than the single life; it hath more care, but less danger; it is more merry, and more sad; it is fuller of sorrow, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity; and those burdens are delightful. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, and churches, and heaven itself. Marriage is the symbolical and sacramental representment of the greatest mysteries of our religion. Christ descended from his Father's bosom, and contracted his divinity with flesh and blood, and married our nature, and we became a Church, the spouse of the Bridegroom, which he cleansed with his blood, and gave her his Holy Spirit for a dowry, and heaven for a jointure, begetting children unto God by the Gospel. This spouse he hath joined to himself by an excellent charity; he feeds her at his own table, and lodges her nigh his own heart; provides for all her necessities, relieves her sorrows, determines her doubts, guides her wanderings; he is become her head, and she as a signet upon his right hand. He first, indeed, was betrothed to the synagogue, and had many children by her; but she forsook her love, and then he married the Church of the Gentiles, and by her had a more numerous issue; and all the children dwell in the same house, and are heirs of the same promises, entitled to the same inheritance. Here is the eternal conjunction the indissoluble knot - the exceeding love of Christ - the obedience of the spouse - the communicating of goods the uniting of intereststhe fruit of marriage-a celestial generation. "This is a great mystery." This is the sacramental mystery represented by the rite of marriage; so that marriage is divine in its institution, sacred in its union, holy in the mystery, sacramental in its signification, honourable in its appellation, religious in its employments. "Christ and his Church:" that begins all. And there is great need it should be so; for they that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. Begin, therefore, with God. Christ is the president of marriage; and the Holy Ghost is the fountain of purity and chaste loves, and he joins the hearts. Let all such contracts, then, begin with religious affections. Let the husband and wife infinitely avoid a curious distinction of mine and thine; for this hath caused all the laws, and all the suits, and all the wars in the world. Let them who have but one person have also but one interest. As for the duty of the husband, he is commanded "to love his wife even as himself." That is his duty, and the measure of it too; which is so plain, that if he understands how he treats himself, there needs nothing be added concerning his demeanour towards her, save only that we add the particulars, in which holy Scripture instances this general commandment: "Be not bitter against her." And this is the least index and signification of love. A civil man is never bitter against a friend or stranger, much less to him that enters under his roof, and is received by the laws of hospitality. But a wife does all that, and more; she quits all her interest for his love; she gives him all that she can give; she is as much the same person as another can be the same, who is conjoined by love, and mystery, and religion. They have the same fortune, the same family, the same children, the same religion, the same interest, the same flesh; and therefore this the apostle urges, "No man hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it." And he certainly is strangely sacrilegious, and a violator of the rights of hospitality and sanctuary, who uses her rudely, who is fled for protection, not only to his house, but also to his heart and bosom. The marital love is infinitely removed from all possibility of rudenesses; it is a thing pure as light, sacred as a temple, lasting as the world; it contains in it all sweetness, and all society, and all felicity, and all prudence, and all wisdom. For there is nothing can please a man without love; and when a man dwells therein, then is his wife a fountain sealed; and he can quench his thirst, and ease his cares, and lay his sorrow down upon her lap, and can retire home as to his sanctuary, and his gardens of sweetness and chaste refreshments. No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society. But he that loves not his wife and children feeds a lioness at home, and' broods a nest of sorrows; and blessing itself cannot make him happy. So that all the commandments of God enjoining a man to love his wife, are nothing but so many necessities and capacities of joy. She that is loved is safe, and he that loves is joyful. Above all the instances of love, let the husband preserve towards his wife an inviolable faith; for this is the marriage-ring: it ties two hearts by an eternal band; this is the security of love, and preserves all the mysteriousness like the secrets of a temple. Under this lock is deposited security of families, the union of affections, the healer of accidental quarrels. This is a grace that is shut up and secured by all arts of Heaven, and the defence of laws, the locks and bars of modesty, by honour and reputation, by fear and shame, by interest and high regards. Hitherto we have spoken of the duty of the man. Now concerning the woman's duty. The first is obedience; which because it is no where enjoined that the man should exact of her, but often commanded her to pay, gives demonstration that it is a voluntary cession that is required; such a cession as must be without coercion and violence on his part, but upon fair inducements, and reasonableness of the thing, and out of love and honour on her part. When God commands us to love him, he means we should obey him. "This is love, that ye keep my commandments;" and, "If ye love me," said our Lord," keep my commandments." Now as Christ is to the Church, so is man to the wife; and therefore obedience