To Abraham, the father of the faithful, the Almighty God said, “I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.” (Gen. 17:7.) In token of this covenant, Abraham was circumcised, and his family, and his posterity, at eight days old.  This principle of the ecclesiastical unity of the many, this family, is continued under the new dispensation of the covenant, and distinctly announced in the memorable sermon of Peter, on the day of Pentecost:  “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost; for the promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” (Acts 2:38, 39.) Accordingly, when Lydia believed she was baptized, and her household; and when the jailor believed he was baptized, he and his, straightway.  (Acts 16.) And so clearly was this principle established, that it extends to the children of parents of whom one only is in the covenant; “for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband, else were your children unclean, but now are they holy.” (1 Cor. 7:14.) The first mother derived her personal name from this great principle.  Under the covenant of works her name is simply the feminine form of the man, [Hebrew:  ISHA] the woman, from [Hebrew:  ISH] the man.  But when, in the awful darkness which followed the fall, the first light broke upon the ruined race, in the grand comprehensive promise, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed:  he shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel,” it was promised that she should be the mother of a Savior who should destroy the grand adversary of man, though he himself should suffer in his inferior nature in the eventful conflict.  In view of this great honor, that she should be the mother, according to the flesh, of the living Savior, and all that should live by his mediation and grace, Adam called his wife’s name Eve, [Hebrew:  KHAVA], because she was the mother of all living, [Hebrew:  HAY]. (Gen. 3:20.) The family identity, established at the beginning of the dispensation of grace, and continued to the end of divine revelation without the least shadow of change, gives to Christian parents their grand encouragement and constraining motive to seek the salvation of the children whom God hath given them.  His former respects, first, themselves, and then their children, as part of themselves.  As it is necessary that they should believe the promise to themselves, in order that they may enjoy it; so they must believe the promise respecting their children, in order that the children may enjoy the blessing.  And as they must prove the reality of their faith in the promise which respects themselves by their works, so they must prove the reality of their faith in the promise which respects their children by the faithful discharge of the duties which they owe to God in their behalf.  Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.