errors, nourish the affections of his wife: in fine, to prove how worthy he is of her love.

The most perfect description of love is, that it "seeketh not its own." God's love to man is never so justly appreciated as when the mind is full of the idea of the essential perfection of God's own felicity in himself, to which a thousand creations could not add. His beneficence willed Him to communicate of that felicity to others: and on this glorious errand came out of his bosom his onlybegotten Son. He created the world for himself, (Col. i. 16,) and placed it under the vicegerency of a being formed in the image of God. This lord of creation, Adam, revolted, and transferred his allegiance to another; but instead of dashing into nothing the emanation of his power, he came down into the low estate in which man's apostacy had reduced the whole race, joined man's weak and wretched nature into one eternal and indestructible person with himself, and so raised man to a higher glory than he possessed before his fall. In all this he did not seek his own things, (1 Cor. xiii. 15,) but

man's things. He never renounced his right over that which He had created for himself: "He came to his own, but his own received Him not." He emptied himself of all the riches of his creation, and reduced himself to the low estate of his wretched creature. Born in a stable, obliged to fly for his life from the sword of a tyrant; pinched with hunger; without a friend or home; condemned as a blasphemer against that God, whom He alone, of all beings, duly honoured; put to death like an accursed slave; only "by strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned;" and all this without the possibility of reaping the smallest advantage to himself, but exclusively with the view of contributing to the happiness of those who hated Him. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He first loved us, and sent his Son to die for us."

St. Peter's injunction to husbands is analogous to that of St. Paul:-" Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them (your wives) according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of God, that your

prayers be not hindered." (1 Pet. iii. 7.) Here the husband is reminded that, though the wife be the weaker vessel, she is equally with himself the heir of glory, and thereby entitled not only to his tenderness, but reverence. Probably no man can tell, as he undoubtedly cannot feel, not merely the pains, but the numberless disquietudes and irritations arising from the greater delicacy of bodily structure, and from the sufferings peculiar to their sex. There are few persons who are not aware of the influence which bodily health exercises, not only over their own tempers, but upon the colour of their religious impressions; all of which things produce a sensitiveness, more or less degenerating into irritability, for which men seldom make sufficient allowance. The happiness of women is much more dependent upon men, than that of men is on women, in general.

Αει γυναίκες εμποδων ταις ξυμφοραίς
Εφυσαν ανδρων, προς το δυστυχεστέρον.

The structure of the female mind is as delicate as that of the body. Love is jealous,

and seeks the approbation of the object upon which it is set. A word, a look, a gesture, may plant a dagger into the breast of anxious affection, which he that plants it would have rather cut off his hand than have occasioned, and which would not have been felt by a heart less alive to him. If such may be the result of the involuntary first risings of impulse, even from those who are most aware of their effect, and most anxious to prevent it, what may not be produced by those who are not on their guard, or who have had their feelings deadened by the heartlessness of worldly society? Let all look to the conduct of the Lord Jesus towards his church; see his continued tenderness; her waywardness, and his constancy; her discontent, and his never-ending consolations.

The Lord Jesus Christ takes us not only for better, but for worse; and husbands vow at the altar to do the same by their wives. A feeling is sometimes put down to the score of vanity, which, however, is founded on much more praiseworthy motives, namely, the mortification at finding the charms of person

which first fascinated, gradually withering under the unalterable law of the decay of all created beauty.

Le Pauvre en sa cabane où le chaume le couvre,
Est sujet à ses lois :

Et la garde qui veille aux barrières du Loûvre
N'en defend point nos rois.

Beauty is felt by every woman to be precious, as a mean of contributing to the happiness of those on whom her affections are bestowed. She is probably the last person to be sensible of its decline, and the first moment that she becomes conscious of the change, she apprehends that she has lost at least one tie to her husband's attachment. It is on this account that she mourns over a loss which, had she been single, she might have contemplated with greater indifference: and the regret she experiences has more of disinterestedness than those who are little acquainted with the exquisite sensibility of female affection can easily comprehend. This feeling may be an element in the considerations which actuate those who endeavour to conceal the advances of time by exterior decorations; but to do