ver'? Or, did not people take it for granted, when the bridge was
opened and the ferry-boats were withdrawn, that the bridge was designed
to be the way by which they were to pass over the river?

"Now, suppose so impossible a thing as this, that hereafter baptism
should, by divine revelation, be changed for anointing with oil, and
nothing were said about children. I would anoint the child with oil,
instead of baptizing it with water. We are to use the initiatory rite of
the church for the time being."

"But," said Mrs. Benson, "is there any resemblance between circumcision
and baptism?"

"There need be none," said I. "Resemblance does not give it efficacy,
but God's appointment of it. If marking the flesh in some way should be
appointed to succeed baptism, we need not look for a likeness between it
and baptism before we complied with the divine requirement."

"I do wish," said Mrs. Benson, "that the authority to baptize children
were more expressly stated in the Bible, to satisfy all who were not
brought up as we have been."

_Pastor._ The overwhelming majority of those who now receive the Bible
as the word of God find it there.

_Mrs. Benson._ But why did not Paul receive a revelation about it, as he
did about the Lord's Supper?

_Pastor._ Did that make the thing any more authoritative with us than
the original appointment? We will not prescribe to God how to teach us.
We will not make up our minds how he ought to have made a revelation,
but we will take that revelation and try to understand it.

"I agree to that," said they all.

_Pastor._ It appears to me that God prefers, on certain subjects, that
the world shall reason by inferences. It is a wise way of educating
children and youth, to leave some things to be learned in this way, and
not by setting everything before them, like too many examples in the
arithmetic wrought out.

We have changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day in the
week. It gives me a sublime idea of our Sabbath, that by some great,
silent alteration, it has come to pass that all the world keep the day
of Christ's resurrection, instead of the day which commemorated the work
of creation. I feel toward it as I do with regard to the noiseless
changes of the seasons, and the conformity of our habits and practices
to them. I left New York late in winter for the Azores, and, before I
expected it, the warm southern airs came one morning into my cabin
window. So the Christian Sabbat