of doctrine we are expected to believe to-day.

And worse yet, if anything can be worse. I wonder how many loving,
tender mothers in all these churches know it, how many know that the
little babe which they clasp to their bosoms with such infinite
tenderness and love, which they think of as a gift from the good God,
right out of heaven, is an enemy of God, is under the curse and wrath
of God? How many of you know that your creed teaches that God hates
this blessed little babe, and that, if he does not happen to be one of
the elect, he must suffer torment in darkness forever and ever?

That is taught in your confession of faith, which I have right here at
my hand. The only mitigation of it that I have ever heard of on the
part of consistent believers is the saying of Michael Wigglesworth, a
famous alleged poet of the Puritan time in New England, when he states
explicitly that none of these non-elect children can be saved, but
since they are infants, and not such bad sinners as the grown up ones,
their punishment shall be mitigated by their having the easiest room in
hell.

Friends, you smile at this. This poem of Michael Wigglesworth's was a
household treasure in New England for a hundred years. No end of
editions was sold. It was earnestly, verily believed; and the doctrine
is still taught every time that a new edition of the Presbyterian
Confession of Faith? is issued in this country or in Europe.

Shall we escape these things by going into other churches? Some of
them, yes; but the essentials are there in all of them.

Take for one moment the Episcopal Prayer Book. I have had friends in
the old churches who have become Episcopalians for no reason that I
could imagine, except that it seemed to them they were escaping some of
the sharpest corners of the old beliefs; and yet, if you will read
carefully the form of service for the baptism of infants in the
Episcopal Prayer Book as held to-day and in constant use in every
Episcopal Church in this country and England and throughout Europe, you
will find that it is taught there in the plainest and most forcible way
that the unbaptized infant is a child of wrath, is under the dominion
of the devil, is destined to everlasting death, and is regenerated only
by having a little water placed on its forehead and by a priest saying
over him certain wonderful words.

Can you believe, friends, for one moment that a little child this
minute belongs to the devil, is under his domi