But in all this, God, religion and eternity are cast into the shade; you act towards them as if God had no claim upon them, and you were under no obligations to meet that claim. Think of this, ye who have been recreant to your duty,—ye who have not followed Abraham to the mount of oblation, nor brought up your sons as an offered Samuel. Oh think, that God will demand of you these children, and that if they are not now devoted to the Lord, you will not have them to return to Him in the great day of final reckoning. May the momentous interests and responsibilities of that coming day bring you with your children around the altar of consecration, and constrain you there to say—
"I give thee to thy God—the God that gave thee,
A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart!
And precious as thou art,
And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee,
My own, my beautiful, my undefiled!
And thou shalt be His child!"