part, saying, "This, sir, is one thing I have learned to bear your anger with a patient and submissive deference,"

At a time of life when children may suppose themselves released from this positive obedience, and in matters wherein it seems reasonable enough that they should be allowed to think for themselves, the obligation still subsists in another shape. If the parent has not an absolute right to command, it is, however, his province to advise, and his advice ought ever to be attended to, and followed, unless such reasons can be shown to the contrary as any competent judge will be satisfied with, There is a great deal of truth in the common remark, that "young people think old ones fools, but old people know young ones to be so." They have bought their experience-they have passed through those stages of life which they charge with folly-they remember their own sentiments and conduct, and have lived long enough to see that they were wrong; this gives them a right to advise, and none but a headstrong fool will be deaf to the admonition. I forbear entering into particulars; give me leave, however, just to mention one circumstance, which, I think, few who have treated on this subject have omitted, that is, marriage. Those who determine that the parent has an absolute right to command in this case have, perhaps, carried it too far, at least, with regard to the positive side of the question; but surely they ought to be consulted. Their reason for or against should be calmly and impartially weighed, and their determination submitted to, without very good reason to the contrary. One of the first and most affecting laws of nature, indeed, seems to interfere in our behalf, if we refuse, at the command of a parent, to marry a person whom we find it absolutely impossible ever to love as a husband or wife; but as every good and prudent parent will give up this point, it seems but reasonable that their negative authority should remain inviolate, and no marriage take place which has not their sanction, and especially of which they have signified any particular disapprobation or dislike.

The last duty I shall mention may be comprehended under the general term succour. The child is indispensably bound to administer to all the wants of his parent, to the utmost of his power, so long as he lives; nor is there, indeed, any part of this duty which, exclusive of other considerations, common gratitude does not suggest and recommend to us. Do their declining intellects require our assistance in the ordering their worldly affairs? There was a time when we were incapable of all management of ourselves, during which they acted the part of faithful and provident stewards for us. Are they in a state of mind which requires comfort and consolation? They have a

thousand times performed that kind office for us when our griefs, perhaps, were only imaginary. Have they infirmities which may be alleviated by any art or redress of ours, or by a patient and dutiful submission to them? How many wayward humours have they borne in us for years together? Is their situation such, in point of estate, that our assistance may make life more comfortable and easy to them? Who protected us from hunger and thirst, from cold and nakedness, when we were utterly unable to do the least office for ourselves, or to contribute the least mite to our support? In a word, to whom are we indebted in general for all we ourselves possess, for an exemption from those distresses which require our help, and for the very power which we are bound to exert in the relief of them? Lastly, is our assistance necessary to defend them from any injury or violence? How dear has our life, health, and limbs ever been to them? And, in a word, is there a danger which, had occasion offered, they would have declined for our defence and preservation?

Such is the duty a child owes to his parent. How devoutly were it to be wished, that the general practice were more conformable to this rule! The precept enjoins a decent and respectful behaviour, and that we should address them ever in terms of reverence; on the contrary, too many children behave to their parents as if they were rather their equals, or indeed their inferiors, and scruple not to speak to them in the rudest and most approbrious language. Instead of that love and esteem which they owe them, too many seem to look upon their parents as their greatest enemies; their obedience is either entirely thrown off, and they take a particular pleasure in thwarting and crossing them, or it is kept up only by some worldly considerations, and they are not to expect any deference or regard any longer than they are in a condition to pay for it. How many in a state of ease and affluence unnaturally suffer their parents to feel the want of the conveniences, and even the necessaries of life! There have not been wanting instances where the impious hand has been lift up to injure instead of defending; and would to God we could stop here, and suppose, with Solon, that it were impossible to proceed farther! Fatal experience has convinced us, either that we have made a very considerable progress in wickedness since those times, or that our heathen forefathers had a better opinion of human nature than it deserved. But surely the Lord will not forget to visit for these things: the mischief of these abandoned miscreants shall return on their own heads, and their violent dealing come down four-fold upon their own pates. Common experience, as well as history, will inform us, that those who have been disobedient and untoward

children, rarely become glad and happy parents: they experience the same treatment from their own offspring, and sometimes, as has been observed, with surprising and uncommon instances of conformity between the particular offence and the punishment; and if they reach, which rarely happens, to the hoary honours of grey hairs, they are worn with shame and disquiet, and at length brought down with sorrow to the grave.

