`And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou, and all thy house, into the ark: for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.’ Gen. 7: 1.

`By faith Noah prepared an ark for the saving of his house,’ and was made a witness to future ages that the faith of a believing, righteous parent obtains a blessing, not for himself only, but for his children too. The New Testament teaching, `By faith he saved his house,’ is in perfect accordance with what is recorded in the Old Testament history: `I have seen thee righteous before me: come thou, and all thy house, into the ark.’ Even Ham, who, as far as his personal character was concerned, manifestly deserved to perish with the ungodly world, was saved from the flood for his father’s sake and by his father’s faith. It is the proof that in God’s sight the family is regarded as a unity, with the father as head and representative; that parents and children are one, and that in the dispensation of grace, even as in the ministration of condemnation, it is on this principle that God will deal with the families of His people.

We know how it was this fact, of parents and children being one, that had given sin its terrible power in the world. Or was it not in virtue of this that, when Adam had sinned, his whole posterity had been made subject at one blow, as it were to sin and death? Was not the flood, as well as the fall, a proof of it? We see the children of Seth sunk as deep as the children of Cain, because Seth too was a son whom Adam had begotten in his likeness, with a sinful nature to be handed to his children too. Was it not this that gave sin such universal empire to thousand generations? The family was sin’s greatest stronghold; children inherited the evil from their parents. The unity of parents and children was the strength of sin.

Noah’s deliverance from the flood was to be the introduction of a new dispensation — the first great act of God’s redeeming grace on behalf of a sinful world. In it God manifested what the great principles of the economy of grace were to be. These were life through death; faith as the means of deliverance, the one channel through which the blessing comes. And further, it was now to be revealed whether the family was to be one of the means of grace. There was every reason to expect it would be. It had been sin’s mightiest ally, the chief instrument through which it had acquired such universal dominion. This principle was now to be rescued from the power of sin, to be adopted into the covenant of grace, to be consecrated and made subservient to the establishment of God’s kingdom. How otherwise could the declaration be verified, ‘Where sin abounded, there did grace much more abound,’ if sin alone had the power through the parents to secure dominion over the children? Nay, in this very thing we are to have one of the brightest displays of redeeming grace — that the relation of parents and children, which had become the great means for the transmission and establishing the power of sin, was much more to become the vehicle for the extension of the kingdom of God’s grace. And though many ages would have to pass ere the promised Seed of the woman should be born, yet in anticipation of that holy birth the seed of God’s people were to share in the blessing of their parents. It was on the strength of this hope that the children of righteous Noah were blessed with their father.

Let believing parents understand and remember this. The man who is righteous in God’s sight is not dealt with only as an individual, but in his relation as parent. When God blesses He loves to bless abundantly; the blessing must overflow the house of His servant. It is not only for this temporal life, and the supply of its many needs, that the father must regard himself as the appointed channel through whom the blessings of nature and providence must reach the child, and that he may count upon God’s help. The parental relation has a nobler destiny: for the eternal life too, with its blessings, the believing father is to regard himself as the appointed channel and steward of the grace of God.

When once we understand this blessed truth, and in its fullness of promise by faith accept God’s word, ‘Thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation,’ we shall know to value the word that follows: ‘Go thou, and thy whole house, into the ark.’ The seed of the righteous shall be blessed; the house of His servant God will bless. God gives the assurance that the ark in which the parent is to be saved is meant for his children too; for his sake, it is for them as much as for him; the ark is to be the house of the family.

And as the blessing is to come for his sake, so through his instrumentality too. It is not only a promise, but a command: ‘Go thou, and thy house, into the ark,’ It is to him the charge is given to see to it that just as, and when, he enters in, they too. God will not deal with the house separate and apart from him; the parent has to bring the children into the ark.

And if the question comes up as to the power of a parent thus to lead his children into the ark as certainly as he himself goes in, the answer is simple and clear: `By faith Noah prepared an ark for the saving of his house.’ Let us believe that God always gives grace proportioned to the duty He imposes. Let the believing parent live, and act, and pray with and for his children, as one to whom the ark and its salvation is indeed the one aim and joy of life, and who is assured that his children are meant of God to be there with him. Let him confidently trust God for the salvation of every child. Let him in that spirit instruct and inspire his children. Let them grow up under the consciousness that to be with the father is to be with one who is in the ark — the blessing cannot be missed. This it is that baptism — the figure of the ark with its resurrection out of the waters of the deluge — seals to us in the blood of Jesus.

Beloved parents! listen to the blessed tidings of which Noah is God’s messenger to you: there is room for your child in the ark; the God who saves you expects you to bring your child with you. Oh, let it no longer be enough to pray and hope that your child may be saved, but accept in faith the assurance that he can be, and act out in obedience the command that you are to bring him in! And to each question as to how, let the answer be taken deeper to heart, `Go thou, and thy house.’ Go in and live in the ark; bring up and train thy little children there, as one wholly separated from the world and dwelling there; God’s blessing will use your training for their salvation. Abide in Christ, and let the child feel that to be near you is to be near Christ; live in the power of the love and the redemption and the life of Christ; your house will be to the child the ark where Christ is known and found. Oh, if you have indeed heard that most blessed word, `I have seen thee righteous,’ let it teach you in the obedience of a joyous faith to fulfil the precept, `Come thou, and all thy house, into the ark.’

`Thou, and all thy house ‘ — may the word live in the heart of each believing parent!

O Lord my God! I have heard your message, telling me that, since You have accepted me as righteous in Your Son, You will have my children saved too. I have heard Your voice of grace, `Come thou into the ark, and thy house.’ Blessed be Your name for the assurance of the salvation of his children it offers a parent’s heart!

Lord! do You Yourself open my eyes to see what Your Word sets before me. Let me see in Noah the picture of a believing parent — walking with You, believing Your word, obedient to Your command. Let me see in the ark the type of my blessed Lord Jesus, a sure and a safe hiding-place for me and my child. Let me see in the saving of Noah’s house the sure pledge of what will be given to every parent who trusts You for his children, and obeys Your voice to bring them in.

‘And, behold, the word of the Lord came to Abraham, saying, He that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he believed in the Lord; and He counted it to him for righteousness.’ Gen. 15: 4, 6. `Ye are the children of the covenant.’ Acts 3: 25.

Three times had God already given to Abraham the promise that He would make of him at great nation, as the sand of the seashore in multitude. When God appeared to him the fourth time, Abraham poured out his complaint before God: `Behold, I go childless. Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is my heir.’ In answer the word of the Lord came to him, saying, `Lo, this shall not be thine heir; but he that cometh forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.’ And then follow the memorable words, ‘Abraham believed God, and He counted it to him for righteousness.’

The great truth which this narrative sets before us is this — that the longing and asking for, the promise and the gift on God’s part, and on our part the reception and the birth of our children, is a matter of faith; a matter in which God takes the deepest interest; in which He holds communion with men; and in which faith must operate and will assuredly be blest. It is especially as a parent, and in reference to the promise of a child, that Abraham’s faith is exercised and found well pleasing to God. In the power of faith the natural longing for a child becomes the channel of most wonderful fellowship with God, and the natural seed becomes the heir of God’s promise and the spiritual blessing.

The reason and meaning of all this is easily found. In Noah God had begun to acknowledge the validity of the oneness of parents and children in the dealings of grace.

But it had been of little avail. Immediately after the flood Ham’s wickedness burst out, and it was not many years before the whole world had sunk into idolatry. It is ever God’s way by degrees and gradually to reveal the ways and the purposes of His grace, and so He resolves to deal differently with Abraham. The children of Noah had been born after the flesh. Before their birth God had not entered into covenant on their behalf. In character they had become independent men ere God made them partakers of Noah’s blessing. With Abraham He will deal otherwise; His way of dealing in covenant with His servants is to be advanced a distinct stage forward. The child, who was to be taken up into the covenant, was from before his birth to be the object of God’s care and the parent’s faith. The very birth of the child God takes charge of, to watch over and to sanctify by His word and by faith. Everything connected with Isaac’s birth is to be a matter of God’s revelation and man’s faith. Against nature and against hope God Himself by His promise awakens the faith and expectation of a child. For twenty-five years this faith is tried and purified, until Abraham’s whole soul is filled with believing expectancy, that so the child may in truth be the child of faith and prayer; a gift of God received by faith. Before the birth Abraham is circumcised, once again sealed for God in the covenant of circumcision, that so full and clear proof may be given that the birth of the seed of His people is holy in His sight, a matter to Him of special interest, the object of His promises and His blessing. In all this God would teach us that it is not only in their individual capacity, but especially as parents, and that from before the first hope of having children, that His saints are taken into covenant with Him, are called to exercise Abraham’s faith, and to receive their children from His hands. Not only are the children when grown up, but even from the birth, to be partakers of the covenant. Yea, from before the birth, in the very first rising of hope, would God, by the power of His promises given to faith by His Spirit, begin the great work of redeeming love. He would thus reveal to us how that wondrous power with which He had endowed man, of bringing forth and giving life to a child after his own image, and which by sin had become the great strength of Satan’s kingdom, was again to be consecrated, and under God’s own eye to be rendered subservient to the extension of His kingdom and glory.

