Habit.—"I trust everything, under God," said Lord Brougham, "to habit, upon which, in all ages, the lawgiver, as well as the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance; habit, which makes everything easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from a wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to the nature of the child, grown or adult, as the most atrocious crimes are to any of your lordships."
Original.
AN APPEAL TO BAPTIZED CHILDREN.
BY REV. WM. BANNARD.
It is presumed, young friends, that you have reached an age when you are capable of appreciating your obligations, but have hitherto neglected them. It is proposed, therefore, in what follows, briefly to call your attention to your position and responsibilities. If you have considered your privileges as the children of pious parents who have dedicated you to God in baptism, you are now prepared to examine your duties. You have then a name and a place in Christ's visible church; you sustain covenant relations to God, and these, fraught as they are with manifold benefits, cannot be without corresponding responsibilities.
You are not the children of the world but the children of the covenant. Solemn vows have been assumed for you, and these vows are binding upon your consciences. They were taken with the hope and intention that you should assume them for yourselves when you arrived at years of discretion. You were given to God with the expectation that you would grow up to serve him. And this it is your duty to do. You are his property. You are his by sacred engagement, and you cannot violate this engagement; you cannot renounce His service, and devote yourselves to the service of Satan or of the world, without dishonoring your parents, doing injustice to God, and periling your own salvation. You may say this contract was formed without my consent, and when too young to understand its requirements. No matter; this does not release you from obligation to perform it. Ability and responsibility are not always co-extensive. We are bound perfectly to keep God's holy law, and yet no man of himself is able to do it. His inability, however, does not diminish it's binding force. God cannot abate one jot or tittle of the law's demands, for that would be a confession of its imperfection or of his variableness. Or, should he diminish his demands because our wickedness has made us incapable of keeping them, then the more wicked we become, the less binding would be his authority, and if we only grew depraved enough we might escape from all obligation to obedience. Such an idea, cannot, of course, be tolerated. The truth is, that under the government of God, as well as under human government, children are held responsible for the conduct of their parents. Parents have a right to act for them, and children must abide by their decisions, and endure the consequences of their acts. They cannot escape from it, for this is a natural as well as moral law which is continually operating. The character and destiny of the child are determined mainly by the parent. He may educate him to be refined, intelligent and useful, or to be vicious, debased and dangerous. This process is going on continually. The parent may make positive engagements in behalf of his children, which they are bound to perform, and which the law recognizes as valid. A father dying, for example, while his children are in infancy or in their minority, may require them to appropriate a portion of his estate for certain ends, as a condition on which they shall receive it. Another may require of his children a given service, on condition of receiving his blessing; and if the requirement be not morally wrong, who would not feel themselves bound to observe it? But there are examples, perhaps more in point, in Scripture, in which parents have entered into formal covenants that have had direct reference to their children. Adam covenanted for himself and posterity. They had no personal agency in it, in any sense, and yet all are held accountable for its transgression; all suffer a portion of its penalty, as they might, if he had kept it, been made possessors of its blessings. So Abraham covenanted with God for himself and his seed; and his descendants felt themselves bound to fulfill its requirements. They knew, in fact, that unless they did, its benefits could not be enjoyed. The same principle holds good in reference to the baptized. You are bound by the covenant engagements of your parents. You cannot be released from them on the ground that you had no agency in assuming them. They were assumed for you by those who had the right to do it—a right recognized by both God and man—and you cannot therefore throw them off; you cannot willfully disregard or live contrary to them, without guilt and dishonor. The apostle urges this principle when he testifies "to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law." His consecration to God in this rite bound him to keep his whole law; and yet this obligation was imposed on him when an infant only eight days old; but after arriving at maturity, he could not shake it off. He was a debtor still, for he was placed in that position in accordance with the divine command and by those who had the authority over him. With equal propriety may we now testify unto you who are baptized, that you are debtors unto Christ. You are bound to keep the laws of his kingdom, bound to serve him to whose service you have been set apart. You are not your own; you are not, therefore, to live unto yourselves. The vows of God are upon you. You have been sealed with his seal. And since you have attained an age at which you can understand your position, you are bound to perform those vows; to seek to be sealed with the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption. There is no escape from this obligation; and when, therefore, you live utterly regardless of it, as many do, your conduct is doubly criminal. You may have flattered yourselves that you enjoyed superior advantages, and that you were more highly favored than others; and this is true. But you must take into the account your corresponding responsibilities. There is a broad distinction between your position, and that of mere worldlings, and there ought to be a like difference in your practice. You cannot give yourselves to the sins of youth, or the gayeties of life. You cannot set your hearts on fashion, dress, amusements, business or any mere worldly ends, with as much consistency, or with as little guilt, as your unbaptized associates. You cannot harden yourselves against the truth, grieve the Holy Spirit, turn away in coldness or disdain from the claims of Christ, without exposing yourselves to an aggravated condemnation. Shall you who are pledged servants of Christ, who are bound to him by solemn covenant, be regardless of these vows, or be recreant to Him as his avowed enemies? Ah, this is approaching fearfully near the appalling sin of "treading under foot the Son of God, of counting the blood of his covenant an unholy thing, and doing despite unto the Spirit of grace." You cannot, surely, have considered your relations to Christ and to his church. You cannot have pondered the nature of your baptismal vows which were taken for you, but which are now binding upon your own souls. You cannot realize against what gracious promises, what high, privileges you sin, in living contrary to your obligations, and in remaining at heart, and by your conduct, "strangers to God and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel." Review your position, and remember you are placed where you cannot recede. Duties press upon you which you cannot disregard; vows are upon you which you cannot break with safety or with honor. It is not enough that you lead a moral life, or that you continue in your present position. You are required to advance. You have been pledged to God; and to fulfill this pledge you must be His in heart. You must choose His service. You must take Christ's yoke upon you and dedicate yourselves to Him. Nothing short of this will fulfill your covenant vows or insure your enjoyment of its blessings. As to receding, that is utterly inadmissible. You have been put in this relation by those who loved you and had the right, nay, were commanded of God, to dispose of you in this manner. You cannot then evade it. You may say you never gave it your consent, and that it is hard to be thus bound to act contrary to your natural inclinations; but it is right, and you cannot help it. You are in this position, and you cannot break away but at the peril of your salvation; nay, without the certainty of perdition. But it is not hard, or cruel, to require you to love and obey God. You were created for this, and your nature will never attain to its perfection until you fulfill this its noblest destiny. A hard thing to do right! A grievous thing to be saved from the pollution of sin and the very gulf of perdition! A hard thing to be taken under divine protection; to be enriched with God's blessing; to be numbered among his people on earth and ultimately admitted to his kingdom in heaven! Impossible! You did not think it; you did not mean to urge this as an objection to your most obvious duty. You would not object to your parents' securing for you a costly estate while in your minority, and why then discard the heavenly inheritance they would provide for you? Fulfill your vows. Choose His service, and be blessed now and forever.