official instruction and command: "Suffer little children and forbid them not to come to me." The quibbling of Tertullian, that they must wait till they are grown up in order to "come," is unworthy a Christian minister. These children were of an age too tender to come to Christ from personal conviction. They were "brought" to him, and the command to the apostles and to the Church to “suffer them to come," is a command to "bring" them. It is a duty now, as then, and will remain a duty while there are children and a Church of Christ upon the earth. And this duty of “bringing" them to Christ, and of "receiving" them "in his name," is a duty to do for them all that their age and wants demand, in order to their earliest knowledge of Christ, and their continued enjoyment of the spiritual blessings of his Church.

2. When the apostle says to the believing husband, or wife, that the two are sanctified to each other, so that, although one of them does not believe, yet they are to live together under the sanction of Christian law, and not separate, as the Mosaic law would oblige them if one were a heathen, he offers this fact, publicly known in the Church, as proof that the Christian law sanctions the union, namely, "else were your children UNCLEAN, but now they are HOLY." (1 Cor. vii, 14.) Here holiness is affirmed of the children, but it is affirmed on the ground of the faith of one of the parents, and therefore is not a moral holiness, but simply an ecclesiastical, or ceremonial one. As if the apostle had said: "Else were your children [reckoned as] akolaρTa, heathen, but now are they [counted as] ȧyia, saints, or members of the Christian community." The children, says-Tertullian, were designed for holiness (sanctitati designati) by baptism. "Every soul," he adds, "is reckoned in Adam, till it be anew enrolled in Christ, and so long unclean till it be enrolled." "Their children," says Bishop Burnet, "were not unclean; that is, not shut out from being dedicated to God." This baptismal holiness, this external admission to membership in the Christian family, is only a conventional recognition of a spiritual and pre-existent relation to Christ, a relation directly created by Christ.

3. The design and purpose of God in the constitution of the Christian Church is, as Paul states it in Eph. i, 10, "that he might gather together in one [body, or community] all things in Christ." The apostle here does not intend inanimate "things," as the neuter gender of the pronoun та яаνта might seem to indicate. "The neuter is sometimes found," says Winer, "where persons are signified, when the writer would express his meaning in a general way." It is not of things, but of redeemed human beings, that Paul is speaking. And he is speaking of a particular class of these human beings,

namely, та Tаνта EV TW XOLOтw, the all [who are] IN CHRIST." These, says the apostle, it is the "mysterious will and good pleasure of God, which he hath purposed in himself,” “avakɛpañaιwgaobai, to bring together under one head. This "head" is Christ, and all who are "in Christ" are to be brought together in one family, and comprehended under this one headship. This is the design of the Christian Church. All who are in Christ have a real and spiritual connection with his body, which is the Church. "Christ is head over all to the Church, which is his body." Eph. i, 22. "Christ is the head, from whom the whole body, fitly joined together, . . . maketh increase," etc. Eph. iv, 15, 16. "Christ is the head of the Church. The Church is subject to Christ." Eph. v, 23, 24. "Christ is the head of the body, the Church." Col. i, 18. "Of whom [Christ] the whole family in heaven and earth is named." Eph. iii, 15. That is, saints in heaven and saints in earth. Christ as a son over his own house [household] whose house [household] are we." Heb. iii, 6. "The house [household] of God, which is the Church of the living God." 1 Tim. iii, 15. This doctrine runs through all the New Testament. Those who are Christ's in a spiritual sense, saved by his merit, are of his "body," his " Church," his "family," his "household." They are comprehended under one headship. When Paul would describe the definite limit and number of "the general assembly and church of the first born;" that is, the New Testament Church, he simply says, "whose names are enrolled in heaven." Heb. xii, 23. And this enrollment of names in heaven is the registration of names in the "book of life," the true family register, the final test and proof of a fitness and title to heaven. "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into a lake of fire." Rev. xx, 15. This "book of life" is "the Lamb's book of life," Rev. xxi, 27; "the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Rev. xiii, 8. It is Christ's register of all who are spiritually his.

So then we must erase children from the "book of life," from their "enrollment in heaven," before we can sever their spiritual and real connection with the body of Christ, his family, his household, his Church. The idea that the Church is made up only of believers, is as rational and scriptural as that a family, or commonwealth, is made up only of adults. It is not the personal act of faith apart and by itself that is to be considered, but the spiritual relation to Christ. If an infant without faith can belong to Christ, who is the head, an infant without faith can belong to the Church, which is the body, or community comprehended and brought together under that head. 4. As to denominational Church life, we need only say, that all

creeds, symbols of faith, forms of church government, or special covenant obligations, such as denominational branches of the Catholic Church may adopt, are only their views of Scripture doctrine and duty, and are applied only as prudential tests of fitness for adult membership. They are only so many methods of arriving at the knowledge of that essential fitness for membership which is required of responsible beings as such, and which children enjoy by the unconditional benefits of the atonement, and on the authority of the declaration of Christ. These denominational tests do not have the effect to admit the person to a new Church, different from that to which the baptized child belongs; but only to supply an adequate test of adult membership in the old Church, the Catholic, New Testament, Abrahamic Church; such test becomes requisite only upon a new condition of the candidate, namely, a responsible condition. It is a provisional guard upon the purity of the Church in relation to all who are of mature age. The fitness and Church rights of the child, during childhood, are determined on other grounds. But in either case the Church is the same. If denominational ecclesiasticism assumes a higher ground than this, it does so by usurpation. We have space only to state the doctrine, not to adduce the proof. Children have a real connection with, and valid right to, the real and only living Church of God.

