sires, that he, who was given to the All-Father in the beginning of life may fulfill in himself that which was meant in his infant baptism. He cannot resist it. His father's God shall be his God. The love and longing of his mother shall be gratified. "I remembered that I was a baptized child," many an one may have said in explanation of his resistance of strong temptation, of his continuance in the good habits of childhood, of his choosing the service of Christ for his whole life. There are moral forces which are irresistible. I have looked on at the baptism of an infant child in another land, in a church of an alien faith, with the service in an unknown tongue, standing alone in the gathered group, and then has come to me the vision of faces ever photographed on my mind, of the father who loved me in his large way, and of the mother who gave me my first impressions of God, and of the home and the church of my childhood, and then I have been led to new consecration. We cannot escape these silent, potent, ever-present influences. The child is passive indeed! Nay: he is a most active agent, and those events which took place in his unconsciousness become at length the motors and factors of his profoundest life and enter into the conditions of his immortality.

The objection is of limited scope. It takes no account of time and growth and development. "The child is father of the man." The baptised infant of to-day, is the man of thought and decision before we are aware. He takes cognizance of issues that concern him. He ponders the facts of providence and the agencies that determine character. Out of the dim past rises clearly into his view the relation into which he is brought as a baptised child of the everlasting covenant, and it becomes. one of the most powerful influences of his whole life.

What then becomes of the objection to infant baptism, that it is a useless rite because it can have no effect one way or the other upon the passive child? It is an objection without reason. It is an objection refuted by a four-fold answering. It is an objection against which many witnesses are ready with their concurrent testimony. In making it men leave out of sight the divine Partner in the covenant, they leave out of sight the mysterious law of unity that connects the moral forces of the family life, they leave out of sight the vast influ

ence of united prayer which enters into human life from its very beginnings, they leave out of sight the immense legacy that comes to the mind in its after development.

Let us lay heed to no such objection. Let us stand reverently before the face of Him who rebuked in His day those who forbade that the little children should be brought unto Him and said, "suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for to such belongeth the kingdom of God." Our Lord welcomes those who bring their children to have His name put on them with their names. He stands within His church, as He stood of old, with his outreaching arms, to take them to himself, and to give them back to be trained for Him, as the princess of Egypt gave back the infant Hebrew to his mother to be reared for the kingdom!

Blessed parents! who know their privilege and who prize it! who teach their children that they are thought of and are loved by Christ, that they are indeed Christ's, and that His wish, as their wish, is that they may prove themselves to be His!

All the Christian churches of the world, with the exception of one denomination, in all the ages and all the nations, recognize the significance and the sacredness of the baptism of infants. From that great company who are early given to God in this symbol of His everlasting covenant are His holy churches augmented.

And now the appeal to all those who are the baptized children of the church, to whom the people of God are looking with unwavering hope, by the memory of sainted, and the love of living parents, is, that they make not this venerable and solemn ordinance into which directly enter so many influences for them a vain thing; rather that they renew for themselves the consecration which those who tenderly loved them in infancy made for them; and that from this blessed time onward they walk in the world as children who are in covenant with God.

ARTICLE V.-THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS.

THE volume of "Boston Lectures" for 1872 contains one on "The Christian Consciousness-its apologetical value." This lecture, on its first appearance, attracted our attention because of the new philosophy involved in it; and as often as it has been perused since, the interest then awakened has been by no means diminished, but rather increased. And now, at this somewhat remote period, we have been moved, not, we trust, in the spirit of controversy, or of antagonism to the very respectable denomination to which its author is understood to belong, but solely in the interest of the truth, to give the subject upon which it treats a careful and candid examination.

All our investigations and inquiries, we are constrained to think, ought to be conducted in this spirit, and for this end; not for the sake of a victory to be gained over some opponent, but for the establishment of the truth; not for the upbuilding of our own religious party or denomination, but to ascertain what is taught in the word of God interpreted by sound reason and an enlightened philosophy. Were this rule always observed, if our theological differences were not thus wholly obliterated, the odium theologicum, the intense denominational bitterness which has disgraced the past, and brought a just reproach on our common Christianity, but which is now so happily waning, would be most effectually removed; and if as Christians we were still compelled to differ in some things, it would be not as enemies occupying hostile camps, but as friends of a cause alike common and dear, and with mutual respect and confidence.