Hence it is that the Bible is so full of what cannot otherwise be understood — of Divine promise and interposition, of human activity and expectation, connected with the birth of children. Everything concentrates on that one great lesson, the fatherhood and the childhood of this earth has a Divine and heavenly promise, and everything connected with it must with us be a matter of faith, a religious service holy to the Lord and well pleasing in His sight. I must not only believe for myself; if I would fully honor God, my faith must reach forth and embrace my children, grasping the promises of God for them too. If I would magnify the riches of God’s grace, if I would with my whole nature and all my powers be consecrated to God’s service, and if I would accomplish the utmost possible within my reach for the advancement of His kingdom, it is especially as parent that I must believe and labor.

And what I see in Abraham, that God thought so long a time needful for the strengthening and ripening of faith before he might receive the promised child, teaches me that this grace is a gift of high value, and cannot be attained but by a close walk with God, and wholehearted surrender to His teachings and leadings. The faith which was sufficient to justify Abraham was not sufficient to receive the blessing for his seed; it had to be further strengthened and purified: faith must ever be in proportion to the extent of the promise. And believing parents will experience that there is nothing that so mightily quickens the growth of their faith as the reaching out after this blessing for their children. They will feel in it the mightiest stimulus to a life of entire devotion and unmixed faith, that they may have not only enough for themselves, but to impart to children, in harmony with that law of the kingdom: `According to your faith be it unto you.’

But with this solemn lesson Abraham’s story gives us the comforting assurance that God will give the grace to attain what we need. With what patience and longsuffering did He lead Abraham and Sarah until they were fitted to accomplish His purposes, and it could be said of them, `Abraham believed that he might become the father of many nations;’ and, ‘through faith Sarah received strength to conceive seed and was delivered of a child.’ Even now still will that God, who has undertaken to sanctify His people soul and body, and to fill them with His Spirit, Himself train them for the holy calling of believing parents. He will teach us how the birth of our children can become the highest exercise of a faith that gives glory to God, and the truest means of advancing our spiritual life and the interests of His kingdom.

With us, too, the promise of God and the power of faith are the wondrous links by which the natural seed becomes the heir of the spiritual blessing, and the parental relationship one of the best schools for the life of faith. It is especially in a believing fatherhood that we can become conformed to the image not only of faithful Abraham, but of the Father in heaven Himself.

O our blessed God and Father! what thanks shall we render to You for the wondrous revelation of Your will in Your servants Abraham and Sarah. The fatherhood and motherhood of earth You took into Your covenant charge and keeping, You sanctify and bless, that the seed of Your people might indeed be holy to the Lord. Where sin had abounded, and manifested its terrible power, You make grace much more to abound; and Abraham’s child, the heir of sin and misery, You make the heir of the promise and its blessing. Blessed be Your name Gracious God! Open the eyes of Your servants to see how, through the birth of Your own Isaac, Your dear Son Jesus Christ, in our flesh, the birth of our children has indeed been redeemed from the power of sin, and Your promise comes to us larger and fuller than ever Abraham could understand. Teach us, teach all Christian parents, to realize that if there is one thing in which You have an interest, in which You give abundant grace, in which You ask and aid faith, it is for a believing fatherhood, for our receiving our children from You and for You. O God! enlighten and sanctify our hearts to realize it: the fruit of our body is to be the heir of Your promise. And let our parentage, like Abraham, be what binds us to You in worship and in faith. Amen.

‘And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.’ Gen. 17: 7. `The children of the flesh, they are not the children of God, but the children of the promise.’ Rom. 9: 8.

We have here the first full revelation of the terms of God’s covenant, of God’s dealing in grace, with Abraham, the father of all who believe; the great foundation promise of what God calls an ‘everlasting covenant.’ God had already revealed Himself to Abraham as his God, and the God who would give him a child. The thing that is new and remarkable here is the assurance that the covenant now to be established was to be with his seed as much as with himself: `a God unto thee, and thy seed after thee.’ It is this promise that has invested these words, through all the generations of God’s Church, with an imperishable interest. Let us see how entirely the same the promise is for the child as for the parent.

The matter of the promise is the same in each case: `I will establish My covenant;’ `I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.’ It is God’s purpose to stand in the same relation to the child as the father; the believing parent and the unconscious child are to have the same place before Him. God longs to take possession of the children ere sin gets its mastery; from the birth, yea, from before the birth, He would secure them as His own, and have the parent’s heart and the parent’s love sanctified and guided and strengthened by the thought that the child is His. `A God unto thee, and to thy seed.’

The certainty of the promise is the same. It rests on God’s free mercy, on His almighty power, His covenant faithfulness. The election of the seed is as free as of the parent himself, or rather, is even more manifestly of free grace alone, for here at all events there is no possibility of either merit or worthiness. God’s faithfulness to His purpose is in either case the ground on which the promise rests, and its fulfilment may be expected.

The condition of the promise is in each case the same. In its twofold blessing it is offered to the faith of the parent, and has to he accepted by faith alone. If the promise that comes to a sinner in the gospel, `I will be thy God,’ be not believed, that unbelief makes the promise of none effect. God is true, His promise faithful, His offer of mercy real, but it finds no entrance through unbelief, and the blessing is lost. Not otherwise with the other half, `a God to thy seed; if the parent’s faith accept this for his child, God will see to it that his faith is not disappointed.

The recipient of the promise is the same. It is not as if the first half of the promise is given to the father, the second half to the child. No, but it is the same person to whom the two parts of the promise come. In the one half the individual accepts it for himself, in the other half as a father for his child, but it is one act. The promise is not held in abeyance to wait for the child’s faith; but is given to the father’s faith in the assurance that the child’s faith will follow. With Abraham, as with each believing parent, the same faith accepts the personal and the parental blessing. The blessing is in either case equally sure, if faith equally holds it fast.

But here a difficulty arises with many persons. They see that God’s promises of mercy to sinners are free and sure, and have found, in believing them, that they have come true; they know that they have been accepted. But it is as if the promise with regard to the children is not equally simple and certain. They cannot well understand how one can so confidently believe for another. They know that the only sure ground for faith is God’s word; but they have not yet been able to realize that the word of God really means this, that they are definitely to believe that He is the God of their seed. Their impressions are in accordance with views that are ordinarily held, and that may be expressed thus: `God has established a general connection between seedtime and harvest, between faithful parental training and the salvation of the children. In neither case, the seedtime, nor the training, is absolute certainty of success secured, or God’s sovereignty excluded. It is enough that the promise expresses the tendency and ordinary result of proper training, though not what is to be the issue in every particular case.’ It is evident that such a general principle, with its possible exceptions, cannot give the rest of faith the parent longs for. Faith needs the assurance that God’s purpose and promise are clear and unmistakable; then alone can it venture all upon His faithfulness.

Such was the promise given to Abraham; such is the promise to every believing parent. It is not in the general law of seedtime and harvest that I am to find the parallel for my ground of hope on behalf of my child, but in that other very distinct and definite promise with which God himself has linked it. The first half, `I will be a God unto thee,’ is the Divine pattern and pledge of the second, `a God to thy seed.’ When as a struggling sinner I first sought for mercy, it was not to some general principle that seeking is generally followed by finding that I trusted, but to the very definite Divine assurance, `Everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth.’ I believed the promise; I came and was accepted; I found the promise true: `I will be thy God.’ So the promise is now brought that He is willing to be the God of my seed too. Wherever God comes with a promise, He expects faith to accept it at once. The promise was not conditional on Isaac’s believing, it was intended to be its source and security. And so, as I stand in covenant with God as my God, and see how He offers to be the God of His people’s seed, I have the right in faith to claim this promise, and to be assured of my child’s salvation as firmly as my own, through faith in the God of truth. The analogy between the two halves of the promise is complete. In the first it was the question, Could I trust the love and power and faithfulness of God to accept and renew and keep such a sinner as I am? Faith gave the answer, and secured the blessing. And now with the other question, Can I trust the love and the power and faithfulness of God to accept and renew and keep my child? Faith can again give the answer, and this blessing too is secured.

