no more thought of the baptism.  With them the baptism of their children is the ordinance of name-giving.  Before it takes place they are busied about getting a name from the most approved, and fashionable novels of the day.  This takes the place of dedication.  Their prior thoughts are all absorbed in getting a strange, new-fangled name,—­such an one as will carry you away by association to some love-sick tale, or remind you of the burning of Rome, or some other deed which has disgraced humanity.  And then as soon as this is done, they fix upon some auspicious occasion when either in the church or in the presence of a select company at home, (for children cry now-a-days too much to bring them to church) they have their pastor to baptize them.

Perhaps a great feast is prepared; godfathers and godmothers (if they have the warrant of some valuable presents) are chosen; and then in all the glare and parade of fashion, they have the ordinance administered.  And what then is the first joyful cry of the fond parents, after the solemn ceremony is ended?  Why “now, dear, you have your name!” And this is the end,—­yes, the finale of the vows there made before God,—­the end of all until God shall call them to account!

It requires but very little discrimination to see that in all this the nature, design, and obligations of Christian baptism are left totally out of view.  They do not here appreciate this ordinance as a channel for the communication of God’s grace to their children.  When baptized they do not regard them as having been received into gracious relation to God, as plants in the Lord’s vineyard, as having put on Christ, and as having their ingrafting into Him not only signified but sealed.  Thus being undervalued, it is, as a consequence, abused and neglected.

The great neglect of Christian baptism is doubtless owing to the low, unscriptural views of its nature and practical importance; for if they realized its relations to the plan of salvation, and its office in the appropriation of that salvation to their children, they would not permit them to grow up unbaptized, neither would they be recreant to the solemn duties which are binding upon the parent after its administration.  But upon the subject of baptism itself, we have seen that there is great laxity of feeling and opinion.

The spirit of our fathers upon this point is becoming so diluted that we can scarcely discern any longer a vestige of the good old landmarks of their sacramental character.  Instead of walking in them, Christians are now falling a prey to a latitudinarian spirit of the most destructive kind.  They are, in leaving these old landmarks, falling into the clutches of rationalism and radicalism, which will ere long leave their homes and their church

  “A wreck at random driven,
  Without one glimpse of reason or of heaven!”