bound by a tenfold responsibility; "for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."* Surely they ought to watch over the tokens of God's presence with their children, as the blessed Virgin "kept all His sayings in her heart;" not fully knowing what God has committed to them; to what stature of saintliness in God's kingdom their children may attain; what large capacities of light and sanctity may be in them, even while they are amusing them with toys, and speaking of them as if they had no ears to listen. How do they know who their children may be? Great as the parental care of the fathers and mothers of eminent saints has been, yet how little did they realize at the time what they were one day to become! How, on looking back in old age, when their sons and daughters have been edified to the perfection of a saintly life, must they have said: "Who ever imagined what that thoughtful and docile child really was, and what lay hid in him? What a trust was ours; and with all our fancied care, how little did we realize its greatness!"

If this were indeed the temper of parents, who can say what might not be the holiness of families and homes? they would be consecrated by the vow of sanctity; ruled by a discipline of perfection. Even parents still charged with household cares, and in the midst of the world, would in some sort live the life of the retired and devout, and by their prayers, fastings, alms, charitable works, and abstinence from the world, train up their children in the simplicity and fervor of a consecrated state. If parents would only repress the vanity and self-flattery which they indulge, while

St. Luke xii. 48.

they push their children forward in artificial and ostentatious habits, or correct in themselves that still more guilty indolence and neglect, which makes them abdicate the personal office and duty of instructing and ruling their children, even so their households would bear more tokens of holiness. But how should this ever be, unless the grace of regeneration be faithfully believed and cherished? If there be any one feature that distinguishes the homes of the faithful of earlier days, it is the reverence with which they looked upon their children, after they had received them back from the font, to be reared up for God. What is it but the doctrine of baptismal regeneration which has so strongly developed in the Catholic Church the paternal character of God? And in the consciousness of this heavenly Fatherhood there is contained a whole order of spiritual affections, which issue from the grace of regeneration; such, for instance, as dutifulness, submission, docility, confidence, gladness, a holy fearlessness and filial love; and these are in a peculiar manner the basis of the saintly character. They may be called the sanctity of childhood: "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," of which children are susceptible.

Now in the history of the saints there are two things chiefly remarkable. One is, the depth of personal religion which they have displayed at an age when, in these days, we are wont to look upon children as little more than sentient and irresponsible beings. We read of charity, almsgiving, prayer, self-denial, in children of six or eight years old; and martyrdom at the age of fourteen, or even at twelve the age consecrated by the single mention of our Lord's early obedience, and His questioning with the doctors in the Temple.

The other remarkable feature is, their precocity of general character and powers. No doubt it is but a fallacious evidence of this to allege cases of early intellectual cultivation. We read of boys of fourteen received among the graduates of learned universities, and the like; but all this evidently depends on variable states and tests of learning, and, after all, relates only to the intellectual powers, which are sometimes raised to a very high culture, while the rest of the mind is cramped and stunted. I speak, therefore, of the precocity of moral and spiritual life; the fulness and strength of character which youths have often shown. They have begun to live and act as men among men, while as yet they were hardly in the dawn of manhood. They manifested a resolution and collectedness of mind which follows upon long deliberation, and is the result of a well-tried discipline. They were strong, wise, gentle, fearless, inflexible, ruling themselves and mankind, leading armies, presiding in councils, governing churches, controlling assemblies, guiding courts and nations, at an age when, in these days, men are still in nonage and tuition. Surely some such great and visible facts were originally observed by the Church when it was prescribed that the offices of deacon and priest might be conferred on youths of twenty-three and twenty-four years of age, and even the Episcopate at thirty. And certainly, in comparing the average formation of character now with that of men who were nurtured up from holy baptism in faith of their regeneration, and in religious homes or devout schools of discipline, it must be confessed that in the science of the saints, and in the practice of life, we are backward and unripe. If we were asked to find a reason for it, I believe the truth would be be best expressed by saying these later

ages have lost faith in the miraculous conception and holy childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the type and pledge of our regeneration in holy baptism, and of the development of our regenerate life; and not only so, but that a false and shallow system of theology has grown up, and thrust down this high doctrine from its place. A prevalent notion in these later times is, that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is superstitious and delusive; that it tends to deadness, worldliness, unspirituality; that the Christian life of those who have been religious from childhood is generally tame, cold, and formal; that true Christian perfection is to be found in penitents and those who are converted late in life; that experience of sin and guilt is the stimulus of personal responsibility, and the very life of the conscience; and that the fervor, zeal, and activity of the converted sinner is the true perfection of the Christian character.

Now the analogy we have been considering, between the sanctification of our nature in the Person of our Lord, and the sanctification of our persons through the gift of regeneration, will suggest to us some very important truths, which have the force and extent of first principles in the theory and practice of a holy life. And these we will now shortly consider.

1. In the first place, then, we may learn what is the effect of sin after baptism upon the regenerate nature. As in all other truths, so in this, men have gone into both extremes, some making post-baptismal sin all but unpardonable, and others, hardly needing to be forgiven; some making its soils indelible, some treating it as if it left in the soul no soil at all. Now is there not some evident confusion in all this? And does not the confusion begin in our not clearly distinguishing between the effect of sin upon the

relation in which the regenerate man stands to God, and its effect upon the inward and regenerate nature?

Again when we speak of sin after baptism, surely another and a primary distinction is required; for all baptized men have sinned, therefore they have all sinned after baptism. To solve this difficulty, the distinction of sins into venial and mortal has been laid down. But in one sense, and that a most true sense, all sins are mortal. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die "-"The wages of sin is death." The conceiving of a sinful thought is a direct sin against the Spirit of holiness. Moreover, the privation of original righteousness is a state of sin: "We have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Not to be holy is to be sinful; there is no third estate. Therefore all baptized men have sinned, in one sense mortally, and that after baptism.

But the distinction, as it is recognized in the Litany, is plainly this:-There is one class of sins partly of omission, partly of commission, arising from our original corruption and infirmity of nature, and from the subtilty and strength of temptation; they seem to cling to our fallen nature even after regeneration, almost like mortality itself. And these are sins which neither rescind the remission of sins freely given in baptism, nor hinder the advance of our sanctification; such, for instance, are evil thoughts and motions of our humanity, flashes and transitions of temper, rash words, wanderings of the heart in prayer, and the like, which are both striven against and followed by compunction and confession. There is another class of sins which both cancels the relation of present forgiveness with God and hinders the growth of sanctification in the soul: such as sins of the flesh, evil imaginations, and temper if indulged, habitual pride, uncharitableness, and the like. Now, between these