the proper time for giving the
child a name? Because then Christ claims the child for His own;--
because having a name shows that the child is a person who has a
soul, a will, a conscience, a duty; a person who must answer himself
for himself alone for what he does in the body, whether it be good
or evil. And that will, and soul, and conscience were given the
child by Christ, by whom all things are made, who is the Light which
lights every man who comes into the world.

Thus in holy baptism God adopts the child for His own in Jesus
Christ. He declares that the child is regenerate, and has a new
life, a life from above, a seed of eternal personal life which he
himself has not by nature. And that seed of eternal life is none
other but the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father and of
the Son, the Lord and Giver of Life, who does verily and indeed
regenerate the child in holy baptism, and dwells with his soul, his
person, his very self, that He may educate the child's character,
and raise his affections, and subdue his will, and raise him up
daily from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.

Therefore, when in the Catechism you solemnly ask the child its
name, you ask it no light question. You speak as a spirit, a
person, to its spirit, to its very self, which God wills should
never perish, but live for ever. You single the child out from all
its schoolfellows, from all the millions of human beings who have
ever lived, or ever will live; and you make the child, by answering
to his name, confess that he is a person, an immortal soul, who must
stand alone before the judgment seat of God; a person who has a duty
and a calling upon God's earth, which he must fulfil or pay the
forfeit. And then you ask the child who gave him his name, and make
him declare that his name was given him in baptism, wherein he was
made a member of Christ and a child of God. You make the child
confess that he is a person in Jesus Christ, that Christ has
redeemed him, his very self, and taken him to Himself, and made him
not merely God's creature, or God's slave, but God's child. You
make the child confess that his duty as a person is not towards
himself, to do what _he_ likes, and follow his own carnal lusts; but
toward God and toward his neighbours, who are in God's kingdom of
heaven as well as he. And then you go on in the rest of the
Catechism to teach him how he himself, the person to whom you are
speaking, may live fo