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.

- Eph. ii. 3.

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

against it within us the greatest abhorrence. So decided is the moral feeling of mankind against it, that the strongest human government becomes unsafe the moment the fountains of justice become corrupted. All allegiance and submission are at once at an end, when the ruler becomes unjust. So there is an end to religion whenever you establish the fact that God is unjust.

How, then, stands the present case?"And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." The nature of any thing is nothing more or less than the thing itself, just as God made it. As God made every thing, the nature of every thing must be just what God determined it should be. God makes all human beings through their parents just as certainly as he made Adam and Eve without parents. If we are individually objects of God's wrath by nature, then he has made us so. But if God is angry with us, he must be angry for something. But the only offence charged in this representation is having the very nature which God has given us. God, then, is angry with us, and punishes us when we have committed no offence. It is impossible to conceive of greater injustice than this. And if this be a fact, all religion is at an end. The human heart is so constituted, that it can neither venerate nor love such a being.

But we are told by grave metaphysicians and pious men, that human nature is odious in the sight of God, in consequence of the sin of our first parents; that the condition of the nature of all mankind, whether it should or should not be odious in the sight of God, was suspended on the obedience of Adam. It is his sin, therefore, that we suffer for, and not our own sins. I answer, that the charge of injustice is not removed from the Divine

government. Nothing could possibly be more unjust than the suspension of the nature of the countless myriads of the human race, whether it should or should not be intrinsically odious in the sight of God, on an individual act of a remote ancestor over which they had no control. As far as they are concerned, the contingency was as fortuitous as the cast of a die. There is nothing analogous to this in God's subsequent dealings with mankind. No parent has since been endowed with the power of permanently changing human nature.

But it is said, that it is a matter of fact, explain it as we will, that God makes mankind with such a nature that all sin as soon as they become capable of sinning. All sin is odious in the sight of God, and as all men sin, all are created with a sinful nature, and are, in consequence, children of wrath, that is, they inevitably sin and suffer the punishment of sin.

If, under this hypothesis, we interpret "children of wrath "" to mean, that God has made men with a nature such that it is impossible for any one to arrive at the age of moral action without sinning, and that every one, in consequence of inevitable sin, is condemned to everlasting suffering, then the justice of the Almighty is as much committed as in the other case. The requisition of perfect obedience from an imperfect being, without experience, and surrounded with temptations, is plainly unjust, because incommensurate with the power bestowed. Common justice cannot require the same uniform obedience from a child as from an adult. Common justice cannot ask from a will nicely poised between good and evil an entire exemption from evil, when it is perpetually surrounded by strong temptations.

The most that can be expected is, that there will be

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