Thus the child is taught that, by nature, he is bad and accursed by God; that so bad was he as an infant, that his parents were obliged to wash away his sins before God would love him. If he asks what harm he had done that he should need cleansing, he will be told that he inherits Adam's sin; if he asks why he should be accursed for being born, and why, born into God's world at God's will, he should not by nature be God's child, he will be told that God is angry with the world, and that everyone has a bad nature when they are born; thus he learns his first lesson of the unreality of religion; he is cursed for Adam's sin, which he had no share in, and forgiven for his parent's good deed, which he did not help in. The whole thing is to him a play acted in his infancy in which he was a puppet, in which God was angry with him for what he had not done, and pleased with him for what he did not say, and he consequently feels that he has neither part nor lot in the whole affair, and that the business is none of his; if he be timid and superstitious, he will hand over his religion to others, and trust to the priest to finish for him what Adam and his parents began, shifting on to them all a responsibility that he feels does not in reality belong to him. The unreality deepens in the next answer which is put into his mouth--"What did your godfathers and god-mothers then for you?" "They did promise and vow-three things in my name: First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that I should believe all the articles of the Christian Faith. And thirdly, that I should keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of my life." Turning to the Baptismal Service again, we find that the godparents are asked, "Dost thou, _in the name of this child_, renounce," &c, and they answer severally, "I renounce them all," "All this I steadfastly believe;" and, asked if they will keep God's holy will, they still answer for the child, "I will." What binding force can such promises as these have upon the conscience of anyone when he grows up? The promises were made without his consent; why should he keep them? The belief was vowed before he had examined it; why should he profess it? No promise made in another's name can be binding on him who has given no authority for such use of his name, and the unconscious baby, innocent of all knowledge of what is being done, can never, in justice, be held liable for breaking a contract in the making of which he had no share. Bentham rightly and justly protests against "the implied--the necessarily implied--assumption, that it is in the power of any person--not only with the consent of the father or other guardian, but without any such consent--to fasten upon a child at its birth, and long before it is itself even capable of giving consent to anything,