in the manner in which they are governed, are as certain as anything in the material sciences. Materialism would be annihilated were there not minds to inspect it and build a system on its phenomena.

There is a strange pretence, not now offered for the first time, that all speculations on material things, all opinions are totally disconnected with the moral or religious character; that an atheist may be as good a man as Paul or Isaiah; that these speculations have nothing to do with the state of the heart; that the pursuit of knowledge should be free, and it is not free if any odium is attached to any conclusion. Even Lord Brougham said: "The great truth has finally gone forth to all the ends of the earth, that man shall no more render account to man for his belief, over which he himself has no control. Henceforward nothing shall prevail upon us to praise or blame any one for that which he can no more change than he can the hue of his skin or the height of his stature." But one of the most terrible ideas in the moral world is a God of perfect justice. It is beyond the energy of language to express it. No form of material terror can for a moment equal this.. Not the earthquake that desolated Lisbon; not the loudest thunder that ever tore the sky. The reason of this terror is twofold: first, our weakness; next our guilt. To be obnoxious to all-seeing justice is a fearful thought; and what men fear, they are apt to hate. This principle operates on men before they know it. This Lucretius confesses and all the Epicureans. Here is a bias against those religious opinions, which a man thinks he has rejected, or at least reduced to zero — a bias which he who feels it most, most stoutly denies. It blinds him.

It is impossible, we think, to assume the truth of the gospel without regarding it as a system of duty, presenting a series of obligations, of which disbelief is a general violation. So the New Testament represents it; so the blessed Redeemer himself—"This is the work of God, that ye believe on his Son" (John vi. 29).

The last deduction we shall make, is to show the latent

cause of that wonderful unity which runs through all the varying parts of the sacred volume. No man ever saw this unity without believing the Bible, and no man that disbelieves the Bible ever saw this unity. There is a golden thread that runs through the volume, and unites all its parts in one harmonious whole. It may be compared to the path of light, which the moon, rising in the east, spreads over the trembling waters, and guides the boatman to the western shore. He sails in light, and is confident not only of the lustre but the safety of its direction. He dips his very oars in glory, and he never misses the headlands in the lucid direction. Now the cause of this unity is an exceedingly natural one. It arises from the theme; the central subject of revelation. We have already shown that justice is one great, central, selfseen idea, shedding its light on itself and on all the offshooting ideas. The Bible treats of law, obedience, transgression, pardon, hope, immortality, purification, punishment, which are all but varying forms of the same essential justice. It is true this golden thread is latent to a careless reader. To a neological interpreter, however learned, the Bible is always a jumble of discordant fragments. But the golden thread may always be discovered by humble inspection. It may be compared to the rocky flumes in the table-lands of New Mexico, so narrow, so deep, so dark, yet at the bottom of them flows a placid stream, warm in its shaded course, and leading the passenger that sails on it to a better region of plenty and peace. The Bible treats of the justice of God in all its conformities and conformations, and he is "the same to-day, yesterday, and forever." It must have a unity, for its soul is always the same.

As justice, then, is a principle which may enter your soul and be the perpetual motive of all your actions, and as it may shed its light on all its affiliated ideas, as it is the subject of revelation; see this, and you will want no other light.

ARTICLE III.

THE CHURCH-MEMBERSHIP OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN.

BY REV. LEWIS GROUT, FORMERLY MISSIONARY OF THE A. B. C. F. M.

It is a common remark that our duties are modified and determined by our relations. Taking this to be true, how important it is that the church of Christ should carefully consider that relation which is instituted between herself and those children whom she brings to the baptismal font. Nor would this seem to be either common or easy; else we might suppose the opinions of many of our clergy and laity would be less vague and diversified. Inquiring of one and another as to their thoughts on this subject - what they believe to be the proper ecclesiastical standing of baptized children; whether they belong to the church, are in it and of it, or out of it, or where they are the writer has been somewhat surprised at the variety of views that prevail, even among those who are supposed to be of the same general faith in respect to the duty and import of infant baptism.

All agree that such children must be related to the church somehow, and that this relation must be of such a nature that something good ought to be expected to come of it. Yet some seem to look upon it as wholly an external one, and so deny that they are either in the church or members of it at all, in any sense. Some will admit that they belong to the church, yet seem to doubt or deny that the church belongs at all to them; that is, the church has a claim upon the children, and an interest in them, but the children have as yet no interest or place in the church. Some hold that they are in the church, yet not of it; as though to be in it, in any sense deserving the name, is not to be of it. Not a few seem to regard them as neither in it nor out of it, but as occupying some sort of middle ground; as though this were either

scriptural or tenable. Our own conviction is that these views fall, all sadly, though not all equally, short of the truth; that on this point our Congregational churches, many of them, at least many members in most of them, have departed from the teaching of the divine word, from the faith and practice of the primitive church, from the faith and practice of the Puritan Fathers, and from the faith, at least, of other branches of the catholic church of the present age, the Baptists alone excepted.

Nor can we rid ourselves of the conviction that much of the neglect into which infant baptism is alleged to have fallen within the memory of the living, and much of the neglect of that nurture, too, which the church owes her baptized children, are among the sad consequences of the doubts, errors, and haziness of sentiment that prevail among us on this subject. Nor, again, do we think it among the least hopeful signs of the times, pertaining to this point, that so many are coming to be dissatisfied with the present state of the question. If we mistake not, the opinion is beginning to prevail that we, as Congregationalists, must take up this subject anew; that both the clergy and the laity must think it through, from end to end, and come to some conclusion less crude, more positive, definite, and consistent; that we must go either backward or forward, if we would ever hope to set our feet on solid ground.

Some, indeed, are all ready to go forward, and take the ground — which a few, in fact, have never yielded — that baptized children are truly members of the church. And such is the belief of the writer. Not that he is one of those who have always held this view. Indeed few are likely to be further from it than he was when first led, not long since, to take up the subject, and give it more than ordinary attention. But every step in the investigation served only to lead him to the conviction here avowed, that the children of whom we speak are really and truly in the church and members of it.

We may call them children of the church, if we will, as indeed we often do; and for certain occasions and purposes

the term is a good one. But it has its defects, and its dangers too. The fact is, the words we use, the names we apply, often have in time, a strange, powerful, though silent influence in moulding and determining our ideas of the things they are used to represent. John Foster somewhere tells us of a ship that was turned out of its proper course and carried into the port of an enemy by a magnet concealed near the compass. So the mind may be quietly deflected and drift off into error by the hidden influence of a misapplied name. And how is it, in fact, with the language, the name in question? What really ought to be the natural effect of an indiscriminate or exclusive use of it, but a gentle and easy letting down of the mind, a gradual but sure turning off of the thought, from the true idea of that relation to the church into which the child is brought when he is set apart and sealed as the Lord's in the ordinance of baptism? Were the term " children of the church "always understood and employed, when used in the connection of which we speak, to signify even as much as it does when applied to the children of a household, that such persons are, of course, members thereof, we should have less objection to it. And yet there would be another difficulty in confining ourselves to this mode of designating them. For, others than those who have been baptized, being born in the church, that is, of parents belonging to the church, as the children of parents in the Baptist church, not to mention any in our own who have been neglected, and never brought to the font, may be called the children of the church. But probably very few of those who believe in infant baptism would be ready to admit that the two classes, the baptized and the unbaptized, sustain equal relations to the church, though both are born alike of parents in the church, and so, for that reason, may be called her children.

We may call them infant members, minor members, or members in minority, if we will; only say not that a membership of this kind is imaginary, absurd, or worthless, but rather bona fide, most real, and of blessed import. The