Then I thought how much discredit has been cast upon that ordinance, which is intended to be the great sign and declaration of parental piety and faithfulness; and that family religion had, proportionably, declined, with the indifference of Christians to this powerful means of promoting the eminent zeal and efforts of parents in behalf of their children's spiritual good.

Youths of fifteen to twenty-one years of age are, in a large proportion, the causes of prevailing wickedness,--Sabbath-breaking, profaneness, and other things.

They need just what the ordinance of baptism, properly observed and fully carried out by covenanting parents, would do for them.

But, in being present at the formation of new churches, I have mourned to see that, instead of declaring infant baptism to be the duty of believers, as was formerly done in our older churches, a compromise with modern lax views is made, by merely permitting infant baptism, saying, in the confession of faith, that, "Baptism is the privilege only of believers and their children." But the idea of getting up a zeal in favor of infant baptism, or a public sentiment in the churches which should enforce it as a duty, seemed to me unprofitable; but it occurred to me, whether something could not be done to interest Christian parents in the subject, by showing them the infinite privilege of having God for their God, and the God of their seed, and then the naturalness and propriety of using an ordinance to express and to assist it.

People need instruction on the subject; instruction which will commend itself to their Christian feelings.