In addressing you _as parents_, who have dedicated your children to God by baptism, I would affectionately remind you of the duties which you owe both to yourselves and to them. The apostle tells you that “they are not unclean but holy”—holy, as the sabbath and the temple were; and holy as all children are who are dedicated to God by a religious rite. When you brought them to the waters of baptism, you thereby testified your conviction of their depravity and of their need of cleansing grace; you thereby testified your belief that the great promise, “I will be a God unto thee, and unto thy seed after thee,” which was once to the Jews, is now unto you and unto your children; and at the same time you testified your intention “to teach them to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded.” Remember then, that the great and blessed privilege which you have enjoyed, is connected with corresponding obligations. Having given your children to God by baptism, you are to regard them as being peculiarly his; and you are to regard yourselves not as their proprietors, but as trustees, appointed by Christ, to train them up for the church, and for the service of their Lord and Master. Baptism, you are aware, does not constitute a man a member of any particular church; but it gives him a ceremonial qualification for membership. And this is just the position in which baptism has placed your children. They are candidates for communion with the church; and, as “holy children,” they possess the ceremonial qualification for communion. Now, as you have been the means of giving them the one qualification, you may also be the means of giving them the other. You may, through the divine blessing, be the means of making them spiritually as well as ceremonially holy. And it is the will of God that you should. For that purpose he has committed them to your charge; for that purpose he has authorized you to baptize them; and for that purpose he has given you the blessed assurance, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, AND THY HOUSE.” One of the great principles on which the God of mercy acts, in his moral government of the world, is to bless children for the sake of their believing parents; and the number of such children which are received into our churches, and which are engaged in the christian ministry, is an evidence of the fact, and of the faithfulness of Him by whom the promises are made. But you are not to expect this blessing unconditionally; nor are you to expect it from the mere fact of their baptism. When God made promise to Abraham, and gave him the sign of circumcision as the token of his covenant, he made the fulfilment of that promise to depend on Abraham’s personal piety, and on the religious education of his children. “Abraham,” said he, “shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I know him, that he will command his children and