fractory to parental admonition; in none of these cases can the church of God interpose any further than to perform an act of voluntary benevolence. Authority is out of the question. For what authority can she have over those who never sought her fellowship; to whom she has denied her privileges; and whom she disowns as members? The same principle upon which she attempts to control the children of her members, would justify her in attempting to legislate for others who are without her pale, extending her discipline to Jews, Turks, Pagans; nay, to the whole world lying in wickedness. If she may not do ' this, the reason, and the only reason, is that they are not her members; which reason is equally valid in the case of children who are not her members. The alternative is plain; either the Church of God must give up her care over youth who have not made a profession of their faith; or in order to exercise it must commit an act of usurpation.

But how can a Christian be reconciled to either part of the alternative? How can he persuade himself that children born of the people of God, consecrated to his fear, and declared by his inspired apostle to be "holy," are no more members of his church, than the savage who wanders upon the banks of the Missouri? How can he persuade himself, that among the solemn trusts of the Christian church, that most important one of superintending the youth, has been omitted? That she has received no charge, possesses no

power, and is under no responsibility, on this subject, further to stimulate the individual efforts of parents, masters, or teachers? If she has received any other commandment; if, in her social character, she is bound to provide for "training up a child in the way in which he should go," then the children to be so trained, must be treated as her members; and are members in fact, for God never vested her with authority over any who are not.

To set this point in another light. God, in the ordinary course of his providence, does actually gather his "true worshippers" from the families of his people; and, for the most part, in the days of their youth. He does it most conspicuously in those churches which subject them, when young, to the most exemplary inspection. He has, on the other hand, frowned upon churches as they became remiss in this particular; his good Spirit has departed from them; and there are not a few which, at this hour, may trace their declension and the rapid approach of their desolation, to the neglect of their youth. But to deny that children are members of the church, is to deny both her duty and her right to exercise any public authority over them; and to deny it in opposition both to the blessing and the curse of God; is to smite the Redeemer's kingdom in the heart of one of its most precious interests, the youth; and to do it much deeper and more effectual injury, than it is likely to suffer from the assaults of open enemies.

These consequences appear to us inevitable. Far from us be the thought of imputing them to those who reject the church-membership of infants; or of asserting that they do in fact occur as regularly as we might expect. For, on the one hand, God does not permit error to mature all the deadly fruits which she is capable of bearing: and, on the other, the nature of human society is not to be subverted by theory. Let men profess what they please; let them renounce, and if they think fit, ridicule, our doctrine; it is nevertheless true, that they cannot get along in the religious, any more than in the civil community, without more or less considering children as members. And it is their acting upon the very principle which they represent as unscriptural and absurd, that saves their churches from speedy destruction.

4. From the date of the covenant with Abraham, to the cessation of the Mosaic law, infants were undoubtedly members of God's church. The seal of his covenant was in their flesh; and it was deemed by every Hebrew a prerogative of inestimable worth. "Uncircumcised," was the most bitter and disdainful reproach which his mouth could utter. He would sooner lay his sons in the grave, than permit them to go without the token of their being Abraham's seed. On these facts we found three inquiries. The first relating to the privilege which God conferred upon his people; the second to the effect which the recalling of it produced on

them; and the third to their state of feeling under the loss.

First. "The sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith," applied, by divine direction, to infant members of the church, was a high privilege.

This cannot, with even a show of reason, be disputed. That God should subject them to a painful rite which was of no use-that the indelible certification of his being their God, as he had been the God of their fathers, should be coupled with no benefit-that he should draw them into covenant-relations which were good for nothing, no man is sottish enough to pretend. Their condition, there fore, as members of his church, and the sacramental sign of it, was a real and an important privilege.

What has become of it?

If infants are no longer members of his church, it is taken away, and what has replaced it? Nothing. Nothing! then God has put the children of his people under the new dispensation, further from him than they were under the old. He has inverted his method of providence toward his church, which has uniformly been to bless her with progressive light and favour;-the communication of his grace and truth always increasing, never diminishing; each succeeding dispensation comprehending the whole mass of benefits which belonged to the preceding, and adding others of its own. But in this solitary instance the course of his covenant is changed! And

whereas he had formerly separated his people from the heathen that knew him not; had drawn around them a line of covenant-goodness; had put their little ones within the holy circle; and had instructed them to cherish the distinction as, in his sight, of great price-yet now, when he is to enlarge their inheritance, and enrich their joys; to fulfill the promise of those good things which "eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither had entered into the heart of man," he begins with telling them that though he will still be their God, he will no longer be the God of their seed; that he has cast their babes out of his church, over the line of his covenant, in among the "dogs." And all this, after he had sworn that he would "not break his covenant, nor alter the thing that had gone out of his mouth:" and having done it, commissions his apostle to declare, that "his gifts and his calling are without repentance;" i. e. that a grant which he has once made to his church, he never annuls! Believe it who can. *

* Rom. xi. 29. That the unchangeableness of God's gifts and calling refers to his church, we conclude from the whole scope of the apostle's reasoning in the context; part of which proves the recovery of Israel to the mercies of their fathers; and proves it from the consideration, that it is God's gracious design to reinstate them in their privi. leges; that this design is to be accomplished in virtue of the "gifts and calling" to their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And as they cannot be reinstated but by embracing Christianity, these unchangeable "gifts and calling," must be continued in the New Testament church. Infant-membership was, incontrovertibly, one of the gifts: therefore, if the children of his people are not members of his church, God has broken hisc ovenant.