adoption-grounded on grounded on the express words of our Saviour, "suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not"-where a rule is evidently given to guide his church on a contingency, which it is certain he must have foreseen. And, indeed, if it was deemed so necessary to admit the children of the Jews to a participation in the benefits of their covenant, with so little delay that every male was ordered to be circumcised on the eighth day, surely we should be scarcely justified in withholding such as are born under the Christian dispensation, from the earliest possible participation in the benefits of a covenant so manifestly superior. But here a difficulty arises; "the answer of a good conscience" must be made, and who is to make it? The being who possesses but a consciousness of existence, and scarcely that, cannot be competent of itself to undertake a responsibility, of

which it can form no conception, and whose very ear is a stranger even to the sounds by which that obligation is conveyed. Since then the party concerned is incapable of undertaking, for himself, to perform his part in the contract, it were desirable that there should be some one who would undertake to per form it for him, with the understanding that the person or persons so undertaking, should be relieved from the responsibility so soon as the infant attained to such an age as admitted of his taking it upon himself: hence have arisen the institutions of godfathers and godmothers, with the subsequent rite of confirmation.

The sponsorial office is one of no light moment. I approach the temple of the Almighty; I stand, as it were, in the immediate presence of my Creator; on such a spot, associated with every serious and affecting thought, I hear myself solemnly

adjured to declare, whether I am prepared to renounce, in the name of another, those soul-subduing passionsthose alluring pleasures-those fascinating dreams of worldly interest, which a sense of my own weakness, struggle with them as I may, compels me to acknowledge, I dare not renounce for myself. I utter the tremendous words which bind me to my contract-I declare, in the face of men and of angels, "I renounce them all." Those of you who may have taken upon yourselves this most awful duty, if you would perform it faithfully, have a pleasing-if unfaithfully, a most dangerous part. Can there be any thing so pleasing to one in whom the love of God is visible to the eye, depictured in the love of man, as to become the father in a higher sense, the spiritual parent, to an infant mind?-to mark its earliest dawn? to watch its gradual developement? to drop into its ear the first lessons of

wisdom? to speak to it of a God and a Saviour? to awaken its childish curiosity? to open to its view, step by step, the beauteous fabric of religion, cleared from the mists with which our weaknesses, perhaps our errors, have clouded it? to sow the seed, and reap the increase? to plant the tree, and gather the fruit? to behold him he has nurtured in the faith, go boldly forth, in full assurance of truth, to redeem the pledge that has been given, to return "the answer of a good conscience toward God?" to see some venerable hand laid on his youthful head? and then to have the feeling, that he has done his work, that he has acquitted himself of his charge, that he stands clear before his conscience and his God? what reflexion is there more delightful? what enjoyment more lasting or intense?There is nothing so lasting, nothing so intense, with the exception of a feeling of a widely different character, and arising

from a widely different source, a consciousness that the vow has been broken, that the trust has been betrayed, that the parent has abandoned his child, that the perjured has blasphemed his God. Be there any present, who may have lightly assumed this momentous relation, who, regarding it as a mere matter of form, have thought to comply with the usages of society, and thought of nothing more, I will not seek to aggravate the bitterness of recollection, that by this time, at least, must have begun to afflict your hearts: would that I could say any thing to soften that bitterness. There have been some who have found no place for repentance, even though they have sought it with tears; you may be more fortunate, I pray God it be so; if the season be not past, if mature age has not annulled the contract, perhaps it is not too late to redeem the time that has been lost; if the season be past and gone, have re