he withdraws from her society, on him be the consequence; but let her still continue to show the duty and submission, by which it is the will of God that she should glorify his name and power.

A delusion often comes upon young Christians, against which they ought to be put especially on their guard, by those of their brethren who have been longer in the faith. It frequently happens that they have formed attachments in those days when they knew not the Lord; and find themselves, upon their conversion, entangled in a conflict of duties, out of which they know not how to escape. Too honest and conscientious to be willing to deceive the other party, and too much bewildered by seeing as yet only spiritual things "as trees walking," and by more or less love for their favourite object, they usually make known to the other the change that has taken place in themselves; but partly from obscurity of view, and partly from a secret fear of doing it in such a manner as shall break off the connexion, they express themselves so darkly, that the other

coincides as a matter of course.

Most young

men, when they marry, mean to be quiet and steady, and moral and religious, and to seek for happiness only in the bosom of their family; and it is not till some time after the union has taken place, nor till after long struggles to hide from themselves that which is evident to all the world besides, that the wretched conviction is forced reluctantly upon them, that they had become, in fact, united in wedlock, not to a member of Christ, but to a member of Belial. It is seldom that the result of this union is not to unspiritualise the one, instead of spiritualising the other; and, as far as my observation serves, I have generally seen that the female through harder struggles has, in such cases, been a more consistent Christian, than when the situation was reversed.

It has been already remarked, that all the relationships of life have corresponding duties annexed to them, because they all shadow forth, or are types, or patterns of relationships which God has assumed for the purpose of communicating of his own blessedness to

the redeemed from among his fallen creatures; for this reason it comes to pass, that these duties have varied under different dispensations. Abraham, the friend of God; and David, the man after God's own heart; and Solomon, the eminent type of Jesus, the Prince of Peace; had each several wives, and were not blamed: and the Jews practise polygamy to this day. Under the christian dispensation, and without any express injunction to the contrary, the practice has ceased, and one man is united but to one woman, as in the days of our first parents. We cannot suppose that that which is lawful in one age can be sin in another, or that which is sin at any time can ever be right. We must therefore look for the cause of alteration in the practice, to the alteration in the thing to be manifested; and we shall find that to Abraham a double promise of a double blessing was promised-one to his seed after the flesh, another to his seed after the Spirit. There were two lines of seed, and two corresponding lines of blessing. But, under the christian dispensation, there is but one blessing, the

highest of all, that of being a member of Christ; and He has not many spouses, but one. It is the fidelity and union of Him to his one Church, which is the thing signified and to be represented; and therefore it is the fidelity and union of one man and one woman, which must now be manifested in the present dispensation.

It is for similar reasons that we never find a blessing, but, on the contrary, a curse, following a violation of the due observance of these duties. The thing to be set forth requires the subjection of the wife to her husband. Now it sometimes happens, no matter from what cause, whether from the unreflecting fancies of childhood, or the mercenary calculation of parents, that an union takes place between parties where the husband is inferior in judgment, and every other intellectual capacity. As in reasonable beings, power resides in the intellect, the wife in the case supposed is, whether she wishes to be so or not, the more powerful party of the two; and it is impossible to imagine a more difficult situation arising from the conflict of

opposing duties, than that which a woman in such a case has to encounter. It requires the utmost effort of an abiding sense of her duties, for a wife in such circumstances to preserve her proper place. Examples of this difficulty are to be found in every rank of life and from the duchess down to the lowest artisan, there is scarcely an instance of the family being blessed, and prosperous, and happy, where, yielding to the temptation of her lot, the wife has usurped dominion over her lawful lord. Sometimes also, but more rarely, a man with a soft, and easy, and affectionate, but weak disposition, so pampers the irritability of a mind weakened by sickness, and rendered selfish by infirmity, if not by original constitution, that instead of making use of his own strength to counteract the caprice of his wife, he becomes its victim, and the pander to its diseased appetite. The cause is irrelevant; the effect is the same; the type is broken; and the family consequently disorganised and miserable. Such consequences of the wife's usurpation have been observed, while the cause has been un