ever the other virtues of baptism, it seems most reasonable to believe that it removes from its every object original sin. Baptized as we are into Christ's death, the power of that death, we doubt not, is so applied to us in this solemn sacrament, as to purge away the stains transmitted from our forefather. There is one great sense in which baptism is the sign of regeneration: the child that was born an alien is received into God's family, and it is only by committing actual sin that it can again be brought into condemnation: and if therefore the child thus renewed and accepted in Christ, die, ere old enough for moral accountableness, it seems impossible to question the salvation of this child. Original guilt is removed, and actual guilt there is none: and what then shall prevent the entrance of the immortal spirit into heaven?

Such is our persuasion, with the reasons on which it rests, with regard to those who are taken away in their infancy. We never hesitate to tell parents sorrowing for their dead children, who had been old enough to endear themselves by the smile and the prattle, but not old enough to know moral good from moral evil, that they have a right to feel such assurance of the salvation of their offspring, as the best tokens could scarcely have afforded had they died in riper years.

And we would not, in offering this consolation, limit it, as some do, to parents who give evidence of vital religion. It has always seemed to us one of the most unwarranted of the theories put forth by that great ornament of the dissenting community, Dr. Watts, that all infants except those of pious parents are annihilated at death. This eminent person-for few ever rivalled him in varied ability -maintained strongly the likelihood, that the bodies of those who die in infancy have no resurrection, and that their souls are extinguished by an act of Omnipotence, making, however, an exception in favour of such babes as have been born of religious fathers and religious mothers. To us the theory appears most rash and untenable, even with the exception, and still more without it—that God should quench the spirit of immortality which he has once lighted. We doubt not his power, were he pleased thus to employ it: but the spirit within us pleads so emphatically against the possibility of extinction, that, unless Scripture asserted it, we cannot believe that any kindred principle is created to perish. It were to darken and almost to dislocate my every hope of immortality, to prove to me that human souls once called into being could ever cease to exist and even if this were overcome, the excepting certain infants, and the making the exception depend on the parent, would surround the theory with insuperable difficulties. That the character of father and mother is to determine whether there shall or shall not be annihilation of a soul-whether there shall or shall not be resurrection of a body—this were ascribing to one set of beings such an influence over the eternal destinies of another, as has, we think, no warrant in Scripture, and no vindication in reason. Indeed, we are assured from the Bible, that all men who are to be judged hereafter, shall be judged by their works and how can infants, it may be asked, who have done no works, ever answer this description? At least it should be observed, that this difficulty, if a difficulty at all, belongs to one infant as much as to another; and if, therefore, it avails nothing against the children of the righteous, neither can it against the children of the unrighteous. But we find no difficulty whatever. All shall be judged by their works: this is unquestionable, for it is the broad

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assertion of holy writ: but the infant sinned in Adám, and is therefore accounted by God as having done evil: and the infant grafted by baptism into Christ, is accounted by God as having wrought righteousness. The infant therefore shall be tried by works-works in which it had as actual a share as the full-grown man. Has it sinned? Yes, in Adam. Then it must die. Has expiation been made for its sin? Yes, in Christ, of whose body it had been made by baptism a member; and righteous wrath is set against the sentence. And as truly as with the adult-respect, of course, being had to the capacities of the two-the infant is tried by its works, and consigned, as the result of the trial, to everlasting blessedness.

