It is proposed, therefore, in what follows, briefly to call your
attention to your position and responsibilities. If you have considered
your privileges as the children of pious parents who have dedicated you
to God in baptism, you are now prepared to examine your duties. You have
then a name and a place in Christ's visible church; you sustain covenant
relations to God, and these, fraught as they are with manifold benefits,
cannot be without corresponding responsibilities.
You are not the children of the world but the children of the covenant.
Solemn vows have been assumed for you, and these vows are binding _upon
your consciences_. They were taken with the hope and intention that you
should assume them for yourselves when you arrived at years of
discretion. You were given to God with the expectation that you would
grow up to serve him. And this it is your duty to do. You are his
property. You are his by sacred engagement, and you cannot violate this
engagement; you cannot renounce His service, and devote yourselves to
the service of Satan or of the world, without dishonoring your parents,
doing injustice to God, and periling your own salvation. You may say
this contract was formed without my consent, and when too young to
understand its requirements. No matter; this does not release you from
obligation to perform it. Ability and responsibility are not always
co-extensive.
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