rmed? If you have, now is the time
for you to fulfil your parts as sponsors. You must help me, and
help the children's parents, in bringing your godchildren to
confirmation. It really is your duty. It will be better for you if
you fulfil it. Better for you, not merely by preventing a
punishment, but by bringing a blessing. Let me try to show you what
I mean.

Now godparents must have some duty, some responsibility or other;--
that is plain. If you or I promise and vow things in another
person's name, we must be bound more or less to see that that other
person fulfils the promise which we made for him: and so the
baptism service warns the sponsors as soon as the child is
christened, 'Forasmuch as this child has promised,' &c.; and then we
have a plain explanation of what a godfather and godmother's duties
are. 'And that your godchild may know these things the better,'
&c.: and finally, 'you shall take care that this child be brought
to the bishop to be confirmed.'

That is the duty of godfathers and godmothers. Those who stand for
any child do it on that understanding, and take upon themselves
knowingly that duty.

Now, I will not threaten you, my friends; I will not pretend to tell
you how God will punish those godfathers and godmothers who do not
do their duty; because I do not know how he will punish them. He
has not told us in the Bible; and who am I, to deal out God's
thunders as if they belonged to me, and judge people of whose real
merits and dements in God's sight I have no fair means of judging?
I always dread and dislike threatening any sinner out of this
pulpit, except those who plainly break the plain laws which are
written in those Ten Commandments, and hypocrites: because I stand
in awe of our Lord's own words--'Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for ye bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and
lay them on men's shoulders, while you yourselves touch them not
with one of your fingers.' There is too much of that now-a-days, my
friends, and I have no mind to add my share to it. And sure I am,
that any godfathers and godmothers who do their duty, only because
they are afraid that God will punish them if they do not, will not
do their duty at all. But sure I am also, and thankful to God, that
we cannot neglect any duty whatsoever without being punished in some
way or other for our neglect of it. That is not a curse, but a
blessing: it is a blessing to us to be punished