o call meetings of parents in the church, and their children, and to
address the parents and the children in sight and hearing of each other.
In doing so, if there are any parents in the church who are withholding
their children from baptism, we have the best of opportunities to
conciliate their feelings to the ordinance of baptism. We all know how
little is effected in our minds by abstract reasoning upon any subject,
where the feelings are deeply concerned; close argument, invincible
logic, absolute demonstrations, and all measures seemingly intended to
coerce the will, excite resistance, and confirm us in our prejudices.
But open to a parent, who has doubts on the subject, its inestimable
benefits to all concerned, and he will be more disposed to see the
grounds for it, and the abundant proofs of its divine authority, which
the atmosphere of pure reason had not sufficient power of refraction to
make him apprehend.

_Mr. S._ I thank the chairman heartily for those remarks. May I add a
leaf from my observation? I have noticed that in such meetings of
parents, in the church, and their children, good influences sometimes
reach those who are pursuing the mistaken course of withholding their
children from baptism, under the plea that they can consecrate their
children to God as well without baptism, as with it. They need to learn
the spiritual power which God has vested in the sacraments of his own
appointment, and to be disabused of the notion that the baptism of a
child is, from beginning to end, merely a human act, of which God is
only a spectator;--they need to feel that baptism is something conferred
upon a child by God; and not merely a sign, but a seal.

"Yes," said Mr. R., "it is an ordinance of God, and the neglect of it is
not merely a failure to obtain blessings, but a disregard of a divine
ordinance; not merely the withholding a sign of allegiance, but the loss
of a seal,--the government seal, not ours, which God would affix to the
intercourse between himself and our souls. If we, pastors, feel this
deeply, and so perceive the design of God in bestowing baptism upon the
children of his people, we shall convey to the hearts and minds of
doubting Christian parents, persuasive influences, which will succeed
where arguments and appeals, based on mere proofs and obligations, have
failed."

_Mr. A._ It is gratifying, now, to think that these things, and others
like them, may be done without calling the children "me