is the best instance of her love; for it proclaims her submission, her humility, her opinion of his wisdom, his pre-eminence in the family, the right of his privilege, and the injunction imposed by God upon her sex, that although "in sorrow she should bring forth children," yet with love and choice she should obey. The next line of the woman's duty is compliance, which St. Peter calls "the hidden man of the heart, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit;" and to this he opposes the outward and pompous ornament of the body. Indeed, the outward ornament is fit to take fools; but they are not worth the taking. But she that hath a wise husband must entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil of modesty, and the grave robes of chastity, the ornament of meekness, and the jewels of faith and charity; she must have no paint but blushings, her brightness must be purity, and she must shine round about with sweetnesses and friendship; so shall she be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies. PIETY, NOT YEARS, THE MANHOOD IN CHRIST: A Sermon For the End of the Year, BY THE REV. EDMUND LILLEY, M.A. Minister of Peckham Chapel, Surrey. "For the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed." THE whole book of Isaiah is so full of allusion to Jesus Christ, that in explaining many of its predictions, we cannot fail to be hurried forward to the Gospel-day, and to find every thing resplendent with Gospel truth. The latter chapters, especially, seem to breathe with little else; he, and he only, appears their Alpha and Omega. Yet without farther reference to the rest, we would fix your attention on the latter portion of this, as intimating with peculiar beauty and expressiveness that holy and spiritual empire-as portraying that reign of righteousness and peace, when the doctrines of the Saviour shall become the statute-law of every land, and every heart a temple to his name. It is scarcely requisite to add, we do not account the prophetic imagery as yet fully realised, whatever tokens there may be of such day approaching; nor, on the other hand, are we inclined to agree in the idea that it represents solely the kingdom of glory accord though it may with that, it is only as the type agrees with its antetype; we believe, and hope that this globe shall first be honoured by the manifestation of its splendours. To create a new heaven and a new earth, though applicable, without doubt, to the pure and celestial and eternal habitations of the children of the resurrection, may, in its simpler intention, mean that change in the economy of human things, effected by the establishment of Christianity, whereby the heavens and the earth became altered in their character relatively to man, the heavens thenceforward his recognised homethe earth but the pathway to its glorious rest. being an hundred years old shall be accursed." We think, then, it is evident the prophet intends to delineate some state of the world parallel to that which preceded the fall; its restoration to a primeval state of holiness and rest, when "this wilderness shall become like Eden, and this desert like the garden of the Lord;" and that it is in accordance with that his metaphors are selected. Life is made to resume its antediluvian extent; the peaceful occupation of labour and tillage answers to the employment of our first parents' innocence; and the condition of the inferior creatures, neither terrified at man, nor longer bent on each other's destruction, beautifully corresponds to that pristine gentleness wherewith they traversed an unfallen world, or waited the behests of its delegated lord. But of course these figures, borrowed from earth's primitive condition, are to be spiritually interpreted, and are designed to delineate that moral renovation of mankind, which the Gospel is both calculated and destined to produce; and in consonance herewith, we understand by the first portion of our text, not that childhood should be so long in number of years, but in the measures of goodness; that there should be, under that holy dispensation, so general a diffusion of knowledge and saving truth, that youth should be as conversant therein as before ever was old age; that the Gospel-day should shine so brightly, that "every man shall know the Lord, from the least even to the greatest;" and in this way "there shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days." And he who shall prove an exception; who, spared to old age, has never lived to God; who, venerable in years, but not of the full age in Christ; he, "the sinner being an hundred years old, shall be accursed." All allusion, however, to this latter clause we defer for the present, that we may extract from the former some important, and, we trust, by the grace of God, profitable deductions. We have admitted-would there were less room for such admission!-that, in its strict intention, this prophecy is by no means accuThe other metaphors too, whatever pre-rately fulfilled in our own day; that in spite cisely they may mean (and it comes not within our purpose to follow out the inquiry), certainly betoken that which is blended with things terrestrial; and chiefly the language of our text convinces us they cannot altogether have respect to celestial blessedness, the Jerusalem above: for while the state, where "there shall be no more death," is contradicted by the assertion, "the child shall die an hundred years old," the idea of heaven is yet more so by the truth, "but the sinner 66 of every advantage possessed by the higher, and every effort made to bring about among the lower, ranks of society so desirable an era, it is yet very far from being generally true, that spiritually our sons grow up as the young plants, and our daughters are as the polished corners of the temple." cannot but confess, in sorrow of