be the utterance of some fact or
calling which belongs to that home. Their name is one of the first things
which children know, and hence it makes a deep impression upon them. And as
our Christian names are given to us at the time of our baptism, one would
think that there is always a correspondence between the name and some fact
or interest connected with the occasion. We should then receive a Christian
name, a name which does not bind us by the laws of association to what is
evil either in the past or the present, but which indicates a relation to
some precious boon involved in the dedication of the child to God.

Is this always so? By no means. It once was. It was so in the Hebrew home
and in the families of the apostolic age. But in this day of parental rage
after new-fangled things and names, taken from works of fiction and novels
of doubtful character, we find that parents care but very little about the
baptismal name being the herald of a religious fact. "What is in a name?"
was a question propounded by a poet. His answer was "nothing!"

"That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

The principle here evolved is false. There is much in a name; and at the
creation names were not mechanically given to things; but there was a
vital correspondence between the name and the thing named. Much depends
upon the name. It exerts a potent influence for good, or for evil upon the
bearer and upon all around him.

Primarily, a name supposed some correspondence between its meaning and the
person who bore it. Hence the name should not be arbitrary in its
application, but should "link its fitness to idea," and with the person,
run in parallel courses.

"For mind is apt and quick to wed ideas and names together,
Nor stoppeth its perceptions to be curious of priorities."

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, felt that practically there was much in a
name, when he heathenized the names of the young Hebrew captives. By this
he thought to detach them from their Hebrew associations. God was in each
of their original names, and in this way they were reminded of their
religion. But the names this Chaldee king gave them were either social or
alluded to the idolatry of Babylon. Their Hebrew names were to them
witnesses for God, mementoes of the faith of their fathers; hence the king,
to destroy their influence, called Daniel, Belteshazzar, i.e. "the
treasurer of the god Bel;" Hannaniah he called S