CHILDREN'S BAPTISM 171 



tious ecclesiastical valuation, the benefit will be 

 nothing. But if these convictions are present in 

 active form, then the child will each day receive 

 the benefit of that consecration which gave it back 

 to God and which abides in the ever-working vi- 

 sion that this is a holy child and may not be dealt 

 with as if it were in the sole power of the parents 

 to do with as pleasure or caprice or unholy am- 

 bition dictate. Where this consecration is lacking, 

 the ordinance is an empty and meaningless form; 

 its only effect is to work a delusion. 



Children's baptism, then, demands certain con- 

 ditions, without which it is only an empty super- 

 stition. If the parents understand its nature and 

 its limitations ; if they will undertake to carry out 

 its implications ; if they comprehend that its spir- 

 itual working is vicarious, coming to the child 

 through them, then its observance will be fraught 

 with the largest possible blessing and spiritual 

 fruitage. It is but the first act of a program of 

 spiritual education and influence that, through a 

 wonderful and divine arrangement, enables the 

 parents to be in very deed the father and the 

 mother of the spiritual form of the child, and not 

 merely the cause of its physical structure. This 

 assumes a previous instruction and preparation 

 that probably are not usually given, but without 

 which it will be as profitless and mocking as it 

 is sacrilegious. Could this be adequately under- 

 stood we would enter upon a period which would 



