Bertha and Her Baptism | Page 5

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