communion with the Holy Ghost. To these advantages must
be added the respect which God bears to the believing act of the
parents, and to their solemn prayers on the occasion, in both of
which the child is interested; as well as in that solemn engagement
of the parents which the rite necessarily implies, to bring up
their child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

To these impressive words of Richard Watson, I add the following equally
impressive extract from the pastoral address of the Wesleyan Conference
in England to the Societies under its charge in 1837:--

By baptism you place your children within the pale of the visible
Church, and give them a right to all its privileges, the pastoral
care of its ministers, and as far as their age and capacity will
allow, the enjoyment of its ordinances and means of grace. These
children are not offshoots of the Church, enjoying only a distant
relation to it, but they are of it, as a fact; they are grafted
into the body of Christ's disciples; they are partakers of an
initiatory and provisional state of acceptance with God, and can
forfeit their right to the fellowship of the saints only by a
course of sin. Besides, when this sacred ordinance is regarded by
parents in the spirit of prayer and faith, it cannot be
unaccompanied by the divine blessing. Grace is connected with every
institution of the Christian Church; and when children are
constituted a part of the flock of Christ by being placed within
the fold, they have a peculiar claim on the care of that good
Shepherd who "gathereth the lambs with his arms and carries them in
his bosom;" and they will receive instruction, spiritual
influences, tender care, and the exercise of mercy, agreeing with
the relation in which they stand to God. On these grounds we
affectionately exhort you to place your beloved offspring within
the "courts of the house of our God," and amongst the number of His
family, by strictly attending to this divinely appointed ordinance
of our Saviour.[142]

Dr. Ryerson's views were, therefore, the same in 1834 as they were in
1854--that by Baptism children stand in the relation of members of the
Church, and should be enrolled in its registers, and entitled to its
privileges, until they, by their own voluntary irregularity or neglect,
forfeit them. The coincidence me