heart, that in too many there is, instead of a maturity in godliness, a precociousness in indifference and sin; and we blush, as the daily proofs We present themselves, at the slow progress made towards this predicted blessedness of the Gospel-era. It is not, however, with the unrealised fact we need concern ourselves, but the principle the text comprises; it is enough that the tendency of Christ's religion is to such happy result, and that in due season it will be brought about. Our object now is, by instancing those exceptions to the general indifference, which we thankfully acknowledge do exist to some extent in our own day, to shew how our text is to be verified, and how sure an earnest we already have of that coming time, when "the Spirit shall be" more abundantly "poured upon us from on high;" when youth shall more generally be an age of godliness, and the morning of life be the dawning of heaven. Now the principle of which we have spoken, as deducible from the expression," the child shall die an hundred years old," we find very appositely expressed in the apocryphal book of Wisdom." Honourable age," it says, "is not that which standeth in length of time, nor is measured by number of years; but wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age;" or, to evangelise such language: to have attained to a saving knowledge in Christ Jesus, is to have arrived at a full age; and for a child or youth to die at this, is as though he died" old, and well stricken in years." The word "child," however (for we may not pass over an important truth), certainly includes, if in strictness it denote not, a state too tender and too young for such practical growth in holiness; and is, or is not, the prediction to fail as applied to such? We "trow not." O, is it not, brethren, one of the peculiar features of the Gospel, and one well worthy to have been glanced at by the enraptured prophet, that even the least may be made partaker of the blood of no the covenant; that to childhood and infancy it may be given in Christ the requisite fitness it for his kingdom above? Is it not one of the most comforting doctrines of our faith to know that the tender babe, which scarcely yet can recognise its fond parents' smile; or the child, which just can answer their endearing words, if plucked from their bosom by the hand of the destroyer, is, through the Divine appointment and blessing, only transplanted to bloom as an unwithering floweret of the Redeemer's crown? We would not insinuate that the infant under the Jewish dispensation,-no, nor of the gentile, or present pagan, world, may not in a degree be a sharer in the same; if they be, it must also be through the redemption which is in Christ; for only through that, "where sin abounded grace did much more abound:" but of neither one nor the other is there the same assurance, nor was there to the parent the same hope. It is of those who have by baptism "been engrafted into his Church," and undergone "the mystical washing away of sin," that the promise is sure to and we can unhesitatingly, because on scriptural warrant, affirm, they are saved in Jesus Christ, if, in the words of our Church, "they die before they commit actual sin." Without further digressing, therefore, to substantiate this truth, we base on it the question, Whether to have thus, by a Divine and mystical process, conveyed to them all that is requisite for their existing condition, the meetness for admission into the Church triumphant, is not to have attained that age in Jesus which shall fit them to be ranged as lesser stars in the immaterial firmament; and whether thus dying is not, as respects all that is most important to man, equivalent to their dying an hundred years old? And when, therefore, we think of the saddened parent, weeping at the death-bed of such little one, or bending in anguish over its coffin, we feel considerations like this should turn that “ sorrow into joy;" yea, though it were the last over which the mother's aching heart had yearned, and thenceforth she must be" written childless;" O, as we tell her that babe is blessed; that God hath "taken it away from the evil to come;" that "she may go to it, though it cannot return to her," she must, if she be spiritual, if she be Christian, find grief's deep throbbings gradually stilled; and while the tearful eye is lifted up resignedly to heaven, faith, triumphant over nature, shall meekly say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" We But although we have considered this as included in the bearing of our text, it is in a later period, of what may be termed childhood, we seek the fuller application. take it as representing youth in its general acceptation; but, of course, that youth which is hallowed by holiness, the youth of immortality as well as of time. Some we believe there are among us, whose attainments and exercise in spiritual things may well entitle them to our warmest commendation; and, truly, we know no moral picture more lovely than that of early piety, which, like the tree planted by "the rivers of God," is blossoming for heaven, and gives promise of " bringing forth his fruit in his season." Even where it is yet in its tenderest budding, we hail with joy the happy presage; but where it is already putting itself forth in the solemn duties of its calling; where every future hope is considered only by the light of God's favour, and the meetness for heaven, whenever the time may come, is made the paramount object, O, such an one we look on, though a "child," | as of full years in Christ; and if called at once to die in him, dying as though "an hundred years old." Yet them, and all such, we would, nevertheless, most affectionately exhort to faithful perseverance. Let there be a shunning every evil communication which may corrupt good manners," the abstaining from all which