We are not then to be moved by any argument or any authority, from believing it proved by the nature and terms of the Christian covenant, that all baptized children, dying ere they commit actual sin, find entrance into the kingdom of heaven. And however melancholy the thought, that so many of our fellow men live without God, and die without hope, it is cheering to believe, that perhaps a yet greater number are saved through the sacrifice of Christ. Far more, we suppose, than a third of our population die before old enough for moral accountableness: and thus, how large a fraction of the Christian community is safely housed ere exposed to the blight and the tumult of the world. O, the "perfected possession" would not want inhabitants if all, who could choose for themselves, chose death, and not life; heaven would still gather within its capacious bosom, a shining multitude, who just descended to earth that they might there be grafted into the body of Christ, and then, flew back to enjoy all the privileges of membership; headed by the slaughtered little ones of Bethlehem-those who dying, we might almost say, for the Saviour, won something like the martyrs' crown, which shall, through eternity, sparkle on their foreheads. Who, then, shall say that Herod was permitted to do a real injury to those innocents, and that thus their death is an impeachment on the justice or the mercy of God? We may be assured that they escaped many cares, difficulties, and troubles, with which a long life must have been charged; for they might have remained on earth till Judah's desolation began, and have shared in the worst woes which ever fell on a land. And better was it for them -even if certain that they would all, at last, have attained eternal lifethat they were removed from the earth ere it shook under the vengeance of God, than had they been left to bear their parents to the grave, and wish themselves with them as they marked the gathering of divine wrath.

Indeed we will not dare to affirm, that it would be always a privilege to die young, though we can be assured that God, who does best whatsoever he does, consults most for the advantage of the child whom he allows not to become man. It is common, we think, on the death of children, to hear as a topic of consolation, that they have gained rather than lost by dying; the joys of heaven having been secured, and the cares of earth avoided. For our own part we are not prepared to make this affirmation. If it were necessarily and manifestly— so manifestly, we mean, that we could detect all the reasons-for the advantage of the child, that it died while yet young, it must follow that it would necessarily have been for the advantage of each one amongst ourselves, had we not been spared to manhood. But this we never can admit. I can thank God as heartily for the mercy that I died not in my boyhood, as for anv other blessing

received at his hand. I can thank him for the development of my faculties, for the development of my reason, for the tracing his handy work in this magnificent dwelling-place, and acquainting myself with him as revealed in the Gospel of his Son. I can thank him for the opportunity allowed me of serving him in the flesh it were no privilege not to have had the opportunity. I can thank him for the afflictions from which early death might have exempted me; for, rightly endured, they work out "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." So that we regard it as nothing better than the effusions of a poetic and sentimental theology, that the infant is necessarily advantaged by not living to be a man. We doubt not that the infant is advantaged, because we doubt not that God does nothing which is not, on the whole, for the best. But when men would prove the advantageousness by speaking of the trouble escaped, and the joy obtained, we remind them that, as to the troubles, they discipline us for eternity, and, as to the joys, they will undoubtedly be proportionate to present attainment. No, brethren; if now a believer in the Saviour of sinners, I have abundant cause for hearty thanksgiving that I died not in my infancy: I have a nobler prospect before me than I should had my days been shortened. I am sure of a greatness which I never could have reached had I only just touched the earth and sprung upwards, tarrying not either to taste its cares or to labour in its duties. That the powers of the infant will be matured in a future state, so that capacities not here unfolded will be brought out and perfected-and that employment in God's service denied below, will be granted above-this opinion cannot be doubted; though it may be difficult to conceive how the soul, fitted for being instructed in the regions of sense, shall reach her strength, and gain her knowledge, when stripped from the covering of this appointed machinery. But there can be no debate that the operations of eternity will be adjusted to our growth, whilst on earth, in the various Christian graces: and, therefore, neither does it seem to admit question, that the portion of infants will be amongst the lowest. We cannot suppose that the suckling, taken from the earth ere it could give itself to the service of God, will approach hereafter, in glory and blessedness, the veteran saint who has honoured his Maker during a long life, and laboured unweariedly to advance the kingdom of Christ. I can believe that the martyred innocents of Bethlehem shall wear a rich crown; but I cannot believe that it will be radiant as that of a Peter or a Paul.

