[Illustration:  Dr. Talmage in his first church, Belleville, new Jersey.]

Sometimes at the baptism of children, while I have held up one hand in prayer, I have held up the other in amazement that the parents should have weighted the babe with such a dissonant and repulsive nomenclature.  I have not so much wondered that some children should cry out at the Christening font, as that others with such smiling faces should take a title that will be the burden of their lifetime.  It is no excuse because they are Scriptural names to call a child Jehoiakim, or Tiglath Pileser.  I baptised one by the name of Bathsheba.  Why, under all the circumambient heaven, any parent should want to give a child the name of that loose creature of Scripture times, I cannot imagine.  I have often felt at the baptismal altar when names were announced somewhat like saying, as did the Rev. Dr. Richards, of Morristown, New Jersey, when a child was handed to him for baptism, and the names given, “Hadn’t you better call it something else?”

On this occasion I had adopted the theory, which I long since abandoned, that an officiating clergyman at baptism should take the child in his arms.  Now, there are many ministers who do not know how to hold a baby, and they frighten the child and increase the anxiety of the mother, and may create a riot all along the line if there be other infants waiting for the ceremony.

After reading the somewhat prolonged liturgy of the dear old Reformed Church, I came down from the pulpit and took the child in my arms.  She was, however, far more composed than myself, and made no resistance; but the overpowering sensation attached to the first application of the holy chrism is a vivid and everlasting memory.

Then, the first pastoral visitation!  With me it was at the house of a man suffering from dropsy in the leg.  He unbandaged the limb and insisted upon my looking at the fearful malady.  I never could with any composure look at pain, and the last profession in all the world suited to me would have been surgery.  After praying with the man and offering him Scriptural condolence, I started for home.

My wife met me with anxious countenance, and said, “How did you get hurt, and what is the matter?” The sight of the lame leg had made my leg lame, and unconsciously I was limping on the way home.

But I had quite another experience with a parishioner.  He was a queer man, and in bad odour in the community.  Some time previously his wife had died, and although a man of plenty of means, in order to economise on funeral expenses, he had wheeled his wife to the grave on a wheelbarrow.  This economy of his had not led the village to any higher appreciation of the man’s character.  Having been told of his inexpensive eccentricities, I was ready for him when one morning he called at the parsonage.  As he entered he began by saying:  “I came in to