And if the thought still come up, as it has come and troubled many, How about election? how can I be sure that my child is one of the elect? the first half of the promise again gives the solution. When I believed to the saving of my own soul, it was not the secret things which belong to the Lord our God that I had to do with, but the things revealed in His Word, His invitation, and promise. I was sure the election and the promise of God never could be at variance with each other. Even so with my child. No believer in God’s promise ever had to complain that God’s sovereignty had hindered its fulfilment. `They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise.’ Not the fleshly descent from a believer can secure grace for the child, but only this, but this most certainly, that God’s free promise, given for the seed of His people, had been claimed and held in faith. The promise is definite, `a God unto thee and to thy seed.’ Oh, let us, like Abraham, not stagger at the promise through unbelief, but be strong in faith, giving glory to God, and be confident that what He has spoken He is able and faithful to perform. Let us look upon our children, let us love them and train them as children of the covenant and children of the promise — these are the children of God.

O my God! how shall I sufficiently adore You for the grace You have revealed in the promise of the covenant? As if it was not enough to take such unworthy sinners and make them Your children, You offer to provide for their children too, and make the house of Your servants the home of Your favor and blessing. You meet them with the sure promise once given to Your servant Abraham: `I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.’ Blessed be Your Holy Name!

And now, Lord! I beseech You, give me grace to take this promise and trust it with my whole heart. I desire to believe that as sure as is the confidence I have that You have accepted me and are my God, so confident may I be that You are the God of my seed. As I yielded myself all sinful to You, and You took me as Your own, I give them, all sinful too, to You, and believe You take them as Your own. As I accepted Your promise for myself, I accept it for them. Give me grace now to look upon them as You look; as children of the promise. May this be what gives me courage and hope for their training on earth and their portion in heaven. They are the children of the covenant, children of the promise. Faithful is He who has promised, who also will do it. Amen.

`Ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised, every man child in your generations.’ Gen. 17: 11, 12.

`He received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith.’ Such was according to the teaching of the Holy Spirit, the meaning of the ordinance of circumcision given to Abraham. And yet there are many who speak of it as if it were only the initiatory rite into the temporal privileges of the Jewish people. As if it could be meant as one thing to him, something deeply spiritual and sacred, and another to his descendants! As if the whole argument of the Epistle to the Romans did not reprove the Jews for looking at it in so carnal a light, and degrading it from what it originally was — the holy sacrament of friendship and fellowship with God, the seal of the righteousness of faith, the emblem of the covenant of the spirit in which God would circumcise the heart, the sure sign of God’s faithfulness to him and to his seed. It is only this spiritual aspect of circumcision which justifies the Church in grounding upon it the baptism of the infants of believers. But in this light it is the glorious type of the later ordinance, and its best exposition, when we understand how there was no need in the New Testament for repeating in express words the truth so deeply inwrought into the life of God’s people, that their children were as truly in the covenant, and had as sure a right to its sign, as they themselves. May the Holy Spirit lead us to know the mind of our God.

We are taught that circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of faith. A seal is the confirmation of something that has been settled and transacted, the securing of privileges that have already been secured. Abraham had believed, God had counted his faith to him for righteousness, and had taken him into a covenant of friendship. Circumcision was to him a Divine seal and assurance of this. But it was also a sign, and that no arbitrary one, but with a spiritual meaning. It was a sign of that purity and holiness which was to be the mark of God’s people. The most remarkable feature of the covenant was its passing on the blessing from generation to generation, its taking possession for the service of God’s kingdom of the very power of generation. Of this power sin had taken possession; the very first sign of sin with Adam and Eve was that they knew that they were naked and were ashamed. The very fountain of life was defiled, and had to be cleansed. And so, when the little child of eight days old had to suffer the taking away of the foreskin of his flesh, it was in token of the defilement there is in our natural birth, a foreshadowing of that Holy One who should be begotten of the Holy Ghost, and of that second birth in Him, not of the will of the flesh, but of God, which was to be the blessing of the new covenant. It was a type of the circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, being buried with Him in baptism. The seal of the righteousness of faith under the Old Testament was the sign of the need of regeneration, a sign for the quickening and instruction of Abraham’s faith, and the setting him apart as a father for the service of God.

Circumcision could not be to the infant Isaac essentially different from what it was to Abraham. It was to him too a seal of his participation in that spiritual covenant of which God’s promise and man’s faith were the two marks. All unknowing, he had been taken, with his father, and for his father’s faith; into the favor and covenant of God. It was to him, as to Abraham, a seal of faith — faith already existing and accepted. Not his own, but his father’s; for Abraham’s sake the blessing came on him. We find this distinctly stated later on (Gen. 26: 3, 5): ‘I will bless thee, because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, and my statutes, and my laws.’ And again (ver. 24): `I am the God of Abraham thy father; fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, for my servant Abraham’s sake.’ Abraham had not believed for himself alone, but for his child; the faith that was counted for righteousness had entirely reference to God’s promise about his child; as a father he had believed and received the child in faith from God; the sign of circumcision in the child was the seal to the child of the father’s faith. God dealt with father and child as one; the father believed for himself and his child as one; the child had the same place in the covenant, and the same claim on the seal of the covenant, as the father. And as he grew up it would be to him a seal not only of the faith his father had, but of God’s promise waiting for his faith too, the remembrancer of the one thing required by God, the one thing counted righteousness by Him, the one thing well-pleasing to Him, and by which he in turn could pass the blessing on to his seed again.

What circumcision was to Abraham and Isaac, baptism is still to believers and their children. It, too, is a sign, only far clearer and brighter. If circumcision spoke of the shedding of blood and the purifying of the very fountain of life, the water in baptism witnesses of the blood that has been shed and the Spirit that has been given, with their cleansing and renewing. `There are three who bear witness: the Spirit; and the water, and the blood.’ Of all these blessings it is a sign, and also a seal — a seal from God of the righteousness of faith, that faith in His promise is well-pleasing to Him, and is counted as righteousness.

And baptism is all this, not only to the believing adult, but to his infant too. It were indeed strange if Abraham and every father of his race should, under the Old Testament, have had the privilege of knowing, My child has the same place in the covenant as I have; and of having this sealed to him by the child’s receiving the sign of the covenant, and the Jew, on becoming a Christian, should at once have forfeited the privilege. It need not for a moment surprise us that our Lord, in giving the command to baptize, said nothing of the little ones. So deep had this foundation truth, ‘My covenant with thee and thy seed,’ and therefore the sign of the covenant for the father and the child too, been laid in the very first establishment of the covenant, and so completely had it become inwrought during two thousand years in the life of God’s people, that only the very express revocation of the principle could lead us to believe that the New Testament sign of the covenant is for the adult only. No; in this dispensation of larger love and more abounding grace, this beautiful provision of the everlasting covenant shines with new glory, the covenant and the sign of the covenant for parents and children alike.

But then, let us remember, almost more than in the old, in this dispensation of the Spirit, the one condition of blessing, without which the covenant and its sign are of no value, is faith. It is on this that the blessing of infant baptism depends. The parent must meet God as Abraham did, as a believer. It is faith and faith alone that can enter into the covenant, that pleases God, that obtains the reward. He must believe for himself in that Christ who is the surety of the covenant, who is Himself the covenant. He must believe for his child. `Thy God and the God of thy seed;’ these are the unchangeable terms of an everlasting covenant. The faith that claims the first may claim the second too. It has the same warrant — God’s word. It has the same hope — God’s faithfulness. It obtains the same blessing of free grace — the salvation of my child as surely as my own. And it has the same sign as its seal — baptism for the infant as well as the adult.

O my God! we thank You for the condescension to our weakness, manifested in giving us, in visible sign, a Divine seal of spiritual and unseen blessings. You know our frame, and remember that we are dust. You are the Creator of our bodies, not less the Father of our spirits; You have redeemed them to be the temple of Your Holy Spirit. In the body You set the seal of Your acceptance of us and Your right over us. Lord, teach us to understand this; and let holy baptism, the seal of the New Testament faith and life, be indeed to Your people the sign that they are baptized into the death of Christ.

And grant, most gracious God! that where Your people cannot yet see eye to eye in the dispensation of this ordinance, it may still be, not the symbol of division, but the bond of unity in the Spirit of love.

And teach us, who believe that You Yourself have meant this seal of the covenant for our children too, to recognize its deep spiritual meaning, and to live ourselves as baptized into the death of Christ, and circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands. Teach us in faith to claim the full spiritual blessing for our children too, and to train them for it. And so fulfil to us, O our God! in full measure the promise of the covenant: `A God unto thee, and to thy seed.’ Amen.

