they are established. It would be a sufficient answer to remind those who put the question, that the parent is already bound, by every tie, to consult the welfare of the child, and to watch diligently over all its interests. The parent can contract no new obligation upon this account. But the reasons why the parent is not admitted to this office, will be further manifest by considering the ends and uses for which the practice was first settled in the Church, and for which it is continued still in use. It must be confessed then, that this office, in the first age of Christianity, was, in some respects, of more importance than it is now, although many of its uses still remain in force. Thus, upon the first publication of the Gospel, and its early progress in the world, there was perpetual danger in times of persecution, which raged with fury for some ages, lest the parents of children who were baptized might be cut off by the hand of cruelty and malice. Against this peril, therefore, the sponsors were provided, that the child who should experience the loss of parents, might find spiritual friends in those who took a charge upon them of that kind in the day of baptism. But there was another danger also to which children were exposed in early times, and against which the sponsors were provided. There was the fear lest some of those whose children were baptized might yield to the temptations of the world, or the fury of opposers, and go 'back to their former state, and renounce the faith they had embraced. In such cases it became the pressing duty of those who first pledged their word for the child, to use their best endeavours that the death of pious parents, or the falling off of those who might not keep their first footing in the faith, should not leave the child without all counsel, or cast him back into the arms of unbelievers. Nor are some such ends and purposes entirely wanting at this day, with reference to the sponsor's charge. Something of this duty still continues, with regard to those children who may be deprived of parents by the stroke of death. Something of this duty too continues, with regard to those children whose parents shall, by gross and manifest licentiousness, or by flagrant proofs of irreligion, neglect the spiritual welfare of the child which God hath given, and which was also hallowed to the Lord. It is not to be expected in such cases that the child

should fall wholly to the care of sponsors: the necessities of life forbid it; nor would this be possible, for many reasons, in most instances. But in such events of children deprived of parents, or abandoned by them in their chief concern, the sponsor will find his obligation, and his care may be eminently useful and important. The sponsors, without neglecting their own families, or taking any great burden on themselves, may be ready to succour and advise the child, and may strive, as far as they are able, to promote his spiritual interests and well-being. I pass the vulgar misconceit, that the sponsor makes himself responsible for the duties and the conduct of the child, because he answers in the child's name, who indeed stands bound to fulfil what is so pledged on his behalf, and stipulated for his benefit. In a word, the sponsor undertakes that the child shall not want what his necessity may call for in order to his spiritual welfare, and what he may be able to supply on that account. It belongs to him particularly to remind those for whom he undertook a serious trust, of the duty to which they stand bound, on their part, when the proper season comes, and when the day of confirmation calls them forth to answer for themselves. It argues a poor spirit to shrink from every trust which we can undertake for others; but it is quite surprising that the parent should be backward to accept a new friend for his child. If the trust should be rendered needless by the care which is supplied by others, by prudent parents or preceptors, still the caution, which provides it, is founded upon probable contingencies, and a solid benefit may follow.

We reach now the next chief point to be considered. Having shewn upon what reasons the child is brought to Christ by baptism, and what concern the sponsors undertake about him, we have but to remember that the good seed, according to the text, must be duly sown in the morning of their lives, by religious education, and, above all, by religious patterns and examples, in the nearest circles of society to which they stand related. They will then, by this happy road of Christian culture, reach the day of confirmation, if it should please God to prolong their term of life, and to enlarge the scene of trial to that new period of their

course.

The young must, in due time, per

ceive their obligation to renew the promises which were pledged for them. They cannot fail to understand this, unless the most scandalous neglects of all religious habits shall prevail in the persons and the lives of those about them, and unless the good work of education. shall be quite neglected. The great truths of Christianity should form the earliest lessons in a Christian household, and the practice of them should be the standing and perpetual illustration of the precepts.

Most exemplary were the heads of families in Israel, of old time, in this respect. They maintained among their children a familiar knowledge and acquaintance with the testimonies of the law of God, and with the monuments of his controlling providence. They spake of these things at their up-rising and down-sitting, so truly did they sow the good seed in the morning and the evening of their day. In the latter days, indeed, when they became di vided among themselves, and things ran into extremes, the Sadducee sowed doubts and cavils for the good seed; the Scribe disputed upon narrow grounds for empty trilles; the Pharisee was carried equally by pride and superstition from the knowledge and the practice of the sober rules of faith and duty. Then it was that the good seed became choked or deprived of nourishment for its increase; overwhelmed with a spurious growth of false conceits, or lost amidst the follies and extravagancies of fanatical delusion.

