ORIGINS 33 



that it was his personal invention for it is hoary 

 with age; his responsibility may only be that he 

 did not reject it.) It is as profound a fiction as 

 was ever conceived to affirm that water baptism 

 has anything whatever to do with the moral na- 

 ture of a child. It is simply not true. No evi- 

 dence for it from life can be produced. No ra- 

 tional necessity for it can be shown. I will not 

 undertake to prove this negative position. Like 

 any other axiomatic position, it is impossible to 

 make its offensiveness to truth and justice any 

 clearer to him that does not see it. But one in- 

 ference from the position it is worth our while 

 to arraign. If baptism is necessary to arrange 

 children's relation with God, then those children 

 whose parents are too negligent to attend to their 

 baptism remain under the wrath of God. This 

 horrible conclusion might have gained a standing 

 in the darkest Middle Ages, and may still occa- 

 sionally be heard among those who have not 

 moved entirely out of the twilight; but it is so 

 nearly extinct, and its death-gasps are so nearly 

 inaudible that there is no motive in striking it 

 another blow, unless to quickly end its dying 

 misery. We are so far away from it in our 

 thought that we are startled when we see the evi- 

 dence that it once lived on this side of the At- 

 lantic. But there is material evidence of it in 

 Copp's Hill Graveyard in Boston, where there is 

 a mound raised over the place where the fathers 

 buried the little bodies of their unbaptized chil- 

 3 