I cannot believe, then, that it is a privilege to die young. Far better it will be to win the victory than to be spared the battle. Nevertheless it is impossible to prove, in any given case, that the infant is not advantaged by death. The infant might have lived an unbeliever many years, and have repented only wher dying certainly it were better to have passed at once into eternity, than to have denied God for half a century, and sought him in the last extremity, when, if there were time for the acting of faith, there was none for the working of love. And when you combine these several statements, you must perceive that, without supposing such a necessary advantageousness in early death as would make it more desirable than a life spent in faith and obedience, we may affirm of the innocents, that it was no injury to them that burial followed so quickly on birth. There is nothing therefore in God's permission of the murder which can be shown at variance with any divine truth. There were many ends, as we have proved to you, subserved by the permission; and we cannot doubt that the

innocents who fell by the sword at Bethlehem, gained by the exchange of earth for heaven. Hence the benefit to the survivors was purchased by no injustice to the slaughtered; and we trace the working of a righteous government in God's transaction with that sorrowing city.

The innocents of Bethlehem have always been reckoned by the Church amongst the martyrs; for, though incapable of making choice, God, we may believe, supplied the defect of their will by his own entertainment of their death. And it is beautiful to think, that as the spirits of these martyred little ones soared toward heaven, they may have been taught to look on the Infant in whose stead they had died; that He for whom they had been sacrificed was about to be sacrificed for them; and that they were mounting to glory on the merits of that defenceless babe, as he seemed then, hurrying as an outcast into Egypt. O, the voice of weeping might have been heard in Rama, but those over whom the roused mother lamented, had entered heaven as the first-fruits to God and the Lamb, and were already celebrating the praises of Him whose blood, not yet shed, had provided for their ransom. Well might Rachel be bidden to restrain her weeping. The address to the sorrowing parent, applicable, as it primarily is, to the restoration of the scattered Israelites, might yet be spoken in its every part to the mothers of Bethlehem, and to those who, in any age of the Church, bewail their dead infants-" Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border." The mother's travail in bearing the children, as well as her work of prayer and faith for her children, shall be rewarded by her beholding them return from the land of the last enemy, death, and landed in their own border, the heavenly Canaan.

Thus we can accommodate the whole prophecy referred to in our text, to the parents whom Herod's sword bereaved, and to those who, in our own day, bury their infants. And this is the practical use which we would make of the prophecy. Adapted as it is, by the Evangelist to the slaughter of Bethlehem, it may be regarded as a promise declaratory of the happiness of those who die young. They shall come again from the land of the enemy." Their dust is as precious, and as carefully watched, as that of those who have fought the good fight, and professed a good profession before many witnesses. Their spirits have passed into the separate state; and there, with those of the patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles, and saints, await the morning of the resurrection, that they may come again to their own border," a renovated creation changed into a new heaven and a new earth, wherein shall dwell righteousness. And if, then, death enter your families, and take as his prey those whose helplessness makes them especially the objects of your carefulness, you are not to lament with too intense a wailing, that the cradle is exchanged for the coffin-the warm embrace of the mother for the cold resting-place of the grave.

It is the last Sabbath of the year, as well as the Innocents Day. The funeral bell of the Innocents is the knell of another of our great divisions of time. There may be some of you who have buried young children during the past year; but too possibly there are others who will be called to this trial during the coming. Indeed it is a touching sight, that of parents performing the last

office to their children: it is like an inversion of the natural order. In the book of Genesis it is said, "And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity;" the circumstance being mentioned as worthy of note: Haran should have followed Terah, and not Terah Haran. We feel it natural -if any thing can be natural in a fallen and disorganized world-that children should close the eyes, and shroud the limbs of fathers and mothers, but unnatural that fathers and mothers should perform these sad duties for children. Hard seems it for the mother that she bring forth, and that what she had borne in anguish, and then gazed on in joy, should fade before her eyes, and wither in the bud, till she is forced to hide it in the earth, a wasted thing, and a cold, and a silent. But they shall come again from the land of the enemy:" and therefore let those who have endured the bereavement, fortify themselves with the assurance, that to die young-whatever the other features of the case—is to die happily; and that, in taking from them children ere they knew evil from good, their heavenly Parent makes a better provision for them than their earthly could ever make; securing them a provision which would otherwise have hung in doubt-sparing them trouble which might not have worked for good-and educating them in a school where the only discipline is love, the only lesson immortality.