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But it is my aim, at this time, to remind the young more particularly, that they have a duty to fulfil, and an interest to cherish, for themselves. The care of others may do much; it has its season and its opportunity; and most cruel is the spirit of wantonness or indolence which shall omit such pains in their own domestic circle, by which neglect the hope of harvest at a future season may be much endangered. But certain it is, that each one in all the number of the children of men will find the day of trial for their own exertions, if the loan of life shall be prolonged. The call of duty will come home to the hearts of all. The day arrives when the hand of others must, in some sort be removed. The parent's wing is for the nest; it leads and governs the first flight; it accompanies the fluttering pinion, which has no steady movement or direction in its early ventures, and is open to so many

dangers, which await the weak, and which press on all sides on the rambles of the heedless and unpractised in these sublunary scenes. But the time comes when they who have enjoyed the benefit of such fostering care, and seasonable aids, must govern their own ways, and find their own poise, and consider their own safety, and learn to seek their own subsistence in the world, and to fill their own place in the scenes of life.

Were we indeed to distribute the several exercises of religion to the different seasons of the time of life, we should allot the careful cultivation of good principles to the days of youth, when the mind is most apt to receive impressions, and stands so much in need of good ones for its safeguard and direction: we should leave the full discharge of active services for those of more strength and more experience; and we should assign the consolations of religion, its cheering hopes and quiet resignation, its calm reflec tions, and its humble but well placed assurance, to the time of age.

But the text presents a better lesson to us; it reminds us that diligence is always needful to promote the final harvest, and that the care of the first laid principles must be among the last concerns of human life. Above all, the season which is given to us for our profit at whatever moment, should be readily embraced. "He that observeth the wind," saith the wise man, "shall not sow: and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap." The meaning is, that present opportunities must not be omitted on the ground of some slight reasons which may seem to offer a discouragement. Our observations may not be well founded, and our prognostics may deceive us; but our exertions in a good cause will never fail entirely of producing good effects.

In the morning of life, indeed, the faculties are more alert and the choice most free. The fears and apprehen sions which eleave perhaps to declining years, do not then mingle so much of constraint with the motives for compliance with religious duties. Accordingly the tenders of the heart are then most valuable. What is offered is not then the poor refuse which escapes the ravages of vice; which is saved with difficulty from the wreck of folly; the remnant which survives the wasteful and confused accounts of idle babits and improvident neglects. Let

the young, then, with that lively zeal which is the character of youth, and the life-blood of religion, yield the bosom to that good seed, which will spring up with an early promise in its season, and which will yield a rich abundance for the days of harvest.

It remains but to add a few words concerning the nature of the rite of confirmation, to which the young are now called; that they who are now preparing for it may the better understand its ground and objects.

It cannot require much scope of discourse to shew that they for whom a pledge is given, and in whose name and behalf an early promise is both made and received, should have a fixed time and opportunity to redeem that pledge, and to make their own profession, to set the seal of faithful resolution to their own engagement.

In a former part of this discourse it was remarked that Baptism in the Christian Church answers to the rite of circumcision in the old Israel, and we may observe here that the rite of confirmation answers also to that custom in the Jewish Church, of bringing children at the age of thirteen, to make a solemn promise to observe the law and to undergo a public test. So constantly do the same reasons produce the same provisions, where reason is allowed to bear sway, and to form its own rules. So uniform and so consistent also are the methods which are followed under every dispensation which has God for its author.

With regard to the grounds of this rite of confirmation as they may be traced in the divine word, our Church may be thought to take its pattern from the laying on of the hands by the Apostles in their days, where baptism had already been administered. The cases are not parallel in all respects, but in some they are; and therefore without too high a challenge we may well adhere to that authentic precedent so far as the reasons and the uses of it can be shewn in some principal respects to be the same.

After the baptism, then, of the Sa maritans, by Philip, who exercised an inferior ministry in the Christian household, Peter and John, who sat in the chief seats of pastoral government, laid their hands upon them, and it is added that the Holy Ghost came upon them. It is true, that upon the laying on of hands here mentioned, the gifts of prophecy and tongues, which were then REMEMBRANCER, No. 66.

