St. John, but our Judge from whom we must hear the words, "An excellent keeper truly have I left thee of thy brother's soul!" We shall see how precarious a thing it is to look for "conversion" in riper years, (a thing which God has not promised,) if we neglect His appointed means of training up in their youth, "the members of His Son, the heirs of His kingdom." Our ministerial care must be, I will not say exclusively, but still very mainly directed to these "little ones:" and while we neglect not to build up older Christians, and take every opportunity of recalling a wanderer to Christ's fold, "if, peradventure God may yet give him repentance," our chief duty, delegated to us by the Great Shepherd, is His twice-repeated commission to "feed His lambs." Our own Church has very carefully directed our attention to them: our sermons, she supposes,[1] shall be such as shall interest and instruct them, long before their confirmation: their elementary instruction, she supposes[2] will be interesting and edifying to the adult portion of the congregation, when assembled for worship on the Lord's day: for it is out of their mouths, and such as them, that "God hath perfected praise;" and so, assuredly, it would be; and our sermons, if addressed in part to these "babes in Christ," might most healthfully recall us to the memory of our own childhood; the remembrance of childhood's comparative innocence in the recentness of its Baptismal purity, augments, probably, the repentance of most of us, that we have not "led all the rest of our lives according to that beginning;" it is a tie, which God has often still wound round the heart of the apparently obdurate[3], whereby He has drawn him back to Himself, when every other band was burst, and more direct appeals have only hardened. This, however, is not the question: it is, whether from false views of Baptism, and, consequently, a faithless doubt as to
- ↑ "And that he may know these things the better, ye shall call upon him to hear sermons."—Baptismal Service.
- ↑ See "Directions after the Catechism."
- ↑ It is certainly true to human nature, that in a popular tale, the aged sinner, after many years of crime, is represented as first softened into penitential tears, at the unwonted sight of childhood's prayer.