On the contrary, the length of days which the great Lawgiver expressly promises to such as honour their father and their mother, is the least blessing they have to expect. Their days are not only many in the land, which the Lord their God giveth them, but serene and happy; their wives are like the fruitful vine, and their children like olive branches round about their table. They often see the blessing extend to their children's children; and, having eat and drank to the full of the good things of this life, they retire, in a good old age, to sleep quietly with those fathers whom they loved and honoured, according to the commandment; and when they awake, they shall awake to the everlasting inheritance of those joys which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.

THE RELATIVE DUTIES OF HUSBANDS AND

WIVES.

BY THE REV. GABRIEL TOWERSON, D.D.

Ir being so rare for popular discourses to entreat of the duties of married persons, that it is almost become an absurdity to mention them, I may, perhaps, fall under the censure of indiscre tion for going about to make them the subject of mine, though the design I am now upon do naturally lead me to it. But because I cannot give à satisfactory account of the nature of adultery, and much less of the due importance of that commandment which forbids it, without entreating of the laws of marriage which adultery is the violation of, and because, how nice soever men are now grown, and how fearful soever of incurring the censure of indiscretion, St. Paul made no difficulty of interlacing almost all his epistles with discourses of it; lastly, because there is neither that fidelity between some married persons which the divine institution and their own covenants, nor that accord between others which so intimate a relation doth require, I hope it will not be looked upon by sober persons as any imprudence, if I make it the business of this discourse to demonstrate what is requisite to preserve it inviolable, after it is so contracted. In order whereunto, I will represent,

I. Such duties as are common to the married parties; and after that, descend to

II. Those which are peculiar to each of them.

Now though what both the one and the other are be competently evident from those covenants into which the parties enter at the solemnization of matrimony between them, yet because it is not impossible some duties may be more obscurely expressed there than will be requisite to give each of them a due understanding of them; and because those which are more clearly set down, will be looked upon as more forcible, if it can be made appear that they have the obligation of the divine command, as well as of their own contract, to bind them on them; therefore, I think it but necessary to investigate them by the purport of the divine commands, as well as by the tenor of their own compacts.

I. To begin with those which are common to the married parties, because the most natural results of that intimate conjunction into which they enter. Where,

1. First, I shall represent the parties loving each other, as both their own compacts, and the divine commands bind them. For though love be most usually made the duty of the husband to the wife, as, on the other side, obedience and reverence that of the wife towards the husband, yet as it is evident from St. Paul's enjoining the aged women to teach the younger to love their husbands, that love is no less due from them than it is from the husband to them. So the ground which he elsewhere assigns for the husband's loving of the wife, infers equally the returning of it by her. For the love of the husband to the wife being founded by him in that unity, or identity rather, which marriage conciliates between the parties, and so on, if the wife be one with him as well as he with her, there must be the same tie of love upon her as there is upon the husband to her. Here only is the difference, that whereas the husband, by the perogative of his sex, hath no other tie than that of love, which is the reason why the duty of love is in a manner appropriated to him; the wife, because subjected to the husband, is to temper hers with reverence and obedience. For which cause we hear so little of any love to be paid by her, and so much of reverence and obedience.

It being thus evident that love, how peculiar soever it may seem unto the man, is yet alike the duty of both, proceed we to enquire what is the due importance of it. Where first, no doubt can be made but that it implies an inward affection; as because love, in propriety of speech, denotes the affections of the heart, so because all effect, without it, are but hypocrisy and dissimulation. As little doubt is to be made, secondly, but that that inward affection of love is to exert itself in suitable effects, partly because love is naturally operative, and partly because St. Paul, where he exhorts husbands to love their wives, proposeth Christ's love to the Church for the pattern of it, which, as it was not without an inward affection, so showed itself in effect, because (as the same St. Paul observes), prompting him to give himself for it. The only thing of difficulty in this matter is, what is the ground of that mutual love, and what effects it ought to manifest itself by.

As to the former of these, much need not be said, especially if we have an eye to the principal ground of it. The words of St. Paul in the place before-quoted, no less than those of the institution of marriage, showing the ground of the party's love to be no other than that unity into which the divine institution hath