On this occasion he addressed the parents in their own behalf and
that of their children. The bright day, the magnificent view his eyes
commanded from the place where he stood to address the handful of
people, the truth, with whose importance he was impressed, made him
eloquent. He spoke with power, and Clarice Briton, holding the hand of
little Gabriel, listened as she had never listened before.

"Death unto sin," this baptism signified, he said. She looked at the
child's bright face; she recalled the experience through which she had
passed, by which she was able to comprehend these words. She had passed
through death; she had risen to life; for Luke was dead, and was alive
again,--therefore she lived also. Tears came into the girl's eyes,
unexpected, abundant, as she listened to the missionary's pleading with
these parents, to give their little ones to their Heavenly Father, and
themselves to lives of holiness.

He would set the mark of the cross on their foreheads, he said, to show
that they were Christ's servants;--and then he preached of Christ,
seeking to soften the tough souls about him with the story of a divine
childhood; and he verily talked to them as one should do who felt that
in all his speaking their human hearts anticipated him. It was not
within the compass of his voice to reach that savage note which in
brutal ignorance condemns, where loving justice never could condemn.
He had an apprehension of the vital truth that belief in the world's
Saviour was not belief in a name, but the reception of that which Jesus
embodied. He came down to Diver's Bay, expecting to find human nature
there, and the only pity was that he had not time to perform what he
attempted. Let us, however, thank him for his honest endeavor; and be
glad, that, for one, Clarice was there to hear him,--she heard him so
gladly.