`I have known Abraham, to the end that he may command his household and his children after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; to the end that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him.’ Gen. 18: 19.

Faith without works is dead. Saving faith is an energy, the power of a new life, manifesting itself in conduct and action. In true faith the soul becomes united to God, and seeks to enter into the Divine will, as the surest way of becoming one with Himself. As faith grows clearer and stronger, it always sympathizes more fully with God’s plans; it understands Him better, and becomes more conformed to His likeness. This is true not only of individual but also of parental faith. The higher the faith of the parent rises, the more the family will come under its power, and be permeated by the spirit of godliness. Parental faith in God’s promise will always be known by parental faithfulness to God’s will

Abraham is a remarkable illustration of this. As distinctly as God’s Word speaks of his faith, it tells, too, of his faithfulness as a father. In assigning the reason why God’s purpose in regard to Sodom should not be kept secret from him, God grounds it upon this part of his character. Not as an eminent believer, not even as the father of the promised seed, but as one called to be the faithful leader of his children and household in the ways of the Lord, God confers on him the high distinction of having His secret counsel revealed to him. Faithfulness in his household gave him access to God’s secrets and to God’s presence as intercessor for Sodom. Let us try to understand what this means, and why God puts such honor upon parental faithfulness. Let us look to its need, its character, its blessing, its power.

Think what need there is of it. Without it the blessing offered to parental faith is lost, and the purpose of God made void. Were God by direct interposition, or by special agents, to seek the salvation of the little ones, there would be no reason for the part the parent is allowed to take in the covenant. God’s object in thus honoring him is distinctly that he, to whose influence the helpless babe is committed, should train it for God. God seeks a people on earth. The family is the great institution for this object; a believing and God-devoted fatherhood one of the mightiest means of grace. God’s covenant and the parent’s faith are but preliminary steps; it is by the godly upbringing by the parents that the children are led really to enter upon and possess the blessings secured in the covenant. They must learn to know, and choose, and love the God who has given Himself to them. The most precious promises on God’s part will not avail unless the child is brought up, in the course of patient and loving training, to desire and accept the proffered friendship of the Holy One, to obey Him and keep His commandments. God establishes His covenant with parents not only for their comfort, to assure them of what He will do, but also to strengthen them for what they must do, whom He makes His fellow-workers in securing the children for Him. The sure covenant does not dispense with, the better it is understood, the more it reveals the indispensable need of, parental faithfulness.

What God says of Abraham further gives us an insight into the true character of this grace: `I have known Abraham to the end he may command his children and his household after him.’ The spirit of modern so-called liberty has penetrated even into our family life; and there are parents who, some from a mistaken view of duty, some from want of thought as to their sacred calling, some from love of ease, have no place for such a word as `command,’ which God here uses, in their family religion. They have seen nought of the heavenly harmony between authority and love, between obedience and liberty. Parents are more than friends and advisers: they have been clothed by God with a holy authority, to be exercised in leading their children in the way of the Lord. There is an age when the will of the child is to a great extent in their hands, and when the quiet, loving exercise of that authority will have mighty influence. We speak here not so much of commanding in the sense of specific injunctions; we speak of what we see in the heavenly Father; the tenderness of affection combined with an authority not to be despised. It is the silent influence of example and life which also exercises its commanding power, which makes the child often unconsciously bow to the stronger will, and makes it happy in doing so.

The blessing of such parental faithfulness is sure and large. God says: ‘That the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken concerning him.’ It was in the way of a godly education that the blessings of the covenant were to come true. God’s faithfulness and man’s in the covenant are linked by indissoluble ties. If Abraham was to be blessed, and his seed with him, and all nations again in his seed, it was only thus — he must, as a faithful parent, pass on to others what he knew himself of God. It is only as the children become partakers of the parent’s spirit that they can share his blessing. The child is to be identified with the parent, not merely in an imputation in which God looks on it for the parent’s sake, but in a similarity of disposition and conduct; so, and not otherwise, would God bring upon Abraham what He had spoken. As it is written: `Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect, and he was called the friend of God.’ In a way that passes all comprehension, but that fills us with adoring wonder at the place given to His servants in the fulfilling of His counsel, the faithfulness of God and man, each in his performance of the covenant obligation, are inseparably and eternally interwoven.

The solemn responsibility may well make us tremble. But God’s word meets us with Divine comfort. The power is provided in the purpose of God. The words of the text are most remarkable: `I have known Abraham, to the end that he may command his children and his home.’ It was with this very purpose that God had chosen him and revealed Himself; God Himself was the security that His own purposes should be carried out. It was because God had known, and he truly known God, that he could do it. And so every believing parent has, in the very fact of his being taken into this relation with God, the guarantee that God will give the grace of faithfulness to prepare for the blessing, as well as the reward upon it. In the covenant we have not to trust our God for every other blessing, but look to ourselves for the faithfulness that receives it; no, as for every other, so for this, most of all, we may count upon Him: `I have known Abraham, to the end that he may command his household and his children.’

It is part of God’s covenant that He will first teach man to keep it, and then reward that keeping (Jer. 32: 40). A covenant-keeping God and a covenant-keeping parent — in these the children must be blessed. `The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear, and His righteousness to children’s children, to such as keep His covenant, and to those that remember His precepts to do them.’

Believing parent! see here the two sides of a parent’s calling. Be very full of faith, be very faithful. Very full of faith: let faith in the living God, in His covenant with you and your seed, in His promises for your children, in His faithfulness, fill your soul. Take God’s word as the only measure of your faith. And then, be very faithful: take God’s word as the only measure of your life, especially in the family. Be a parent such as God would have you be. Let it be your one desire so to live yourself, so to rule your home, so to command your household and your children, that they may walk in the ways of the Lord, that so the Lord may bring upon you that which He has spoken concerning you. You may depend upon it that the blessing will be large and full. In the blessing for your own Christian life, which comes from that self-discipline and exercise of faith which parental faithfulness involve, in the blessing on your home life and your children, in the influence which will come to you on those around you (1 Tim. 3: 5, 6), in the power given you, like Abraham, to enter into God’s secrets, and to plead with Him as intercessor for the perishing, God will prove to you that believing, faithful parentage is one of the highest privileges to which man can be admitted. Study Abraham in his fatherhood as chosen of God, faithful to God, blessed of God, and find in him the type, the law, the promise of what your fatherhood may be.

O my God! have You indeed taken me too into this wonderful covenant, in which You are the God of the seed of Your saints, and make them the ministers of Your grace to their children? Open my eyes, I pray You, to see the full glory of this Your covenant, that my faith may know all that You have prepared for me to bestow, and may do all You have prepared for me to perform. O my God! may Your covenant-keeping faithfulness be the life and the strength of my faith. May this faith make me faithful in keeping the covenant.

And teach me to realize fully what this parental faithfulness is which You do ask of me. I would make this the one object of my home life, to train a seed to serve You. By my life, by my words, by my prayers, by gentleness and love, by authority and command, I would lead them in the way of the Lord. O God! be You my helper.

Teach me, above all, that, as You have appointed this parental training for the fulfilment of Your purpose, I may be assured that You have made provision for the grace to enable me to perform. Let my faith see You undertake for me and all I have to do, and an ever-growing faith so be the root of an ever-growing faithfulness. I ask it in the name of Your Son. Amen.

‘And Judah said unto Israel his father, Send the lad with me; I will be surety for him; of my hand shalt thou require him.’ Gen. 43: 8, 9.

These are the words of Judah, when he sought to persuade his father to send Benjamin with him. And that he realized what his surety-ship for the child meant, and was ready at any sacrifice to fulfil its duties, is evident from his pleadings before Joseph, when he said, `Thy servant is become surety for the child with his father,’ and offered himself as slave in his brother’s place. In this he was not only the type of his own descendant, the great Surety of His people, who gave Himself in their stead; but also, because the spirit of self-sacrifice passes from the head to the body, of every parent to whom God commits the care of a child amid the dangers of the journey through life. The language and conduct of Judah will teach us some most suggestive lessons as to the little ones who have been entrusted to our charge.

