Note 47 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Just as the words of our Baptismal service, enrolling a young child into the 'church militant,' lose half their effect when addressed to men whose ideas of manliness and fighting fall very short of their true meaning.
It has a strange sound (to say the least that could be said) to hear quiet town-bred godfathers promise that they will 'take care' that a child shall 'fight under the banner' of the cross, and 'continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end;' and it is almost as strange to hear the good Bishop Heber's warlike imagery—'His blood-red banner streams afar; who follows in his train?' &c., &c.—in the mouths of little children.