this faith. But if it be not a true sign, it is not an obligatory seal. He who believes and is baptised shall be saved. But he who is baptised and believes not shall be damned. It is not the circumcision which availeth, but a new creature. It is not the baptism which availeth, but the answer of a good conscience. God hath given a terrible demonstration of the utter worthlessness of a sign that is deceitful, and hath let us know that on that event as a seal it is dissolved. He thus stands emancipated from all His promises, and adds to His direct vengeance upon iniquity, a vengeance for the hypocrisy of its lying ceremonial. When a whole circumcised nation lost the spirit, though they retained the letter of the ordinance, He swept it away. The presence of the letter, we have no doubt, heightened the provocation; and beware, ye parents, who regularly hold up your children to the baptism of water, and make their baptism by the Holy Ghost no part of your concern or of your prayer-lest you thereby swell the judgments of the land, and bring down the sore displeasure of God upon your families.

This affords, we think, something more than a dubious glimpse into the question, that is often put by a distracted mother, when her babe is taken away from her-when all the converse it ever had with the world, amounted to the gaze upon it of a few months or a few opening smiles, which marked the dawn of felt enjoyment; and ere it had reached perhaps the lisp of infancy, it, all unconscious of

death, had to wrestle through a period of sickness with its power and at length to be overcome by it. Oh, it little knew, what an interest it had created in that home where it was so passing a visitantnor, when carried to its early grave, what a tide of emotion it would raise among the few acquaintances it left behind it! On it too baptism was imprest as a seal, and as a sign it was never falsified. There was no positive unbelief in its little bosom-no resistance yet put forth to the truth— no love at all for the darkness rather than the light -nor had it yet fallen into that great condemnation which will attach to all who perish because of unbelief, that their deeds are evil. It is interesting to know that God instituted circumcision for the infant children of Jews, and at least suffered baptism for the infant children of those who profess Christianity. Should the child die in infancy, the use of baptism as a sign has never been thwarted by it; and may we not be permitted to indulge hope so pleasing, as that the use of baptism as a seal remains in all its entireness-that He who sanctioned the affixing of it to a babe, will fulfil upon it the whole expression of this ordinance: And when we couple with this the known disposition of our great forerunner-the love that He manifested to children on earth-how He suffered them to approach His person-and, lavishing endearment and kindness upon them in the streets of Jerusalem, told His disciples that the presence and company of such as these in heaven formed one

ingredient of the joy that was set before HimTell us if Christianity do not throw a pleasing radiance around an infant's tomb? and should any parent who hears us, feel softened by the touching remembrance of a light, that twinkled a few short months under his roof, and at the end of its little period expired-we cannot think that we venture too far, when we say that he has only to persevere in the faith and in the following of the gospel, and that very light will again shine upon him in heaven. The blossom which withered here upon its stalk, has been transplanted there to a place of endurance; and it will then gladden that eye which now weeps out the agony of an affection that has been sorely wounded; and in the name of Him who if on earth would have wept along with them, do we bid all believers present, to sorrow not even as others which have no hope, but to take comfort in the thought of that country where there is no sorrow and no separation.

O, when a mother meets on high

The babe she lost in infancy,

Hath she not then, for pains and fears—
The day of woe, the watchful night—
For all her sorrow, all her tears-

An over-payment of delight?

We have put forth these remarks, not for the purpose of inspiring a very violent distaste towards the practice of others in respect of baptism, but of reconciling you to your own; and of protecting you from any disturbance of mind, on account of

their arguments. It forms no peculiarity of the age in which we live, that men differ so much in matters connected with Christianity; but it forms a very pleasing peculiarity, that men can do now what they seldom did before, they can agree to differ. With zeal for the essentials, they can now tolerate each other in the circumstantials of their faith; and under all the variety which they wear, whether of complexion or of outward observance, can recognize the brotherhood of a common doctrine and of a common spirit, among very many of the modern denominations of Christendom. The line which measures off the ground of vital and evangelical religion, from the general ungodliness of our world, must never be effaced from observation; and the latitudinarianism which would tread it under foot, must be fearfully avoided; and an impregnable sacredness must be thrown around. that people, who stand peculiarized by their devotedness and their faith from the great bulk of a species who are of the earth and earthly. There are landmarks between the children of light and the children of darkness, which can never be moved away; and it were well that the habit of professing Christians was more formed on the principle of keeping up that limit of separation, which obtains between the church and the world-so that they who fear God should talk often together; and when they do go forth by any voluntary movement of their own on those who fear Him not, they should do it in the spirit, and with the compassionate

purpose of missionaries. But while we hold it necessary to raise and to strengthen the wall by which the fold is surrounded-and that, not for the purpose of intercepting the flow of kindness and of Christian philanthropy from within, but for the purpose of intercepting the streams of contamination from without-we should like to see all the lines of partition that have been drawn in the fold itself utterly swept away. This is fair ground for the march of latitudinarianism—and that, not for the object of thereby putting down the signals of distinction between one party of Christians and another, but, allowing each to wear its own, for the object of associating them by all the ties and the recognitions of Christian fellowship. In this way, we apprehend, that there will come at length to be the voluntary surrender of many of our existing distinctions, which will far more readily give way by being tolerated than by being fought against. And this is just the feeling in which we regard the difference, that obtains on the subject of baptism. It may subside into one and the same style of observation, or it may not. It is one of those inner partitions which may at length be overthrown by mutual consent; but, in the mean time, let the portals of a free admittance upon both sides be multiplied as fast as they may along the whole extent of it; and let it no longer be confounded with the outer wall of the great Christian temple, but be instantly recognized as the slender partition of one of its apartments,