Consider first the meaning of the engagement made. What else is our language, as in baptism we undertake to train a child for God, but this: `Send the child with me; I will be surety for him.’ In answer to the questions, How can that little one receive the mark of the covenant, and then be sent forth into a sinful world? Were it not better that it were removed at once from a world of sin to the Father’s home? Or else left without that sign of the covenant which has so often been but an empty form? The answer has been, `Send it with me; I will be surety for it.’ Most distinctly the question has often again been put to the trembling parents when the little one was threatened with sickness or death, Shall the child live or die? and the answer was heard again: Spare it, leave it, even though it be a world of danger; I will be surety for the child; of my hand shall You require it; send it with me. Solemn thought! Amidst all the dangers down in Egypt, and so many seen perishing, as parent I take charge of the child, and the great God may hold me responsible if I bring him not back to his father’s home in safety. With Judah I have spoken: ‘If I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, then let me bear the blame forever!’

Consider, too, the duties of such a suretyship, as illustrated in Judah. He was thoroughly in earnest with the engagement he had undertaken. When the governor of Egypt had commanded that Benjamin should be kept as a slave, he at once came forward as a substitute. Not for a moment does he think of his own home and children, of Egyptian slavery and its hardships; everything gives way to the thought, My father entrusted him to me, and I am surety for the lad. With the most touching earnestness he pleads to be accepted in the youth’s stead: `Thy servant is become surety for the lad with his father. How shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me? Now, therefore, let thy servant abide instead of the lad as bondman to my lord, and let the lad go up with his brethren.’

Would God that Christian parents realized, as Judah did, what it means that they are surety for their child! Alas! how often, when our children are in danger from the prince of this world, when the temptations of the flesh or the world threaten to make them prisoners and slaves, to hold them back from ever reaching the Father’s home — how often are we found careless or unwilling to sacrifice our ease and comfort in seeking to rescue them from their danger! How often the spiritual interests of the child are considered subordinate to worldly prospects or position or profit, and the solemn covenant forgotten in which we undertook to make it our first care that the child should not be lost to the Father in heaven! How feebly we realize that it is only in a life of pure and wholehearted devotion, in which the selfishness and worldly-mindedness of the world are crucified, and our life is lived for God, that we can really train children for heaven! And how little we have learnt, when danger threatens, and our children appear to be growing up unconverted, to bow at the foot of the throne, until we see that our plea, `I am surety for the child,’ has touched the heart of the King, and we have His word to set him free. Oh, that the ruling principle of parental life and love might be, Without the child I will not see my Father’s face.

Consider now, too, the encouragement Judah’s example gives. It sets before us the abundant reward the faithful surety will reap. In pleading with the ruler of Egypt, Judah thought he had to do with a stranger, a despot, and an enemy. Little did he know that his pleadings were entering the ears of one who was his own and Benjamin’s brother. He never dared to hope that it would exercise such a mighty influence, or call forth that wondrous revelation of the ruler falling weeping on Benjamin’s neck, with his, `I am Joseph.’ Wonderful picture of the power and the reward of a surety’s supplication!

And yet not more wonderful than the parent-surety may expect. Did we but more feel the sinfulness of our children’s nature, and the dangers surrounding them, with what fervency we should plead with the great King and Savior of the world for their salvation. It is there, not less than to Judah, that the blessing would come to us. It might be that at the first, as it was with him, we had no conception of the tender relation in which He stands to us and our children as a Brother: as we plead for the child, and show ourselves ready to make any sacrifice so he may be saved, we should have our reward in the blessed revelation of what Jesus is to us, as well as in the blessing on the child. The blessing to the pleading surety would be no less rich than to his charge. In Jairus, and the father of the lunatic, and the Syrophenician woman, and in the experience of ten thousand parents, we have proof that, while they only thought of obtaining what their children needed, their prayer led to experiences of the power and love of the Savior, to such closer and more intimate fellowship with Him, to such personal blessing as they never had found in only praying for themselves. They saw Him with whom they were pleading on the throne descend and say, I am Jesus; they saw Him embrace the beloved one they pleaded for and kiss him; Jesus was never so gloriously revealed as when they were pleading as parents and sureties for their children.

And just as Judah then learnt to understand how Joseph was the true surety, who in the path of suffering had won the throne and their deliverance from famine and death, so parents will learn, the more they seek to fulfil their duties as sureties, to know and rejoice in Jesus as their Surety. He has not only undertaken their own personal salvation: He has secured and vouchsafes the grace they need to fulfil their duties; He is the Surety for their suretyship, too, because theirs is grounded in His. The vicarious principle on which redemption rests, and in virtue of which He died, `One for all,’ runs through the whole of its economy; most specially does it appear in the family, that image of humanity as a whole. There the father is head, is priest, is king, even as Christ, over his own house; the father is, in limited sense, but most really, surety for the child. And now it is, as he, the surety on earth, under the burden of his charge, draws nigh to the King, and discovers in Him the Great Surety, that the revelation will give him new confidence and strength and joy in the work he has undertaken. In the light of the redemption and love and friendship of Jesus, the thought, `I am surety for the child,’ will gain new brightness, devotion to the training of the children will become more earnest, the readiness to make any sacrifice to save them from the world will be more spontaneous, and the pleading of faith more confident and triumphant. And it will be found now what richest blessings for parents and their family open out in the words, ` I am surety for the child.’

Blessed Father, most earnestly do we beseech You to open the eyes of the parents of Your Church to see and know their holy and most blessed calling. May they understand and realize that You say to them at the birth of each little one entrusted to their care, At your hands will I require it. May they understand and realize, too, that with each little one they brought and gave to You in baptism, they accepted the solemn charge, and gave the answer, `Of my hand You will require him; I am surety for the child.’

O God, show us what the dangers are that surround our children, and how impotent we are. Give us the true surety spirit, the willingness to sacrifice all rather than be unfaithful to our charge. As we see the power of sin and of the world threatening them, may we plead as for our own life, yea, with the offer of our life, that the children be now saved from sin and Satan. As Your eye sees us day by day with our children, may this be the one desire, of our parental love. You find, that they may be wholly Yours. Be this our one aim in prayer, and education, and intercourse.

And do, O blessed Lord Jesus, King, Surety, Brother, on the throne, reveal Yourself as our Helper and our Joy.

O Lord Jesus, teach us and the parents of Your Church that, as You are our Surety, we are the surety of our family. O You who are the faithful Surety, make us faithful too. Amen.

`And when she saw that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.’ Exod. 2: 2. ‘By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.’ Heb. 11: 23.

The story of Moses will lead us a step further in the study of the way in which the faith of parents will manifest itself in dealing with their children. It was faith that saw the goodliness of the child; it was faith that feared not the king’s wrath; it was faith that hid the child and saved its life. In each child born of believing parents, faith sees the same goodliness, meets the same danger, and finds the same path of safety.

It was by faith Moses’ parents saw he was a goodly child. The natural love of a parent’s heart doubtless made the child a beautiful one in the mother’s eye; but faith saw more than nature could. God opened the eyes, and there was the consciousness of something special, of a spiritual beauty, that made their babe doubly precious. And so the eye of faith sees in each little one a Divine goodliness. Is it not a being created in God’s image, with the faint light of a Divine glory, of an immortal life, shining from it? Is it not an object of the great redemption; destined to be a partaker of the precious blood and the Holy Spirit of Jesus, to be the object of the joy of angels and God’s everlasting love and pleasure? a child, whose worth exceeds that of the whole world? a child, that even in this life can be a brother of Jesus, a servant of God, a blessing for the immortal spirits of fellow-men? Surely faith may call the little one unspeakably fair, for it sees it shining as a jewel in the crown of the Lamb – His joy and His glory. We have indeed a surer hope than ever Moses’ parents had, and a brighter light in which the heavenly beauty of our little ones is reflected. O Father, open the eyes of all Your people that, with each little babe You give them, their faith may see that it is a goodly child.

It is faith that sees, but fears not the danger. Our children are still exposed to the same danger. Pharaoh had commanded that the children of God’s people should all be destroyed. He knew that if the children were cut off, the people would soon die out. There would be no need of the trouble and danger of war; by a slow and silent but sure process the nation would be cut off. The Prince of this world still pursues the same policy. When parents take a decided stand for God, the world may despise or hate them; it soon learns that it is of little use to attempt to conquer them. But it knows a surer way. The spirit of the world claims possession of the children: if these are won, all are won. And too often, alas! Christian parents give their children a prey to the world. Children are allowed to grow up in comparative ignorance about the blessed Savior, are entrusted to the care of irreligious or worldly teachers, are allowed to associate with those whose spirit and influence is altogether worldly. And in many a Christian home, where at one time, when the children were still young, all was earnest and decided; as they grew up, the tone became changed, and the power of religion was far less to be seen. And the Church, alas! is often too faithless or feeble to warn against it. How little it has realized that in the parental relation, and in baptism, it has a mighty hold on the Church of the future, and given to the instruction and encouragement of parents the prominent place its importance demands. To what a large extent the education of the young has been left to the State, and the secular school, and the spirit of the age, until the youthful heart has lost the simplicity and tenderness of which the Master spoke when He said, ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ Oh! what thousands on thousands of the children of the kingdom are thus drowned in the mighty Nile of this world — the fruitful stream of its pleasures and profits. Would God that the eyes of His people might be opened to the danger which threatens His Church! It is not infidelity or superstition, it is the spirit of worldliness in the homes of our Christian people, sacrificing the children to the ambition or society, to the riches or the friendship of the world, that is the greatest danger of Christ’s Church. Were every home once won for Christ, a training-school for His service, we should find in this a secret of spiritual strength not less than all that ordinary preaching can accomplish.

