other plan will fail, if this is neglected.-If this succeed, then and not till then, shall we see the Sabbath honoured as the day of the Lord.

Whatever may be the causes of the present increasing desecration of the Sabbath, something must be done. In view of it, there is an appeal to every one, who loves his country and his God. One of our own statesmen has eloquently said, "Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom, nor virtue, nor knowledge has any vigour or immortal hope, except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in the sanctions of the Christian religion." So far as history is oracular, it tells us plainly that those nations are most blest that fear God and keep His day holy.

Here we agree with Mr. Gurney.

"It is indeed a powerful argument for the divine authority of this institution, that as on the one hand, a conspicuous blessing rests on the use of it, so on the other, the neglect of it never fails to be followed by vice, misery, and confusion." p. 99.

For confirmation of this, let us listen to the word of God. "Blessed be the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil. Every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it and taketh hold of my covenant; even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices, shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people. If thou turnest away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord: and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

In the days of Amos there were those, who wearied with the restraints which the Jewish religion imposed, said, "when will the new moon be gone, that we may corn, and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat."

sell

But eager as they were to break away from the law of the Lord, we hear God say in return, "The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord."

When we hear that the early and latter rains have been withheld that the hopes of the husbandman have failed, and the song of the reaper can no more be heard in the field-or when the death-tones of the famishing on the far-off islands strike upon the ear-we then have proofs of wretchedness that deeply affects our hearts. But what is the famine, which weakens the sinews and prostrates the strength of man, compared with the famine that follows the loss of God's word! Let the Sabbath be desecrated, let the ordinances of God be neglected-let the word of God be withheld-and what desolation ensues! How blighted are the hopes-how enervated the energies of the people! Would we be spared this sad and desolating scene, let it be engraved in letters of light on the House of God, the Temple of Justice, the Hall of Legislation, the Home of our children, the tablet of the Heart, REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY AND KEEP IT HOLY!

ART. III. REVIEW OF SHEPARD AND ADAMS ON INFANT BAPTISM.

BY REV. JOHN A. ALBRO, Cambridge, Mass.

The Church Membership of Children, and their Right to Baptism. By Thomas Shepard, Cambridge. 1662.

The Baptised Child. By Nehemiah Adams, Boston. 1836. Second Edition.

ONE of Scott's historical romances opens with the description of a man called Old Mortality, who was often seen in the burial places of Scotland, busily employed in clearing the moss from the monuments of the persecuted Camero

nians, renewing with his chisel the half-effaced inscriptions, and repairing the emblems of death with which they were adorned. "He considered himself as fulfiling a sacred duty, while thus renewing to the eyes of posterity, the decaying emblems of the zeal and sufferings of their forefathers, and thereby trimming, as it were, the beacon light which was to warn future generations to defend their religion even unto blood." We have often wished that a friendly hand might be similarly employed upon some of those works which yet remain among us as monuments of the wisdom, piety, and zeal of our Pilgrim Fathers. The books of those venerable men, are precious memorials of an age in which the foundations of our civil and religious institutions were laid, and they are essential to a right understanding of our earlier ecclesiastical history. But they are fast disappearing; and, like those of the Sybil, they increase in value as their number is lessened. Unless something is done to rescue them from the all-consuming hand of time, and the careless hands of those who are incapable of understanding their worth, their contents will ere long be as little known to the descendants of the Pilgrims, as the inscriptions upon those ancient tomb-stones which lie defaced and half buried in the dust of our church yards. Why will not some lover of truth, and of the memory of holy men, imitate the pious zeal of Old Mortality, and fulfil a sacred duty, by republishing to the world the lessons of wisdom contained in these almost forgotten records, thus "trimming as it were, the light which is to warn future generations to defend" the faith delivered to their fathers, and by them handed down as a precious legacy to us.

