"The Scripture proclaims, that all human beings were in the person of one man given over to eternal death. How has it happened that the fall of Adam hath involved so many nations with their infant children in eternal death, but because it so seemed good in the sight of God?”

The same doctrine is taught by implication in the Confession of Faith of the divines at Westminster. "Elect infants," say they, "dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth." Nonelect infants, of course, are left in the state of nature, which is, as we have already seen, in a state of damnation.

This doctrine was not only decreed by ecclesiastical assemblies, and proclaimed from the pulpit, but it was sung from the choir. We have already cited one specimen from Watts. In one of his versions of the fifty-first Psalm, he has the following stanza :—

"Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin,

And born unholy and unclean;
Sprung from the man whose guilty fall
Corrupts the race, and taints us all."

In another version of the same Psalm :

"I from the stock of Adam came,

Unholy and unclean;

All my original is shame,

And all my nature sin.

"Born in a world of guilt, I drew

Contagion with my breath;
And as my days advanced, I grew
A juster prey for death."

It is difficult to conceive how a more fatal blot could

be fixed on the character of the Deity than the doctrine of infant damnation. By a benevolent instinct of our nature, the best feelings of the human heart are called forth by the very sight of infancy. Innocence, helplessness, and dependence all appeal to the beholder at once, and it is thought a strong evidence of a hard and cruel disposition, to be indifferent even to the presence of children.

But what is that hardness of heart compared with the infinite barbarity of plunging them in the quenchless fires of hell! One of the worst atrocities of savage warfare is the deliberate murder of infants, of which we often read. Our blood runs cold when we read of the sacrifice of helpless babes, torn from the bosoms of their mothers, by the tomahawk or the scalping-knife. But what is that when compared with taking them from the embraces of human affection, and consigning them to endless torment !

We read of the horrid idolatry of Moloch, that grim deity of blood, whose offerings were little children, thrown into the fire beneath his image, while their cries were drowned by the sound of drums and the fierce yells of the assembled worshippers. Their pains were short, for their frail bodies were soon consumed by the devouring flames. But what was the cruelty of Moloch compared with that of Jehovah, if he could not only plunge them in the flames, but keep them there to all eternity!

Is it not strange that such appalling, not to say absurd, consequences of the doctrine of original sin should not sooner have led to its rejection? Is it not strange that it still holds its place in the symbols of faith of so many and such large bodies of the Christian Church?

Finally, it may be inquired, if infants are pure and innocent, and have no sins to be forgiven, why are they baptized? How are those texts to be interpreted which assert that regeneration is necessary to all? What can regeneration mean, when applied to children, if they are already pure and fit for the kingdom of heaven?

I answer, that baptism is nothing more nor less than a form of naturalization into the visible Church, the outward kingdom of God. It was at first the public acknowledgment of conversion to Christianity. It bore nearly the same relation to the Christian religion that circumcision had borne to the Jewish. This rite was enjoined, not only upon Abraham himself, but on his household. "He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised." So, afterwards, on a man's conversion to Judaism, all his family who were under age were supposed to go with him as a matter of course, for the very obvious reason that it is in the parent's power to bring up his children to what religion he chooses. So, when Christianity became the recognized religion, the conversion of the parents was supposed to involve the conversion of their children or households. So it evidently was in the case

of Lydia and the jailer. In the first ages of the existence of the Church of which we have any authentic history, infant baptism was the general practice. The signification of it, as applied to infants, may be learned from the institution of godfathers or sponsors.

It was

not only a public profession of the Christian religion, but an acknowledgment of the obligation of parents to give their children a Christian education. And this is precisely the meaning of the rite at the present day.

The parent submits his child to this rite, as a profes

est.

sion that he himself is a believer in the authority and obligation of the Christian religion, and that it is his purpose to educate his child in the same religion. God has made religion more than almost every thing else to be an hereditary matter. "The promise," said the Apostle, "is to you and your children." The most important part of life, so far as religion is concerned, is the earli"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." As soon as a child begins to be imbued with Christian truths, principles, and habits, he begins practically to become a subject of Christ's kingdom, and a member of his mystical body. The ceremony of baptism is only symbolical of that fact. It therefore properly takes place in infancy. It does not imply that the child has any sins to wash away, either original or actual, or that its nature requires to be changed, but only that it needs Christian instruction and Christian fellowship, that it may be saved from the temptations of the world, and formed in the spiritual image of the Son of God. If Christ could say of them, at the commencement of their career, "Of such is the kingdom of God," all that was necessary for them was so to be trained up as never to fall from the purity and innocence in which they were created, but to be kept from the evil there is in the world."

DISCOURSE X.

EXPLANATION OF THE PHRASE, "BY NATURE CHILDREN OF WRATH."

AND WERE BY NATURE THE CHILDREN OF WRATH, EVEN AS OTHERS.

THE doctrine which has been drawn from this text, by a large division of the Christian Church has been, that mankind, in the state in which God creates them, are objects of his wrath, "are indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is good, and wholly inclined to all evil," "are born under God's wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, and the pains of hell for ever."

It is to be hoped, that those who felt themselves compelled to draw such a doctrine from this passage of Scripture did it with reluctance, for no doctrine can be conceived more subversive of our natural ideas of justice, or more contradictory to the rest of the Scriptures. Such a doctrine, if true, would overthrow religion; I mean as a sentiment of the human heart. God has made us so that we can have no respect for injustice. Whenever it is named in our presence, there rises up