eartily.

Just think for yourselves; consider, you who are grown up, and have
had experience of life, the harm you have known one bad man do, the
sorrow he will cause, even to people who never saw him; and the good
which you have seen one good man, not merely do with his own hands,
but put into other people's hearts by his example. Is not both the
good and the harm which is done on earth like the ripple of a stone
dropt into water, which spreads and spreads for a vast distance
round, however small the stone may be? Indeed, bold as it may seem
to say it, I believe that, if we could behold all hearts as the Lord
Jesus does, we should find that there never was a good man but that
the whole of Christendom, perhaps all mankind, was sooner or later,
more or less, the better for him; and that there never was a bad man
but that all Christendom, perhaps all mankind, was the worse for
him. So fully and really true it is in everyday practice, that we
are members one of another.

Now this is the principle on which the Church acts. For the little
unconscious infant is treated as what it is, a most solemn and
important person, who has other relations beside its father and
mother, as a person who is the brother of all the people round it,
and of all the Church of God, and who, too, may hereafter do to them
boundless good or harm, and they to it.

Therefore we must have some persons to bear witness of that, to
remind the child himself, and the whole Church, that he is not
merely a soul by itself to be saved, but that he is a brother, a
member of a family; that he is bound to that family henceforth, for
good and for evil. And this the godfathers and godmothers do: they
represent and stand in the place of the whole Church. In one sense,
every Christian who meets that child through life, or hears of it,
ought to behave, as far as he can, as its godfather; ought to help
and improve it if he can. But what is everybody's business, says
the proverb, is nobody's business; and therefore these godfathers
and godmothers are called out from the rest, as examples to the
rest, to watch over the child, and to help and advise its father and
mother in guiding and training it: but not by interfering with a
parent's rights, God forbid! or by drawing away the child's
affections from its own flesh and blood; for if a child be not
taught first to honour its father and mother, there is little use in
teaching it anything else whatsoever; and a go