II. We come now to speak of the method by which the Church relation becomes available to the child for those spiritual ends for which it was ordained. The Church relation is ordained as a means or instrumentality of effecting the gracious ends of redeeming love toward responsible beings. With the Church corporately is vested those divinely instituted means by which the life of God is nourished and promoted in the soul, and his kingdom extended in the earth. The life and growth are directly the gift of God, but the instrumental or secondary causes rest with the Church. Here is her responsibility, corporately and severally; like the living organs of the body, her members are to supply those offices upon which nourishment, growth, and extension secondarily depend.

There are two stages of Church life, according to the original plan and purpose of God: the first is realized in the family, the family as in covenant with God, and comprehended in the Church as an integral primal Church agency; the second stage is that Church life that is assumed upon personal conviction and responsibility. The first is the period of minority, wherein the member is the recipient merely, enjoying the benefits of Church guardianship, instruction, and influences, and is simply preparatory; the second is the period of majority, or full age, in which not only the immunities of Church are

enjoyed, but its responsibilities borne; wherein the member is not a recipient merely, but an actor. The first is the period of nursery life, the second the period of fruit bearing, as well as nurture. In the natural life, and also the civil life of each man, the same twofold aspect appears. It is the order of nature, of reason, and of grace. The child has a civil life, civil rights and immunities, before he is of full age, before he comes to the full powers of citizenship. He was a citizen before, but the sphere of his citizenship is now extended and perfected.

As we are speaking only of children in this article, we shall consequently speak only of this first stage of Church life, the minority or nursery stage. Our position is that the Church relation becomes available to the child first through the agency of the parent, the parent as in covenant with God; and secondly, through the instrumentality of Church offices and ordinances, but all during the family life of the child.

1. Historically, the first period of the visible Church was its patriarchal or family period. The "covenant," which is the form and charter of the Church, was with a family as such, and recognized the family relations. This was not accidental and temporary, but fundamental and perpetual. "I will establish my covenant between ME and THEE and THY SEED after thee . . . to be a God unto THEE and to THY SEED after thee." Gen. xvii, 7. "The promise is unto YOU and to YOUR CHILDREN." Acts ii, 39. The covenant, as Maurice well says, is "with a man expressly and emphatically as the head of a family." Remove the relations of parent and child, and you render nugatory the whole tenor, conditions, and design of the covenant. It was in the faithful fulfillment of the duties of the family relation that the promise of the covenant fell due. "For I know Abraham, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, THAT THE LORD MAY BRING UPON ABRAHAM THAT WHICH HE HATH SPOKEN OF HIM." Gen. xviii, 19. When, in later days, the Church under Moses emerged from its patriarchal to its national character, the family was still recognized and brought out as the true normal element of Church power. Parents and children are addressed as such, and duties laid on them which, while they were of a distinctively Church character, could be performed only within the family relations. In the New Testament the national idea of a Church is dropped, but its public, corporate, and primitive covenant character retained; yet the family is clearly brought out as the true germinal state of the Church, the primitive nursery life of its members. These statements will receive further confirmation in the progress of our argument.

2. The proof of our position will further appear if we take into view the religious design of the family constitution. This is stated by Malachi, chap. ii, 15. Speaking of husband and wife, and of the religious ends of the family relation as originally constituted, he says: "And did not he [God] make ONE? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? THAT HE MIGHT SEEK A GODLY SEED." Bear in mind that the prophet is speaking of the original constitution of the family headship by the Creator, and he directly affirms that the design of God in this ordainment was religious, and this religious end was to be realized in the children of the united pair, that he might seek a seed of God." God might have made myriads of human beings to people the earth, each a responsible agent, as he made the angels, the consequences of whose good or evil conduct should terminate on himself, but he did not. He who "breathed" into Adam "the breath of life," still possessed the undiminished energy of the creative and life-giving spirit, but he did not at once people the earth with adult beings. This would have precluded the grand scheme of a RACE of beings whose life, and sympathies, and dependencies, and obligations should be blended into UNITY, and made the strong guards and guarantees of religion. It would have precluded the idea of FAMILY. He might have made a plurality of "help-meets" or companions for the first man, but this would have weakened the social bond and sympathy of the family, opened the door of discord, shattered parental authority, and defeated the grand religious end. All history shows that polygamy leads to this result. The "residue" of the spirit was with him, but his prolific energy was restrained, and the Creator, excluding all other schemes of human society, shut himself up to this, not from a physical but a moral reason. Religion, godliness, explains the end and reason of the Creator's plan of family. Its sympathies are more open to religion, and when its relations and affections are sanctified it is more powerfully concentrative of holy influences. It is thus that the Creator has carefully sought out a godly seed, as when one seeks by feeling after the object; so the word, denotes, to search by feeling out. Here is forethought and design in the Creator, and as the prophet is speaking expressly upon the subject of the moral reason of the family constitution, we take the passage as decisive of the case. How perfectly harmonious is this original design with the subsequent Church covenant established in the family of Abraham.

3. The whole tenor of law bearing on the family relations, both in the old and New Testaments, proves that the family is a distinct