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 judgment 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 visitant-nor, 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 a 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 Him,Tell us if Christianity does 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 :

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"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?

Dr. THOMAS CHALMERS.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CHILDHOOD OF OUR BLESSED REDEEMER.

As we kneel in spirit to contemplate the childhood of the Redeemer, we learn anew to reverence, to love, to labor, and to pray for our children. In life they seem to grow objects of more precious endearment, in death of serener hope and resignation. Who can bend over an infant's grave, without thinking that Christ not only showed his tenderness for little children by encouraging them to draw near to Him, by nursing them in His arms, and grouping them around Him in the streets of Zion, but that in His early days He was not unlike one of them; and on the eve of the departure of every such to His bosom in glory, He seems to address the father and the mother, and to say, "Suffer that little child to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." He knew all the sorrows and joys, the little worlds of hope and fear, of gladness and agony, in which our children expatiate. We deem it not irreverent to suppose

that He remembers to this day His catechetical examination among the doctors, and will bless and answer the prayers of a Christian mother and father for their boy of twelve years old, about for the first time to encounter the difficulties of a public school, and to shrink before the unsheltered gaze of the new multitude of companions and instructors by whom he will be surrounded. And as to those, who, according to the mysterious economy of the heavenly world, that there should be infancy and childhood throughout eternity, bloom here only for a few summers, and then pine upon the stem,—those little pilgrims to Zion, whom their father and mother seek sorrowing, for their cradle is empty, and they are not to be found in the homes of kinsfolk and acquaintance, we know that we shall hereafter find them, reclining in the great school of glorified spirits, lighting up the Father's House above with their own precious and peculiar radiance; sitting among patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, among the foremost heroes and instructors of the celestial sanctuary, at once perfect and expanding to a new perfection. So let us not sorrow, as men without hope for the babes that sleep in Jesus. Depend upon it, if we are Christ's at His coming, we shall behold them