It is faith that still finds the same path of safety. ‘By faith Moses was hid by his parents.’ They trusted God on behalf of this goodly child, one of the children of His covenant. ‘By faith Moses was hid by his parents,’ — these simple words tell us our duty, what our faith must do. Christian parent! hide your child. And where? Oh, hide it in that safest refuge — `the shadow of the Almighty,’ `the secret of God’s countenance.’ Lay your child from its birth daily there in faith, and let your soul be filled with the consciousness that He has indeed taken charge of it. Let the mighty rock of God’s strength and the tender covering of His feathers be its ark, while still it is all unconscious of temptation or danger. Let with the first dawn of reason, the clefts of the rock and the love of Jesus be the place of safety to which you guide its youthful feet. Hide it in the quiet of home life from the excitements of the world without, from the influence of a civilization and culture which is of the earth. In that hiding, where the enemy cannot find, we have one of faith’s highest duties. And when the time comes that it must come into contact with the world, oh! you can still entrust it to Him who is the Keeper of Israel — let it be a settled thing with your heart that He has accepted your trust, has taken charge, and cannot disappoint your faith. Commit your child boldly to the waters in the ark of the covenant of your God. Fear not the inexorable law which is continually being proclaimed — `The children cannot be kept separate from the world the children must go with the stream.’ No, let faith hold it fast that yours are the children of a peculiar people, separated unto God; they must be kept separate for Him.

The reward of the faith of Moses’ parents will be ours. Not only was Moses saved, he became the savior of his people. Thy child, too, will not only be blessed, but also be made a blessing. Each child has not the calling of a Moses. But in His kingdom God needs not only a Moses, but a Moses’ mother and a Moses’ sister, for the fulfilment of His purposes. Let your faith but, like Moses’ mother, do its work: God Himself will see to it that our labor is not in vain. The education Moses’ mother gave her son during the years of his childhood was such as all the years of his training at Pharaoh’s court could not obliterate. His parent’s faith bore fruit in his faith, when he, at every cost, chose suffering with the people of God, and was not afraid of the wrath of the king, because he saw Him who is invisible. Let faith hide the child in the ark of God’s love. Let faith, when God entrusts the child to its care, train the child for God and His people, and when the time comes that it must go into the world, were it even to live at Pharaoh’s court, it will be safe in the power of faith and of God’s keeping. A child of faith will not only receive a blessing for itself, but be a blessing to those around.

God grant that the Church may indeed become a ` Moses’ mother,’ the faithful nurse of the children He entrusts to her care, `hiding’ them and keeping them separate from the world and its influence. He will give a wonderful fulfilment of the promise, wherever He finds the fulfilment of the duty: `Take this child, nurse it for me: I will give thee thy wages.’

Gracious God! with my whole heart I thank You for the teaching of Your Word, by which You prepare me to fulfil aright my holy calling as parent. I thank You for the example of Moses’ parents, and pray that the grace that taught them in faith to save their child may be given to me too.

I acknowledge, Lord, that I do not sufficiently realize the value of my children, nor the danger to which they are exposed from the Prince and the Spirit of the world. Lord! teach me fully to recognize the danger and yet never to fear the commandment of the king. Open my eyes to see in the light of heaven that each little one is a goodly child, entrusted to my keeping and training for Your work and kingdom. Help me in the humility and watchfulness and boldness of faith to keep them sheltered, to hide them from the power of the world and of sin. May my own life be the life of faith, hid with Christ in God, that my child may know no other dwelling-place.

And grant all this also to all Your people, O my God. Let Your Church awake to know her place in this world, and her calling to go out to the land to which God has called her. Let, in the training of the children, the mighty power of faith be seen, the difference between them that fear You and them that fear You not. O give us grace to rear our children for You. Amen.

`Take every man a lamb, according to their father’s houses, a lamb for an house. When He seeth the blood, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to enter your houses.’ Exod. 12: 3, 23.

It has often been pointed out that, of all the Old Testament sacrifices, there is none that gives a clearer or richer revelation of the person and work of our Lord than the Passover. It has often, however, escaped observation how the whole institution of the Paschal Lamb aimed at deliverance, not of the individuals, but of families; it dealt not with the persons, but with the families, the houses of God’s people. What else is the meaning of the expression, A lamb for an house? or (as in ver. 21), Take you lambs according to your families? and of the blood sprinkled upon the house? As so it is expressly declared, `When your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel, when He smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses.’ Among the Egyptians it was the first-born in every house who died, as representing the house, as in Israel it was the first-born who through the blood was saved from the impending danger and consecrated for God. All teaching how God, in redeeming His people and revealing the principles on which He is to deal with them, lays this down as a fundamental law in the Passover and the blood-sprinkling: I deal with you, not as individuals, but as families. As I chose and blessed you, as the seed of your father Abraham, so I still bless every household through the believing father, who sprinkles the blood in obedience to My command. The lamb and its blood are the consecration of the dwellings and the family relations of My people. In the hands of the father, God thus places the destiny and the safety of the whole house.

Christ, our Passover, is slain for us. We love to trace how, in every, even to the most minute particular, the foreshadowings of the Paschal Feast were fulfilled in Him. Have we any warrant in God’s Word for excepting this so important feature, and allowing the type to hold good in every respect but this? Is, in this one respect, the Old Testament feast to stand higher than the New, and the blood which then was for the saving of the house here to be only for the individual? and not be sprinkled on the houses too? How the Christian parent might then envy the Jew, who enjoyed the privilege, as he looked at the sprinkled blood, of knowing that he had done it to the saving, not only of himself, but his household too. And the Christian parent would not have the right thus, in definite and assured faith, to claim the blood for his children? God forbid! Christ, the Lamb of God, is still `a lamb for an house’! His blood may still be sprinkled upon the door, that the destroyer enter not in. In the new covenant, and with the precious blood of Christ, the principle still holds good it is the believing father’s right and duty in faith to appropriate the blood for his whole house. His faith has the Divine warrant, and will be rewarded with the Divine blessing.

Let me endeavor henceforth to live in this faith, fully to realize this privilege. As I think of the precious blood, and seek to walk in the nearness to God which it gives, let me claim its cleansing power for my house as well as myself. Let me be assured that my faith as parent has power and does secure a Divine influence. Daily there is the sin of my house defiling and darkening. Even my sin, pardoned though it be, might justly, in its consequences, be visited on my children. The fulness of the application of the blood will correspond to what faith claims. I have in nature transmitted sin and death — through me they inherit it. Thank God, as a father, I may also transmit the grace and blessing of redemption.

Not only my own soul, but my house, can daily be kept under the sprinkling and cleansing of the blood. And each time I enter my door, or think of Satan entering it, in the light of heaven I may see it sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb. Parents and children together stand under the cover and protection of the blood: the Lord is our keeper.

Every year in Israel parents had to renew the sprinkling: the blood of the Lamb has been shed once for all. I have now only each day again to renew the consecration of my house to the Lord in the assurance of faith: the blood saves me and my children. In this faith I may confidently expect that the wondrous redemption of the blood will exercise its full and mighty influence, until all our domestic life and its relations be sanctified, our house be wholly the Lord’s, and each child be consciously and confessedly one of His redeemed.

To this end I must notice carefully how God commanded the parents to teach these things to their children (Exod. 12: 26, 13: 14). `The grace of God that bringeth salvation teacheth us.’ What is secured to the child in redemption must be made his own in free and personal appropriation. And this cannot be without his knowing it. The children were to be taught that they belonged to the redeemed people, that they belonged to the redeeming God. The parent was to act not only as priest, and thus, in a sense, mediator, but also as prophet and teacher. As he had dealt for the child with God in the blood-sprinkling, so he was to deal for God with the child in the instructions he gave him. Let me seek grace and wisdom in the spirit of faith to teach my children what the blood has done for them, to make them know and love the God who accepted them, ere ever they knew Him!

