clarations lightly, but they
have their warrant in many such Scriptural analogies, nor should we
easily find a church, careful to deal with souls, which has not employed
them in some form, whether after the Anglican and Lutheran fashion, by
confirmation, or in the less formal methods of other Protestant
communions, or even by delaying baptism itself until it becomes, for the
adult in Christian lands, what it is to the convert from false creeds.

Therefore the Lord called to Moses as he climbed the steep, and offered
through him a formal covenant to the people.

"Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob,[33] and tell the children of
Israel: Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you
on eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself."

The appeal is to their personal experience and their gratitude: will
this be enough? will they accept His yoke, as every convert must, not
knowing what it may involve, not yet having His demands specified and
His commandments before their eyes, content to believe that whatever is
required of them will be good, because the requirement is from God? Thus
did Abraham, who went forth, not knowing whither, but knowing that he
was divinely guided. "Now, therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed
and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me from
among all peoples; for all the earth is Mine, and ye shall be unto Me a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation."

Thus God conveys to them, more explicitly than hitherto, the fact that
He is the universal Lord, not ruling one land or nation only, nor, as
the Pentateuch is charged with teaching, their tutelary deity among many
others. Thus also the seeds are sown in them of a wholesome and rational
self-respect, such as the Psalmist felt, who asked "What is man, that
Thou art mindful of him?" yet realised that such mindfulness gave to
man a real dignity, made him but little lower than the angels, and
crowned him with glory and honour.

Abolish religion, and mankind will divide into two classes,--one in
which vanity, unchecked by any spiritual superior, will obey no
restraints of law, and another of which the conscious pettiness will
aspire to no dignity of holiness, and shrink from no dishonour of sin.
It is only the presence of a loving God which can unite in us the sense
of humility and greatness, as having nothing and yet possessing all
things, and valued by God as His "peculiar treasure."[34]

And with a reasona