On Advent Sunday, our grandson Christian became a Christian. He was baptised, sleeping, in the font of our parish church. On the whiteboard in the maternity ward, the newborn’s name beneath his was Mohamed. As is usual (and, in my view, preferable) nowadays, he was christened in the middle of the communion rather than separately. As is less usual, the rite was that of the Book of Common Prayer, ‘The Ministration of Publick Baptism of Infants’. It is tougher than the modern version. The godparents, in the name of the child, had to ‘renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal desires of the flesh’, but managed with perfect equanimity to drink champagne afterwards. My suggestion of the hymn ‘Christian, dost

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