One thing more is deserving of very special note. The believing Israelite had not only every year to sprinkle the door-posts with blood, and so to testify that it was only in the blood that he and his house could stand before God; he had also to write upon these same blood-sprinkled door-posts the words of God’s law (Deut. 6: 7-9). In all the going out and coming in of his children, these words were ever to meet their eye, the freedom from Egypt’s bondage and Egypt’s curse was a freedom to serve God. God wills to be not only trusted but obeyed. It is `unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Christ’ that we have been chosen: the door-posts sprinkled with the blood, and inscribed with the words of the law, remind me of the blessed oneness of faith and obedience, liberty and service. I would in the joy of the great redemption train and educate my children to know, and love, and keep the commands of their God. Day by day, in faith and prayer, in teaching and, living, I would seek to set before them in its harmony the blessedness of a faith that freely accepts all that God gives, with a surrender that gives all He claims.

`A lamb for an house:’ I must pray that God’s Holy Spirit reveal in its full power all the truths that cluster round this blessed word. A father redeemed by the blood; his children through him and with him partaking of the sprinkling; the father, God’s minister every year anew to sprinkle the house; the father, God’s witness and messenger to the children to teach them of this precious blood, and of the God it reveals; the blood-sprinkled door-posts inscribed with the words of God’s law — such is God’s wondrous provision for getting full possession of His people, and making the family the foundation of the kingdom.

Blessed Lord Jesus! the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world, the Son of God, whose blood cleanses from all sin, in humble faith I claim that blood for myself and my children. May my own experience of its ever-cleansing power every day grow fuller and clearer. And may I by Your Holy Spirit realize fully my right to claim it for my house.

O most blessed Savior! may the power of Your blood work in me so mightily, that my faith may in full assurance accept it for each of my children as a present blessing. May we, under the covering of the blood, know ourselves protected from the destroyer.

O most gracious God! whose is this wondrous ordinance of a lamb for an house, I yield myself to You afresh as the minister of Your covenant. Use me, my God, to save my children, to train them for You, and You alone. I would have the door-posts not only sprinkled with the blood, but inscribed with the law. I would have Your service the one thing they grow up for. As You have chosen us, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and blood-sprinkling, may faith in the blood and surrender to Your will be as the two door-posts, between which we daily go in and out. The Lord make it so. Amen.

‘And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.’ Exod. 12: 26, 27.

The Passover sets the believing parent before us in a twofold aspect. First, as dealing with God on behalf of the children, and bringing down the blessing on them; then as dealing with the children for God, and seeking to lead them up to Him. In the former capacity, he sprinkled the blood of the lamb upon his house, securing God’s protection for the children. In the latter he had to instruct his children, telling them of what God had done, and seeking to lead them to the personal knowledge and acceptance of this God as their God. Those two parts of parental duty are closely and inseparably linked to each other, the first being necessary as the root and origin of the latter. The parent’s work as priest fits him for his work as prophet and teacher. The second is indispensable to the full appropriation of the blessing that the former has secured. It was after having sprinkled the blood for himself, and his child too, that the parent had to instruct him in the meaning of the holy mystery. His interposition with God, his experience of God’s blessing on himself and child, were his own training to fit him for the training of his child. As we keep this in view, we shall recognize the beauty of that institution by which God has chosen and appointed the believing parent the instructor of his children, and realize its extreme fitness as the best means of securing a godly seed for the Lord.

Observe, it is the parent, who has himself already experienced the salvation of God, who is appointed to lead the child to know God. The knowledge of God is no mere matter of the understanding; it is to love Him, to live in Him, to experience the power of His presence and His blessing. It is evident that the man who would teach others to know God must be able to speak by personal experience of Him, must prove by the warmth of love and devotion that he loves this God, and has his life from Him. When God instituted the family as the great instrument of transmitting His fear, He so arranged it as to give it the highest possible efficacy. This consisted in his revealing Himself to each head of a family as the God of his salvation. In the other sacrifices in Israel, the priest sprinkled the blood in the holy places, but in the Passover there was this peculiarity, that each father sprinkled it on his own house. He thereby performed the act of faith by which the destroyer was kept from his house; and when he went forth from Egypt, and undertook the journey to Canaan, he could bear personal witness to God’s faithfulness, and to the efficacy of the atoning blood of the lamb. He could speak as a living witness from personal experience. As a redeemed one he could tell of redemption; he could tell of the Redeemer-God. It is even so now still: personal experience of the power of the blood can alone fit a parent for speaking to his children of God. It is the looking back upon the time when personal deliverance from sin was experienced, and the looking up to a God with whom, in the spirit of adoring gratitude, a personal intercourse is maintained, and the looking forward to a home where the longing spirit knows it will inherit a place prepared by the Father. It is this and this alone that fits a parent to speak aright and in power. It is the parent who has himself experienced redemption who can tell his child in truth of the God of Redemption, who can act in accordance with the injunction (13: 8): And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me in the day when I came forth out of Egypt.’

And as parents in Israel had every year to renew the remembrance of that deliverance, so now it is the parent who lives in the ever fresh experience of what the powers of redemption are, who can, with ever-deepening earnestness and freshness, speak of the mercy and the truth, as well as of the blessed service, of the God of salvation.

But observe, further, this parent has also been constituted and accepted as God’s appointed minister in the redemption of the child. It is this that gives an increased fitness for his work as instructor of the child. He can not only speak of a salvation he has experienced — urging and inviting the child to come and taste that to which he is as yet a stranger. No; in sprinkling the blood upon the door of his house, he saved his child too from the destroying angel. He was honored to act with God on behalf of the child; what the child could not do, he did for him, and the deed was accepted. The child has initially been made partaker of the blessing of that sprinkling of blood, and has, in growing up, personally to accept what has been secured and sealed to him. And what a mighty vantage ground it gives the believing parent in his labor, when he can thus look upon his child in the light of that great transaction between God and himself, of which that child has been the object! With what confidence it inspires his faith! how his energies will be roused! and what a strong motive in pleading with the child himself! He speaks to him, as no longer a stranger to the covenant of grace, but as a child of the covenant. He points him to a God who began to deal with him in the feebleness of infancy; he can attest to the reality of an engagement entered into between God and himself, and sealed in the sprinkling of blood. He shows him how God dealt with the houses, with the families of Israel; and if not in the way of argument, yet practically, and in the tone of the language which his faith adopts, he lets him feel that he cannot consent to one of his house refusing to acknowledge the God of the house.

And it gives him no less power in pleading with God on behalf of the child. He reminds the great Jehovah of the blood and the oath of the covenant, and claims for his child the blessings of redemption — that just as he is a child of the redeemed people, he may grow up personally to accept and ratify the covenant. Next to his own personal experience of the blessing of salvation, this consciousness of what, as a believing parent, he has been allowed to do, and of his seed having been received with him into covenant, constitutes the fitness of the believing parent for his being the minister of God’s grace to his child.

But there is another thought that brings out still more strikingly the wondrous adaptation of the family constitution for the working out of God’s purposes — this, namely, that it is grounded on the natural relation, sanctifying its affections, and adopting them into the service of redemption. It is not any one redeemed man saying to his fellow-man, Come and see what God has wrought for me. Nor is it any one redeemed man saying to some child to whom he sustains a certain official relation, and on whose behalf he has performed an act of atonement, Come and let me lead you to your God. But it is a father, with his own child. In nature they are one, united by the closest and most wondrous ties. The child has his life from the father. The father looks upon him as part of himself, of his flesh and of his bones; he loves and cherishes him. This love seeks, even in nature, the happiness of the child, and can often make wondrous sacrifices to attain it. And it is this love God lays hold of in the parental covenant, and purifies to be the minister and vehicle of His grace. And with a parent’s love there is a parent’s influence. The weakness of the child renders him dependent, to a wondrous degree, upon the parent’s will. The character of childhood is formed and molded by impressions; unceasing intercourse with the parent can render these impressions deep and permanent. The child’s love to the parent rises and meets the parent’s love, and the spirit of the parent can thus, in addition to the natural influence of birth, in wondrous measure be breathed into the child. Of all this God’s grace seeks to avail itself, and while it is the sole prerogative of the Holy Spirit to renew the soul, and make a child of God, there is nevertheless a need for the means and instrumentalities through which His gracious workings are prepared and applied, are confirmed and established. And of all these instrumentalities, there is none more wondrously devised, or more beautifully adapted to its object, than this of godly parentage. A parent made partaker of God’s love and grace himself, accepted and blessed with the promises of the covenant and the Spirit, as covenanting for his child; and then sent forth, in the power of consecrated parental affection, to make all the influences and intercourse of domestic life the auxiliary to the great work of gaining the child for God, this surely is one of the most wondrous exhibitions of God’s grace upon earth.

