scovered planets in a certain quarter of the
firmament, analogy, and the known intercourse of God with mankind, and
our moral sense, incline us to look for some symbolic recognition of
this earthly constituency of heaven by him who ordained and is
redeeming to himself a church from among men. Words of interest and love
toward them on the part of God, we all know, are not wanting in the
Bible. Acts of loving-kindness, also, proving the sincerity of those
words, and reaching even to a thousand generations of them that love
God, are everywhere seen in sacred history.

But is there no great, conspicuous symbol of these things,--no type, no
rite? Symbols appear to be inseparable attendants of God's manifested
favor to men. He cannot enter into covenant with an individual, much
less a people, but there is at least a stone set up, or a
threshing-floor is bought for him, an altar is built, or they pour out a
horn of oil. He invites Ahaz to ask of him a sign of his promise: "Ask
it," he says, "either in the depths, or in the height above;" and, when
that man refuses, God gives him a sign. Emblems, seals and types, in the
early dispensation, burst forth like images in the waters of everything
along the banks, and even of things far off. Everything has its
memorial, its rite; are the children, is the parental relation,
forgotten?

Here let us consider that God began with the first parents and the
first children of the human race to set forth that great law of his
administration, the connection of children with parents for good or
evil. Every descendant of Adam is an example under that law. Thus it was
for nineteen generations,--from Adam to Abraham.

When, therefore, God reestablished his church at the call of Abraham, it
was no new thing to connect parents and their children in covenant
promises and blessings. It had its origin in the very nature of man.
Abraham, and the covenant made with him for all believers and their
children, are, indeed, a striking illustration of a principle recognized
and applied by the Most High; but the principle itself is older than
Abraham,--it is coeval with the moral constitution of man. In making a
covenant with Noah, God included his children; so with David, making
mention of his house, "for a great while to come."

As soon, therefore, as religion was established in the earth, by
securing its perpetuity through the conservative influences of one
selected line of descent, the child was taken, a