TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
that it was no use his listening at all. So I went away for the present, hoping before long to have an opportunity of speaking to him when he was more willing to hear."
"I thought," said I, "that you told me just now of your having conversed with the young woman herself: did I mistake you? or was that at another time?"
"That was just as I was going away: I passed by accident through the room where she was, and we had a very few words together. It was plain at once, by her manner, that she considered me personally unkind in what I had been saying of her to my sister. I begged her to bear with me, considering that I was so much older, and that I could have nothing at heart but my nephew's good; and I put her in mind of two or three things which had passed, such as I thought would be most apt to pacify and soothe her when she remembered them; and then I begged her seriously to consider, not at present whether I was right or no in my opinion of the necessity of Baptism, but, supposing I thought myself right, how could I act otherwise than I was doing? Which, I asked, is the truer charity? to let people go on unbaptized and unsanctified, for fear of paining them;—to treat them as if they were quite safe, when, if you will believe our Saviour, you must believe they have not yet even entered into the Church and Kingdom of God,—or to show them that you feel in earnest for their danger; to remind them what sentence the Church would pass on them, should they die in their present condition? She would not, in that case, allow them Christian burial. Why? Evidently, because she thinks them not members of Christ's body; not entitled by covenant to those promises, the rehearsing of which over the grave are in her mind a part of Christian burial. I believe and obey the Church; and if it was the nearest and dearest relation I have, I should count it kindness, not cruelty, to treat him as she would have him treated; to 'have compassion on him, making a difference,' and so try to bring him, with an humble and penitent heart, to our Saviour's Baptism in good time.
"This was the tone of what I said to her; but I had hardly time for so much as this: however, as she is naturally good tempered and candid, she seemed to take it pretty well."