The author of this lecture is the Dean of the Boston University School of Theology, which is understood to be under the auspices of the Methodists. How far the lecture represents the prevalent views of that large and influential denomination, we are not able to say. Very sure, however, we are, from personal conversation with ministers belonging to it, that it by no means represents its universal sentiment, but only that

of a section, greater or less, which for the want of a better term, and without the least invidiousness, may be called "The Holiness Party." It may also be allowed to be more or less in accord with the views of a much smaller party in some of the other denominations who are the advocates of what they are pleased to call "The Higher Life," and with those of persons of a mystical tendency generally.

The title of this lecture, we have said, is "The Christian Consciousness-its apologetical value." Its real drift would, in our judgment, have been more accurately expressed had the last clause been made to read, "its revealing power." For precisely that is what its author is endeavoring to establish-the power of Christian consciousness to give us immediate knowledge of Christian truth-truth objective to ourselves. There are two parties among Christian apologists, he tells us these are his own words "the one aiming to produce belief; the other knowledge;" "not knowledge through likelihoods, reasonablenesses, arguments, evidences," but direct "spiritual cognitions." The Christian, he claims, may and ought, not only to believe the truth on good and substantial evidence, but also, through the workings of his Christian consciousness, to know it; to know it directly, as by an immediate intuition or insight.

In order that an intelligent conclusion may be arrived at in reference to this high claim, it will be necessary to determine the real office or scope of that power or faculty of the mind which is wont to be designated by the term consciousness. For Christian consciousness is obviously none other than that power or faculty of the mind in Christians employed upon Christian themes. To suppose it to be anything else would clearly imply the acquisition of an entirely new faculty or sense on becoming a Christian; in other words, the remodeling of our essential human nature; which would be subversive of all established views of the real design of Christianity. When, then, and how far, is consciousness to be relied on to give us accurate knowledge, or a true representation of things? A complete answer to this question could not, certainly, fail to place the matter in hand beyond all controversy. And it is for the want of a definite understanding with himself on this

most vital point, we cannot but think, that the author of this lecture has been betrayed into a course of reasoning which the religious world, if it does not pronounce it extravagant, will still be slow to adopt.

Consciousness, has usually been defined by philosophic thinkers as the notice which the mind takes of its own operations. That is the old and long-accepted definition of it. If now this definition is to be allowed, the scope of consciousness as a revealing or knowing power will be very easily determined. In noticing the mind's operations, a knowledge of the fact of those operations, and of their contents, is clearly given. And that is about all that is given: unless it be the implied fact of our personality, and of the mind itself as in an active state. In being conscious of the mind's acts, we must obviously be conscious, at the same time, both of the mind's actual existence and of its activity. But the knowledge of any other facts, such as the accordance of these operations with objective truth. or reality, consciousness alone, under this view of it, cannot clearly be supposed to give us. For that, the coöperation of other coördinate powers or faculties of the mind will be requisite.

More recent investigations of philosophers, however, especially of Sir William Hamilton, have somewhat enlarged the scope of consciousness in this direction. When our mental operations stand connected with sensible perceptions, it is now conceded that consciousness gives us the knowledge, not only of the fact of these operations and their contents, but also of the reality of the objects themselves about which these perceptions are employed. My eyes are cast upon a book lying upon the table, for example; I handle it; I peruse its pages. Of all this I am conscious; and in this very consciousness I am furnished, not only with the knowledge of the mental acts implied, but also with the further knowledge that the book before me is no shadow or delusion, but a veritable reality. And precisely so must it be allowed to be with all the other movements of the mind which spring from, or are connected with, sensible objects. In these movements of the mind, under these conditions, consciousness becomes to us the source of immediate knowledge as to the actual existence of the objects to which they are directed, or about which they are employed.