LETTER XIII. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. MY DEAR I HAVE hitherto commented upon the customary stated duties which the clerical appointment imposes upon its minister, the same in substance from day to day, from year to year; varying not in nature, if occasionally in degree. Every day brings with it some parochial duty to be performed, some portion of private exhortation to be given; every Sabbath the sacred services of the temple; every month the public communion of the Holy Sacrament; every tolling bell proclaims the necessity for additional watchfulness; every closing life reads us its mournful lesson of man's mortality. But there are some offices in our church of less ordinary occurrence. Such is the triennial ceremony of Confirmation. Here, as a new responsibility opens to your view, a new caution seems required. I will suggest to you such rules of previous discipline as may tend very materially to lighten the load of obligation which the office of confirmation brings with it. The Sacrament of Baptism is introductory to the ceremony of Confirmation. In the first, a promise is expressly given by others in our behalf; in the second, we take this promise upon ourselves, namely, that we will faithfully act up to the provisions of that covenant into which, by baptism, we have been admitted. These provisions are so intelligibly set forth in the Catechism as to render any further explanation superfluousi But, by diligently and strictly enforcing upon the several sponsors for infant baptism the very serious responsibilities they take upon themselves; by adding to the valuable exhortation with which the liturgy will furnish you, some strengthening admonitions of your own; by inducing them to consider as a duty of weighty obligation what they now undertake without any consideration, you will do much towards the removal of the prevalent abuse of the ceremony; and there is greater probability that the provisions of the Christian covenant will be more punctually complied with; that the works of the devil, the sinful lusts of the flesh, will be more steadily abjured; the Articles of the Christian faith be more thoroughly understood and embraced; and God's holy will and commandments be more resolutely obeyed. You will have less reason to lament that light and heartless conduct which too commonly accompanies these most serious services; that ignorance, in some cases, of the nature of the baptismal vow, and that indifference to it, in others, which is so frequently betrayed by the young candidate for confirmation. Your first duty, therefore, will be to possess the youthful mind (wherever this has been wilfully neglected by those who undertook the trust) with a due sense of the blessings conditionally secured to them through the Sacrament of Baptism; and of the conditions under which those blessings were imparted. You will tell them wherefore the cross was marked upon their foreheads; you will teach them that by baptism they are regenerated, or born again; that is, that they died unto the sin, which, in common with all mankind, they inherited from Adam, and rose again unto a life of grace, through the merits and sufferings of Jesus Christ. That their hope of inheriting the " precious promises," brought by their Redeemer, depends on the fidelity with which they labour |