Bertha and Her Baptism. Nehemiah Adams

To notes almost divine.

       "How would my leaping heart rejoice,

       And think my heaven secure!

       I trust the all-creating voice,

       And faith desires no more."

      Pastor. What a happy man Abraham must have been when the Almighty made this engagement and promise: "I will be a God to thee!" That was the "Abrahamic covenant," in part.

      "Does covenant mean that?" said Mrs. B.

      "What?" I inquired.

      "Why, sir, what you have just said—engagement, promise?"

      "Nothing more," said I. "But what a happy man, I say, Abraham must have been! 'A God to thee!' To have the Almighty say to one, 'I will be a God to thee!' You know that this is everything."

      "That is a fact," said Mr. B., wiping his eyes; "for, when I went to my store, the morning after I became a Christian, I went along the street, saying to myself, 'Now I have a God. God is God to me. Thou art my God.'

      "Yes," said his wife; "Deacon B., the post-master, heard you, as you went by his side-window, and he made an excuse to bring me up a paper, that forenoon, and asked whether you had not met with a change in your feelings on the subject of religion."

      "Did he?" said Mr. B. "Well, I did not mean to be heard, and yet I was willing that everybody should know how happy I was in having one whom I could call my God. How I had lived so long without God for my God, amazed me."

      Pastor. You make me think of a man who, one night, on reaching his house, after having attended a lecture in a school-room, was filled with such surprising views and feelings, with respect to the greatness and goodness of God, that he saddled his horse, rode three miles, waked up the minister, and, as he came to the door, took hold of each arm, and said, "O, my dear sir, what a God we've got!" He would not go in, but soon hastened back. It was the substance of all that he wished to say; he desired to pour out his soul to some one who would understand him. He was like a thirsty land when at last the great rain is descending.

      Mr. B. I suppose many people would have thought him crazy.

      "I suspect the minister did, at first," said Mrs. B.

      "And yet I suppose," said I, "he was never more rational. Just think what it is for a poor sinner all at once to feel that the eternal God is his; that He will be a God to him! We hear of some people dying at the receipt of good news; and I have seen some so happy at this experience, of having a God to love and to love them, that, if the thing itself did not, as it always does, bring peace and inward strength with it, nature could not have sustained it."

      "Joy unspeakable," said Mr. B. "And full of glory," said his wife, waiting a moment for him to finish the quotation.

      "Now, my dear friends," said I, "that man on horseback, at his minister's door at midnight, had, at that moment, the first part of what is meant by the 'Abrahamic covenant.' How little way do these words go toward expressing the thing itself, and a man's feelings under it! There was a time when God made Abraham far more happy even than he did you on your way to the post-office that morning."

      Helen came along, just then, with a fruit-basket of apples, and I said to her, as she was going round with them, "Say again that verse in your hymn, which has these words in it, 'Thou art mine.'"

      So, while Mr. B. was paring his apple, Helen stood before him, and said:

      "O, might I hear thy heavenly tongue

       But whisper, 'Thou art mine!'

       Those gentle words should raise my song

       To notes almost divine."

      Mr. B. put his apple and knife down, and took his red bandanna handkerchief from under his plate, and, wiping his eyes, said:

      "Hymns always make me feel a good deal, especially Watts's. I've read that hymn in meeting before the exercises began."

      Pastor. You know, by happy 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