istry of home has been faithfully applied,-know ye not that the frowns of abused heaven are upon you, and that the memory of your rebellion against the prerogatives of the family, will constitute an ingredient in your cup of woe? The privilege of baptism lays you under solemn requisition. If unfaithful to it, it will be your condemnation, and add new fuel to the flame of a burning conscience.

Parents and children! be faithful to this holy ordinance of God. It is a solemn service. You should approach the baptismal font with a trembling step and a consecrated heart. And what a solemn moment it is, when you take your child away from that altar! There you gave it up to God, -dedicated it to His service; and there in turn He commits it to you in trust, saying to you as Pharaoh's daughter said to the mother of Moses, "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay thee thy wages," and you bore it away, as did that faithful mother, to bring it up for God. There you solemnly promised that in training that child, the will of God should be your will, and the law of all your conduct towards it. You can never forget that solemn transaction, and how you there vowed before witnessing men and angels that you would be faithful to the little one God has given you. · What now has been the result? Eternity will

answer.

CHAPTER XII.

CHRISTIAN NAMES.

"SHE named the child Ichabod."-1 SAMUEL

"Thus was the building left

Ridiculous, and the work confusion named."

CHRISTIAN baptism suggests Christian names. This introduces us to an important topic, viz., the kind of names Christian parents should give to their children at their baptism. Baptismal names are indeed an important item of the Christian home. Much more depends upon them than we are at first sight of the subject, disposed to grant.

Christianity eminently includes the great law of correspondence between its inward spirit and its outward form. Its form and contents cannot be separated. The principle of fitness, it everywhere exhibits; and hence its nomenclature is the herald of its spirit and truth. The names that religion has given to her followers signify some principle of association between them. They were adopted to designate some fact in

the history of the individual, or in his relation to the church. Hence the names adopted for the children of the Christian home should be the utterance of some fact or calling which belongs to that home. Their name is one of the first things which children know, and hence it makes a deep impression upon them. And as our Christian names are given to us at the time of our baptism, one would think that there is always a correspondence between the name and some fact or interest connected with the occasion. We should then receive a Christian name, a name which does not bind us by the laws of association to what is evil either in the past or the present, but which indicates a relation to some precious boon involved in the dedication of the child to God.

Is this always so? By no means. It once was. It was so in the Hebrew home and in the families of the apostolic age. But in this day of parental rage after new-fangled things and names, taken from works of fiction and novels of doubtful character, we find that parents care but very little about the baptismal name being the herald of a religious fact. "What is in a name?" was a question propounded by a poet. His answer was "nothing!"

"That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."

The principle here evolved is false. There is much in a name; and at the creation names were

not mechanically given to things; but there was a vital correspondence between the name and the thing named. Much depends upon the name. It exerts a potent influence for good or for evil upon the bearer and upon all around him.

Primarily, a name supposed some correspondence between its meaning and the person who bore it. Hence the name should not be arbitrary in its application, but should "link its fitness to idea," and with the person, run in parallel courses. "For mind is apt and quick to wed ideas and names together, Nor stoppeth its perceptions to be curious of priorities."

this way they were But the names this

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, felt that practically there was much in a name, when he heathenized the names of the young Hebrew captives. By this he thought to detach them from their Hebrew associations. God was in each of their original names, and in reminded of their religion. Chaldee king gave them were either social or al luded to the idolatry of Babylon. Their Hebrew names were to them witnesses for God, memen toes of the faith of their fathers; hence the king, to destroy their influence, called Daniel, Belte. shazzar, i. e. "the treasurer of the god Bel;" Hannaniah he called Shadrach, i. e. "the messenger of the king;" Mishael he called Meshach, i. e. "the devotee of the goddess Shesach." He showed his cunning in this, and a historical testimony to the potent influence of a

name.

By this same rule of correspondence, Adam doubtless named, by order of his Creator, the things of nature as they struck his senses.

"He specified the partridge by her cry, and the forest prowler by his roving,

The tree by its use, and the flower by its beauty, and everything according to its truth."

The Hebrews obeyed the same law in naming their children. With them there was a sacred importance attached to the giving of a name. For every chosen name they had a reason which involved the person's life, character or destiny. Adam named the companion of his bosom, 66 WOman because she was taken out of man." He called "his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." Eve called her firstborn Cain (possession) "because I have gotten a man from the Lord." She called another son Seth (appointed,) "for God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew." Samuel was so named because he was " asked of and sent to God." God Himself often gave names to His people; and each name thus given, conveyed a promise, or taught some rule of life, or bore some divine memorial, or indicated somo calling of the person named. Says Dr. Krummacher on this point: "Names were to the people like memoranda, and like the bells on the garments of the priests, reminding them of the Lord and His government, and furnishing matter for a variety of salutary reflections. To the re