When we thus give our children names associated with battle-fields, empty titles, brilliant honors, and lucrative offices,—­positions in life which they can never expect to reach, and which, if they did, would not do honor to the child of a Christian family, we do them great injury; we fasten in them feelings the most disastrous, and draw out propensities unbecoming the child devoted to the Lord, breeding in his soul a peevish repining at his station.  Alas! that Christian homes should ever become so servile in their devotions to the rotten sentiments and flimsy interests of misguided and perverted fashion!  Her smile in your home is that of a harlot; her touch is the withering blight of corruption; her dominion is the desolation of family hopes and the extermination of those sacred prerogatives with which the Lord has invested the Christian fireside.  The ball will take the place of prayer; novels will take the place of the bible; favorites will take the place of husbands and wives; and the children will regard their parents only as their masters.

Christian parents should, therefore, give suitable names to their children, that is, such names as will correspond with their state, character and relations to God,—­names which do not suggest the idea of war, rapine, humbug, romance, and sensuality, but which are associated with the Christian life and calling, and which serve as a true index to the spirit and character of the parental fireside.  Reason, as well as faith, will dictate such a choice; for

  “There is wisdom in calling a thing fitly; names should note particulars
  Through a character obvious to all men, and worthy of their instant
    acceptation.”

Our name is the first and the last possession at our disposal.  It determines from the days of childhood our inclinations.  It employs our attention through life, and even transports us beyond the grave.  Hence we should give appropriate names to our children,—­such as will interest them, and neither be a reproach, on the one hand, nor reach to unattainable and unworthy heights, on the other; for the mind of your child will take a bias, from its name, to good or to evil.

Why not adopt scriptural names for them?  Are they not as beautiful as other names?  They are.  And is not their influence as salutary?  It is.  And are they not more suitable for the Christian home than any other?  They are.  Where is there a more lovely name than Mary,—­lovely in its utterance, and thrice lovely in the glowing memories which cluster around it, and in the hallowed home-associations it awakens in the Christian heart, drawing us at once to the feet of Jesus, where a Mary sat in confiding pupilage, and sealed her instructions and gratitude with the tear-drop that glowed like early dew upon her dimpled cheek?  Would Christian parents desire to give their children more beautiful names,—­beautiful in the light of history and of heaven,—­than that of Benjamin, “son of the right hand;” of David, “dear, beloved;” of Dionysius, “divinely touched;” of Eleazar, “help of God;” of Eli, “my offering;” of Enoch, “dedicated;” of Jacob, “my present;” of Lemuel, “God is with them;” of Nathan, “given, gift;” of Nathaniel, “gift of God;” of Samuel, “asked of God and sent of God,” &c.?