But especially should the children be dedicated to the Lord.  That infant over which the mother bends and watches with such passionate fondness, is “an heritage of the Lord,” given to her only in trust, and will again be required from her.  As soon as children are given they should be devoted to Him; for “the flower, when offered in the bud, is no mean sacrifice.”  Then and then only will parents properly respect and value their offspring, and deal with them as becometh the property of God.  By withholding them, the parents become guilty of the deed of Ananias and Sapphira.  Like the Hebrew mother, every Christian parent will gratefully devote them to Him, and rejoice that they have such a pure oblation to “bring before their God.”

  “My child, my treasure, I have given thee up
  To Him who gave thee me!  Ere yet thine eye
  Rested with conscious love upon thy mother,
  Long ere thy lips could gently sound her name,
  She gave thee up to God; she sought for thee
  One boon alone, that thou mightest he His child;
  His child sojourning on this distant land,
  His child above the blue and radiant sky,
  ’Tis all I ask of thee, beloved one, still!”

Here is a dedication worthy of a Christian mother.  Natural affection and human pride might lead the fond mother to dedicate her child at the altar of Mammon, to gold, to fame, to magnificence, to the world.  But no, every wish of the pious mother’s heart is merged in one great wish and prayer, “that thou may’st be His child.”

The dedication of our children to the Lord is one of the first acts of the religious ministry of home.  All the means of grace will be of no avail without it.  What will the acts of the gospel minister avail if they are not preceded by an offering of himself to the Lord who has called him?  His holy vocation demands such an offering.  It is his voluntary response to and acceptance of his calling of God.  Thus with Christian parents.  What will baptism avail, so far as the parents are concerned, without this dedication of their children to Him in whose name they are baptised?  No more than the form apart from the spirit.  It would be but a mockery of God.

We have a beautiful example and illustration of this dedication, in the family of the faithful Abraham.  “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac:  and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son.”  We might at first view regard this act of his as an evidence of his want of parental sympathy and tenderness.  But not so; it is rather an evidence of these.  What he did was the prompting of a true faith, yielding implicit obedience to the Lord, and offering as an obligation to Him, what he loved most upon earth.  Had he not loved him so dearly, God would not have chosen him as a means of testing his father’s religious fidelity.  Hence this oblation of his son was the best evidence of his supreme love to God, and that all he had was consecrated to his service.  This act called for the subordination of natural affection to Christian faith and love.  “Take now thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering!”