How little way do these words go toward expressing the thing itself, and a man's feelings under it! There was a time when God made Abraham far more happy even than he did you on your way to the post-office that morning."

Helen came along, just then, with a fruit-basket of apples, and I said to her, as she was going round with them, "Say again that verse in your hymn, which has these words in it, 'Thou art mine.'"

So, while Mr. B. was paring his apple, Helen stood before him, and said:

"O, might I hear thy heavenly tongue
But whisper, 'Thou art mine!'
Those gentle words should raise my song
To notes almost divine."

Mr. B. put his apple and knife down, and took his red bandanna handkerchief from under his plate, and, wiping his eyes, said:

"Hymns always make me feel a good deal, especially Watts's. I've read that hymn in meeting before the exercises began."

Pastor. You know, by happy experience, what it is when that heavenly tongue whispers, "Thou art mine."

Mr. B. I do, sir, if I know anything.

Pastor. Now, my dear friends, there is something awaiting you, which you seem not to have experienced, but which is as good as that.

"We would like to hear about it," they both replied.

"How should you like, Mrs. B.," said I, "to have your little boy become a sailor?"

"O dear!" said she, "I should have no peace from this time, if I thought he was to be a sailor."

"But that," said I, "may be God's chosen occupation for him,—the way in which he will employ him to bring him to himself, and then use him to be a preacher to seamen, for example, and so to scatter the truth in many parts of the earth. We are not our own, Mrs. B., and this dear boy was not given you, as we say, to keep. 'For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.'"

"I want him brought up at college," said Mrs. B., looking at your mother, who, she probably thought, would understand her motherly anticipations about her boy so far ahead.

"Well," said I, "let us send him to college. I suspect that you would feel a good deal the morning he left you, would you not?"

"O," said she, "I should so want him to be good first! If he should not be a good man, I would not have him get learning to do harm with it, and make himself more miserable hereafter."

The little gate, with its chain and ball, swung to at this moment, and a woman and girl came up the walk. It was Mrs. Ford, who used to be your dress-maker, and her daughter Janette, now about thirteen. It was a farewell call from Janette, who was going to the neighborhood of Philadelphia, into a coach-lace manufactory.

"So Janette is going to leave us, to-morrow, Mrs. Ford?" said your mother.

"Yes, madam, and I feel sorely about it; so young, and such a way off, and all strangers except the foreman, who spoke to me about her coming! O, sir," said she, changing her undertone, and turning to me, "what should we do without that promise, 'I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee'?"

I looked at Mr. and Mrs. B., and we all smiled, while I said:

"Now we have got the second part of the 'Abrahamic covenant.' So now we have the whole of it. Mrs. Ford, when you came in, we were talking about baptizing children, and about the 'Abrahamic covenant.' What do you understand by that covenant?"

"I understand by it, sir," said she, slowly gathering her words into proper order; "why, I think I understand by it, that God promises to be a God to a believer's child, as he was in such a wonderful way to Abraham's people."

Pastor. Well, that is the substance of one part of it, at least. Did you know, Mrs. Ford, that when you came in we were just entering Mrs. Benson's son at college?

Mrs. Ford. Not this Mrs. Benson, of course. Whom do you mean, sir?

Pastor. This Mrs. Benson;—her little son.

Mrs. Ford. O, I understand! Well, you will send him to P., I suppose, it is so near.

"We had not fixed on the college," said Mrs. Benson, with a laugh.

"Janette," said I, "how do you like the thought of going off so far from us all?"

Janette pulled the ends of her plain cotton gloves, and her heart was full, so that she could not speak for a moment. I was sorry that I had asked the question, and therefore added:

"You will not go where God cannot take care of you and bless you the same as at home, will you, dear?"

She lifted her white apron to her eyes, while Mrs. Ford said for her:

"I tell Janette that I gave her up to God in baptism; and when her father lay sick, he said, 'That child was given to God in his house; I leave her destitute, and with nothing but her hands, but I leave her to a covenant-keeping God.'"

"Now," said I, "here is a dear daughter going to a strange place to learn a trade. She knows not a soul in the place but the foreman who has hired her. A boy is going to college, another to sea, another to a distant city. Here is a daughter, who receives particular attentions from certain young friends, and the probability is that she will be asked in marriage; and here is a son, who with his parents are in doubt with regard to his future occupation and course of life. God only knows the feelings of parents at such times. What prayers are made in secret,—what vows! One wrong step may embitter life. A right step may lead to prosperity and great happiness. I sometimes wish that we could gather our children together, in some of these emergencies and critical periods of their lives, and offer up prayers and vows, as parents and friends, in their behalf. There would not be many meetings more interesting than these, Mr. Benson. How the parents of such children would love everybody that came at such times to pray for their children; and what prayers would go up to God!"

"Can we not have some such meetings?" said Mr. Benson. "Every parent would like it, I am sure."

Pastor. Well, we do have some such meetings occasionally, I remember.

"Our minister loves to use parables," said Mrs. Benson, looking at your mother, "so as to make us understand the meaning better, and remember it."

"I must ask you to explain," said Mr. Benson.

Pastor. As often as we bring a child to the house of God for baptism, Mr. Benson, we have such a meeting, if Christians will but understand it so. We come with the parents, and say, "Lord God, here is this dear child, with a momentous history pending upon thy favor and blessing. In all future time, in the critical moments and eventful steps of its life, or in its early death, or in its orphanage, be thou a God to this child." If God should to-night, Mrs. Ford, say to you, "I will be Janette's God," would you not send her away with a light heart?

"He should have her for life, dear child!" said she; "and I do feel that he is a God to her."

"He is," said I, "if you have really made a covenant with him about your daughter."

"I have, sir," said Mrs. Ford.

Pastor. Did the covenant have any seal? Some good people, you know, think it enough to covenant with God about their children, without using any special act to mark and seal it. Now it is only in consecrating children to God that they omit the seal from the covenant. We practise adult baptism, joining the church, confirmation, and we partake of the Lord's Supper, feeling the propriety and the use of acts and testimonies in the form of an ordinance. What seal had your