"I feel," said Mr. P., "that God's hand is upon me. Passages from the Bible, which I learned at sea, from love to my mother, come to me now. She put a Bible in a box, and covered it up with a dozen pairs of woollen hose, knit with her own hands. I have been saying to myself, in the chamber, 'Behold, he cometh with clouds.' It is growing dark over my dwelling; God is descending upon us in a cloud. 'Behold, he taketh away, who can hinder him? Who will say unto him, what doest thou.' O, you never lost a wife, my dear sir, nor looked on a motherless family, as I begin to do. God help me, for I shall lose my reason." "No, my dear sir," said the pastor; "think what has just taken place up stairs. You now seem to say, as Manoah did, 'We shall surely die;' but his wife said, 'If the Lord were pleased to kill us,--he would not have showed us all these things.' God has bestowed on your children, through their believing mother, his covenant, to be their God.--You are a Notary Public, I believe, sir." "I am," said Mr. Peirce. "Then," said the pastor, "you know the importance of seals." "O, yes," said Mr. P. "A gentleman, last week, came near losing the sale of a large property, situate in one of the Middle States, because he had had some papers executed, here, before a court not having a seal. I told him, beforehand, that he was wrong; but he wished to know of what possible use a seal could be, when the judge and the clerk used printed forms, and the blanks were filled under their own hands. The papers came back, and he had to do his business over again, and before a court having a seal." "But he was perfectly honest, at first, I presume," said the pastor, "only the form was defective." _Mr. P._ Yes, sir; but the form, in such a case, is the warranty. You know that the power to have and use a seal is one of the things specially conveyed by a legislature. "God has seals," said the pastor. "One is baptism. It used to be circumcision. But, as the old royal seal is broken at the coronation of a new king, God appointed a new seal, baptism, to mark the new dispensation; as he also changed the Sabbath of creation in honor of his Son's reign, and removed the memorial of his deeds of greatest renown, the Passover, for one that signifies still greater deeds, the Lord's Supper. Thus God has his seals. He attaches great importance to them. He binds himself by them. Your wife, being a child of God, it is his arrangement, from the beginning, to enter into covenant with her in behalf of her children. He stands, now, in a special relation to them, and has placed the beautiful seal of Heaven upon his promise to that dear sick mother, 'I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee.'"