We are glad of an opportunity to perform this duty in respect to the rare and valuable work of Shepard, which stands first at the head of this article. It was originally a letter written to one of his friends not long before his death, in 1649, though it was not printed in its present form until 1662. It is one of the ablest works of a man, who, to use the language of Increase Mather-"besides his eminent abilities, held much real and living communion with God, and therefore was more likely to know the mind of Christ than many others." In the advertisement to a second edition, printed in 1769, more than a hundred and twenty years after the author's death, the publishers use the following language,which we think by no means extravagant. "There needs not much to be said to commend this

Treatise to the notice and consideration of the public. The great name of the author, and the greater importance of the subject therein discussed, will be enough to excite a general attention thereto, and a careful perusal of its contents. Mr. Shepard stands among the foremost of those worthies, who left their native land, and fled to the wilds of America, for the sake of religion and conscience. In his day he was esteemed inferior to none, either in learning, or gifts, or real piety. His name is still dear to posterity, his memory blessed, and his praise throughout all the churches of New England. Among the several valuable and highly esteemed printed labours of this eminent servant of God, this Letter most justly claims, in proportion to its bulk, an equal share of merit and regard." We hope it will be given to the Church in a new and better form. "The seasonableness and expediency of its republication, will not be disputed by those who concur with the author in sentiment, and have any discerning of the times." In the mean time, we intend to "renew to the eyes" of our readers, certain portions of this work, as illustrative, not only of Shepard's opinions upon a subject of transcendant importance, but of the practice also of those who are rightly called the Fathers of the congregational church of New England; and we hope--to use again the language of the advertisement already referred to-that as, "when it was first wrote, it was blessed of God, entirely to remove the difficulties or scruples of the person to whom it was privately addressed, respecting the important principles therein maintained and defended; it may, through the same divine influence, be still of use to resolve the doubtful, to settle the wavering, and establish others in the present truth."

We must first however, make a few remarks upon the admirable little work of Mr. Adams, which we have placed as a companion piece, by the side of Shepard's Letter. There is an obvious propriety in bringing these two works together before our readers. Shepard gathered the present church in Cambridge in 1636, and was its first pastor. Mr. Adams was its first pastor after its re-establishment in 1829, and evidently drank into the spirit which he so beautifully describes in his "character of Shepard." They defend with equal zeal the right of children to baptism, but with regard to the relation which baptised children sustain to the church, the two writers apparently hold different views; or

at least, the later pastor, as we shall take occasion to show, speaks respecting this point with an uncertainty of tone not to be found in the work of his predecessor. The Church has undoubtedly departed from the doctrine and practice of our Fathers in relation to this subject; and the two writers before us, are representatives of "different administrations." We place these works together in order to show the nature and extent of this difference.

That there is no lack of books upon the subject of Infant Baptism, every one acquainted with our theological literature, for two hundred years past, is fully aware. The opposition-which we must call unreasonable, notwithstanding the multitude of reasons assigned for it-which this ordinance has encountered from a respectable portion of the Church of Christ, has called forth a multitude of publications, in which the divine authority for this ordinance is made exceedingly plain. We did not expect to find, in Mr. Adam's book, any thing new in relation to external evidence. Nevertheless, "the Baptized Child" is heartily welcome, and we affectionately bid it God speed. It is just such a book as we have long wished to see; and we confidently predict that it will do good wherever it goes. The author does not follow the beaten track, nor increase the already formidable number of works upon this subject, without telling us some new things, and placing many old ones in a new and very interesting light. Instead of exhibiting at large the external evidence for our practice, he attempts, and we think very successfully, to develope the great principle of God's government, in which Infant Baptism is grounded.

Mr. Adams does not appear upon the arena, already crowded with fierce combatants, as the champion of a sect. "It is not the object of this book, he says in his preface, to promote a sectarian observance of rites and forms." If this were its object, we certainly should not notice it, except to express our regret at its appearance. There are too many books of that sort already. We are weary of controversy about mere sectarian differences. When shall we be delivered from the attacks of that great host of polemics, who take their stand upon some useless peculiarity of form which distinguishes them as a sect, and waste their strength as well as our patience, in vain efforts to bring the religious world into unity with their practice; or who, in defending