O my God! I come to You again with the earnest prayer for Your teaching. You have said, ‘I will be the God of all the families of Israel.’ Open my eyes to see clearly, and my heart to feel deeply, what Your purpose is in this.

Since sin entered and ruined our nature, You would early take possession of the little ones for Yourself. You seek to secure parents with all their love and influence to be Your ministers. You enter into covenant with them, giving them the right to claim the Blood of the Covenant for their children, and in that Blood the promise, `A God to thee and to thy seed.’ And then You send them, as themselves redeemed, as having claimed and accepted redemption for their children, to use their influence for You, and win and train their children for Your love and service.

Lord God! open the eyes of the parents of Your Church to their calling, that they may honor You as the God of their families. And, O Lord my God! bless my own house, and give me grace, as one of Your redeemed ones, to train my children for their God. May the joy of a personal experience of redemption, and the love of the blessed Redeemer, warm my heart, and inspire my words, and light up my life, to testify of You, and train them for You alone. Amen.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Sanctify unto Me all the firstborn. . . . All the firstborn of man among thy sons thou shalt redeem. And it shall be, when thy son asketh thee in time to come, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt; and it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all the firstborn of Egypt; therefore I sacrifice unto the Lord all that openeth the womb, being males; but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’ Exod. 13: 1, 13-15.

`Let My people go that they may serve Me,’ – in these words so often repeated by the Lord in sending Moses to Pharaoh, we see how service is the aim of redemption. God makes His people free from the bondage of Egypt, to translate them into the liberty of His service, the willing, loving, free service of a redeemed people. The deeper God’s people enter into the spirit of redemption, the deeper will be the insight into the blessed unity of liberty and service, of liberty and necessity. No true service of God without liberty; no true liberty without service.

We have seen in the Passover what a permanent place the family and the children take in redemption. No less than their parents were they redeemed to serve; all their training was to be a training to the service of God. When Pharaoh said to Moses after the plague, `Go, serve the Lord your God; but who are they that shall go?’ the answer was very distinct, `We will go with our young and our old, our sons and our daughters.’ It was on this point that the negotiations were broken off. The going of the children was what the king would not consent to: `So be the Lord with you, as I will let you go with your little ones: look to it, for evil is before you’ (Exod. 9: 8-10). And when later on Pharaoh still wanted to keep the property, he felt that this at least must be conceded: `Go ye, serve the Lord; only let your flocks and herds be stayed; let your little ones also go with you’ (Ex. 10: 24). It is the future of the nation that is to be secured for God; a people that is really to serve God must, in the first place, see to the little ones.

After the people had left Egypt, the very first command God gave to Moses was in regard to the firstborn, who were to be separated and sanctified for Him. In each family the firstborn son was counted the chief and the best; the father looked upon him as Jacob said of Reuben: `Thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength.’

His was the birthright and the place of honor in the family. He was the representative and head of all the children. God looked upon Israel as His firstborn among the nations. Because Egypt oppressed him, and would not let him go, God slew his firstborn. And now in commemoration of this, and as a pledge of God’s claim on all the children and the whole people, every firstborn belonged to God, and was set apart as His peculiar property.

And with what object? For none other but His service. This comes out with great distinctness in the exchange that was made, by which the tribe of Levi was taken instead of the firstborn. `The Levites shall go to do the service of the tent, for they are wholly given unto Me from among the children of Israel; instead of all the firstborn of the children of Israel have I taken them to Me; for all the firstborn are Mine’ (Num. 8: 14-19). And in the redemption money, which had to be paid at the birth of each firstborn for his release, the parents had the unceasing reminder that the firstborn belonged to God and His service, and were represented in the Levites.

The principle involved in this is one of the deepest importance. God claims our best children for His own direct and immediate service. The whole people, old and young, were to serve Him, but the firstborn, the very best, were to be entirely set apart for the special maintenance of that service, not only by the part they took in the worship, but by instructing the people in the law of their God. Let us try to take in fully the lessons the Christian Church has to learn from this.

In Israel all the firstborn, and as their representatives, all the children of Levi, a twelfth part of the whole nation, were exclusively claimed by God to be continually at His disposal in the service of His house. And in Israel that service consisted solely in the maintenance of what existed, nothing had to be done for the extension of the kingdom or the propagation of the knowledge of God among the heathen. The Christian Church has now not only to see to it that she maintains her hold on what she once has occupied: her calling in her redemption from sin is distinctly and essentially aggressive, to teach all the nations and seek the extension of the kingdom throughout the whole world. And the question is naturally suggested: If Israel had to set apart one-twelfth of its children for the work of God, what portion should the Christian Church devote to the work committed to her? And what portion has she devoted?

Alas! that the answer to the latter question should be so sad! There is hardly a missionary or philanthropic society engaged in teaching and rescuing the ignorant and the lost, that has not to complain of lack of laborers. The call is being sounded forth louder every year that the doors to the hundreds of millions of heathen are opened wide, and yet how few, how sadly few, is the number of laborers. And why? Simply because Christian parents do not, as a rule, educate their children under the conviction that they are the Lord’s, do not place them at His disposal, do not train them to look upon this as their highest privilege, if they be found worthy to bear the name of Christ among the heathen.

Let us just think a moment what would be thought of the loyalty of Englishmen to their Queen if it were found difficult to find men to form her bodyguard, or accept appointments in her service! Or what of the enthusiasm of an army where the General could never obtain volunteers for a post of danger and of honor! And Jesus Christ, our King, who came to seek and save the lost, has said that these are His guard of honor, and shall have His richest rewards, who forsake all for His and the gospel’s sake. And yet, while in every profession there are complaints of more applicants than openings, the Master has to wait, and His work has to suffer, because His people do not understand that they and their children have been redeemed to serve Him who gave Himself for them.

And what is the cure of this evil? And what can we do, each in our sphere, to wipe out this terrible reproach? What we can do is this: Let us devote every child to God and His service. Let us cease praying that our children may be saved, while we never think of giving them to serve. Let us cease choosing honorable and lucrative professions for our children, with the truth that they can serve God in any calling, turned into an excuse for declining special service. Let us lay each child upon the altar, specially our first-born and our best, and seek this one thing — that they may become worthy and fit to be set apart for the service of the King.

And let the Church learn as part of her preaching of redemption to lift aloud her voice and cry, You are redeemed for service, you and your children. Is not this the reason that so many a parent has prayed for the salvation of his child and been disappointed? the prayer was utterly selfish; it was simply the desire to see the child happy, without any thought of the glory of God, or of consecration to His service. When God established His covenant with Abraham and gave him Isaac, it was to have him at His disposal as the channel of blessing to the world. When God rewarded the faith of Moses’ parents, it was because He wanted a servant by whom He could save Israel. When God redeemed Israel’s firstborn in the night of the Passover, it was to have them for Himself. Oh, Christian parent, when God offers to be what He was to Isaac, and Moses, and Israel’s firstborn, to your children, it is because He wants them, for His service, His blessed service of love and liberty. Oh, say, has He not a right to claim it, and shall He not have it? He gave His Firstborn, His Only-begotten, for you and your children; can anything be too precious for Him? Listen not to the thought that the demand is hard or the sacrifice great. Know that for yourself, as for your children, it is the path of honor and blessing. And let your example teach the Church that there are those who, just because they love their children most intensely, know nothing better for them than to yield them utterly to the will and the work of their God.

O Lord! You are a great and a glorious God, and Your kingdom rules over all. You alone are worthy to be praised; You alone have a right to the love and the worship and the service of all Your creatures. And this too is their blessedness: in heaven above and on earth below, blessed are Your servants who stand around Your throne and do Your will.

O Lord! we do bless You that You ask and accept of our children for Your service. We acknowledge Your claim: let them all be used for Your service and glory. But especially would we offer You the first and the best.

O God! teach us to feel deeply that You have need of them. For the building up of Your temple, in the struggle of Your kingdom with the power of darkness, in the ingathering of Your people from the hundreds of millions of heathen, You have need of our children. We give them to You. We will train them for You. We will wait in prayer and faith, and beseech You to inspire them with a holy enthusiasm for the kingdom and its conquests. We beseech You to fill them and us with love to Jesus and love to souls, that they may serve You as Your Son did, and give their lives to save men.

O Lord God! You have redeemed us and our children by the blood of the Lamb, let our firstborn, let all our children, be holy unto the Lord. Amen.