so needful, were conveyed, and these gifts were not dispensed to all who were baptized. We do not then contend that the laying on of hands in confirmation, answers in all points to those examples. But the gifts and succours of the Holy Spirit were in their measure and degree to be dispensed to every candidate for future glory in all times, and accordingly in the ages which succeeded we read of the continuance of this rite for the furtherance and profit of the young. The laying on of hands was used indeed for various ends and purposes, which were not restrained to the first age. It was a common form of benediction, and as such it was used by our Lord himself when the children were admitted to his presence. It was employed also both in that first age and in all succeeding times in the solemn rite of ordination. It continues so to be employed with full propriety, although the hand of the Apostle who had seen the Lord, be no longer in the work. They who have succeeded to what is of ordinary and perpetual use in the chief seats of pastoral rule, do not therefore make an arrogant pretension when they do the same things for such causes and such reasons as continue still to be the same. Thus our Church, without presuming upon former gifts of miracle and inspiration, observes that form of benediction which was commonly in use in the first ages, and applies it to the seasonable rite of confirmation. The needful blessing of the Holy Spirit may well be thought to follow upon the solemn tender which the Christian candidate is now called to make of himself as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God; and the pastoral benediction is applied by those whom Christ hath appointed to bless in his name throughout all ages, with the promise that what is so sealed on earth will be ratified in heaven, if they for whom the blessing is designed shall receive and cherish and improve it to their best advantage. They want no aid, no motive, no encouragement in order to that end.

Observe then; the rite of confirmation is not a sacrament according to the proper definition of what has been ordained by Christ as generally necessary to salvation, nor is baptism incomplete without it: but it is a wise and salutary provision in the church of Christ, established on the ground of apostolic usage, and it becomes a Z z

matter of strict duty to comply with it where it may be had. It is also in itself extremely proper and significant as an intermediate step between the font of baptism and the table of the Lord. In a word, it is absolutely necessary at some time or other to do what is done at confirmation, that is, to take up and profess the Christian calling on our part; and what may be more fit, and what time more suitable and proper, than that which is thus furnished for the young? Where no way is prescribed, and no time set apart for any useful purpose in the life of man, experience shews what often happens. The work is left undone.

They must be strangely wedded to their own conceits, then, who shall presume to slight this proffered benefit, or to set at nought the pattern to which it is referred, and to spurn the wisdom and authority by which it is provided. Surely, they will judge more soundly and more prudently, who regard it as a pastoral act of much value, which is thus enlarged to them, to which they owe obedience, and from which they will derive a signal benefit, if they be not wanting to themselves, and careless to improve the blessing.

But there is another point of view in which this rite presents itself, and which must be touched again. It becomes a step to the table of the Lord. It is most desirable that this step should follow as soon as may be. If it be so taken, in duc season, we may hope to be spared the pain of witnessing so often, even to the latest periods of a long life, that strange reluctance to the discharge of a necessary duty, imposed so plainly by our Lord's own word and injunction, and established in his household as a perpetual means of grace. Strange may that backwardness be called, since it is found so often where there is no total want of good dispositions. Where, indeed, the reluctance is the fruit of negligence and folly, of wanton misdeeds and obstinate ill habits, of modes of life which never can be reconciled to this, or to any other act of Christian duty, we may then employ another word of designation or description. In such case, the strange reluctance, so culpable, so unbecoming, so deplorable in the wavering and the weak, will bear, indeed, the plain mark, that the heart is yielded to another master, whose work is followed,and whose wages will one day be received.

Let these things, then, be distinctly noted; that the sacrament of baptism is the sacrament of entrance into the fold of Christ, the laver of regeneration; the means of access to the state of grace.

It is the first preparation of the soul for future seasons of fertility: the first watering of the dews of grace: the first sowing of that seed, which, though it may lie long before it can spring up with a visible and thriving growth, will, notwithstanding, have its increase, if it be not choked by cares and follies, or neglected in maturer years.

Let it be observed next, that the pious rite of confirmation is the public token and assurance that the foot is fixed and established in the state of grace. To which also let it once again be added, and considered with peculiar heedfulness, that the sacrament of our joint communion is our blessed Lord's own ordinance, appointed in perpetual remembrance of the work of our redemption, wrought by his one oblation of himself once offered, and put in force by his ever-living and effectual intercession at the throne of grace. It serves, too, for the best purpose of spiritual succour and increase; for comfort; for encouragement; for good hope, and proficiency in all our course. The seals of grace, what are they but the seals of pardon and acceptance, of sober trust, of humble but well placed assurance?

Finally, let those who are now preparing to make good that part of their duty which relates to the rite of confirmation, reflect that this is the time when they are called to shew their gratitude for the goodwill of others exerted heretofore in their behalf. This is the time when they must witness their at tention to their own best interests, and prove themselves to be sincerely mindful of their duty. This is the season when they are invited to make a solemn profession that they are Christians, and that it is their chief desire to be so; that they glory in that name; that they put their trust in the great Author of Salvation, and that they are most ready and entirely willing to embrace this opportunity, so solemn and so proper, so full of benefit, so profitable, so becoming, for professing the convictions and the purpose of their hearts. It is the time when they declare their choice and resolution before those whose fellowship in all religious exercises, in faith and