and hold them to the side of truth.

"But I told Mr. Dow that I was no formalist, nor did I believe in
compromising the truth to win errorists. Clear, faithful, strict
doctrinal views commend themselves to men's consciences."

I came near saying to the good lady, that, if she were able to talk in
such a strain, and to say so much to her minister, he, surely, could not
have deemed her so enfeebled in mind as to be incapacitated for
admission to the Christian church.

"I told him, also," she added, "I was satisfied that his unvarying mode
of baptism was not ordained by Him who sent the Gospel to every
creature.--Why, said I, Mr. Dow, what do you make of the apostles'
baptizing the jailer, 'at the same hour of the night,' and 'before it
was day?' It could not have been for any public effect. What need to
have it done just then? Was it superstitious and Romish? No; it was to
comfort the soul of the poor, trembling convert, with a sense of God's
love to him. How it must have soothed and cheered him to receive God's
hand of love in that ordinance, before he himself fully knew what the
making of a Christian profession implied! I want that same hand of love
here, in my prison of a sick-chamber,--And, I never thought of it much
before, but, I said then, it seemed so clear to me that they would not
have gone to all the trouble, that night, and in the prison-house, and
after the terrors of the earthquake, to put a whole family into
bathing-vessels. To take people from sleep, ordinarily, and immerse them
in water, would be a singular act; much more when they are weak and
faint, as the jailer's family must have been, from fear and excitement.
In my own case, I could not be immersed, even at home; it would probably
cost me my life. Sprinkling came to me as so sweetly harmonious, in that
scene of the jailer's baptism, that I believed it to be the apostolic
mode of baptizing, and I told Mr. D. that I should imitate the jailer;
and that I should send for a minister who could imitate Paul and Silas."

"But," said I, "what brought you to believe in the propriety of
baptizing your children?"

_Mrs. P._ Your minister enlightened me on that subject. I told him my
heart yearned to have it done; for I took the same view of it which I
have mentioned with regard to my own baptism--that it is something which
God does, to and for the children, primarily, and it is not merely a
human act. He said that it was like laying "a penal bond" on childr