may wean from their brilliant expectations; let there be no growing 'weary in well-doing," no drawing back from the first love, no cessation from importunate prayer; but a continual cleaving to the Saviour, and dependence on his grace,-lest the maturity of childhood should turn to dotage in old age, and the fair morning of promise be clouded, and darken into the night of despair. Now these, brethren, as regards their acceptance with the Saviour, we put at once on a par with the generality of those of riper years. Not that we esteem them actually equal to the more advanced and long-persevering believer; there may be much to learn, and much to struggle through, ere they reach that eminence; but looking at their relative positions, their responsibilities, their means, their employment of the grace given, we may not pronounce the one inferior to the other. "The child" is ready "whensoever his Lord shall call him;" and what more is he who is "an hundred years old?" Eternity may not see them equal; for the longer and more protracted service shall be recompensed in Jesus with the brighter crown and yet it may-because the amount of service to the Lord is not measured only by number of days, but devotedness of heart; and the few brief years of the young may have offered a sincerer and more ardent tribute than was rendered by a lengthened-out age, especially if that age were the alone period of holiness, and its youth had been a stranger to reconciliation with God. The Psalmist bears us witness that the young may "have more understanding than their teachers, when God's testimonies are their meditation," and "understand more than the ancients, when they keep his precepts:" and so we know there is sometimes a forwardness in piety; and instances of godliness have been displayed by our "little ones," which may not be left behind by the more matured Christian; and where thus much of grace is given and improved, we doubt not there will be thus much of recompense also. So that if the youth, whose whole ardour and energy have been devoted to the Saviour; who has swerved not from the way of his precepts, and therefore has, so to speak, lost no ground in "journeying Zionward;" if he be not permitted to see a multitude of years, but the time, which should have ripened his strength, has wasted and consumed it,-still, we are satisfied he may die as those "an hundred years old," and wake again in as bright, or a brighter glory. Yea, as the hosts of the redeemed shall be presented before the Father's throne to receive his glad welcome to the eternal palaces, there may be conspicuous among the ranks of the ancient the head which never knew the hoariness of years; and the body, which reached here only the vigour of youth, may there wear a robe of as pure a whiteness as many which shall be seen within the New Jerusalem. Yet we speak of this only as explanatory of the principle of the text; nor mean we in any way to gainsay the general truth, that they who, having been godly in youth, have also proved "the hoary head" to be "a crown of glory, because found in the way of righteousness," may be more exalted for ever, if their zeal and service, proportioned to their means, have been altogether more. It is enough, we conceive, for the confirmation of that principle, if the child may attain to the level of the more advanced, or if the amount of a short-lived godliness may in any way be commensurate with the longer. And blest and happy they to whom it is so, whose infant piety lays itself an acceptable offering in Jesus at the heavenly altar! Yes, blest and happy, though premature decay destroy it, and an early grave close over it; because it shall yet live in the memory of friends, the dearest comfort in their loss; and more, it shall live in the remembrance of God, to be acknowledged in the presence of the Judge. We confess it is, humanly speaking, among the most moving of spectacles to mark youth thus withering in its bloom; and the more lovely, and amiable, and Christian that youth has been, the intenser the feeling that it shall be no more. The amount of loss is measured by the worth; and that whose beauty has been holiness, " and the mind seasoned with grace," is what we can least spare from its place in our regards. And yet, beloved brethren, which is the favoured year that has not witnessed ere its ending many such a scene? which, that has not borne with it the last breath of many a child of God, surrounded by the sighs of almost brokenhearted friends? O, where are some, who, when this year was young, were as shining lights in the temple of Christ's Church? their earthly lustre is extinguished; but now they illumine a temple above; and wherefore, then, the sorrow, that "hence, like a shadow, they departed?" There is a vacancy in the family circle: it may be so; but there is another place occupied in the circles of the blest. There is a void in many riven affections; but why, when those affections may yet be filled -yea, sublimed, by following whither that rescued soul has gone before? It may be sad to think of venerable parents left only to pensive musings on the dear departed, who "hath come up, and is cut down like a flower;" it may be anguish to hear the bereaved sister or brother recalling scenes now hallowed for ever by intercourse with the lost one; and to gaze on that newly covered grave, yet moist with the tears of weeping relations; but shall they "sorrow as men without hope," when that child of earth has become the child of heaven? Surely from that tomb there comes a voice, saying, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord," responded to by "the Spirit; for they rest from their labours." And though then it was distressing to see loveliness wither; and though it was painful to witness the tearing down the beauteous tabernacle so recently built up; and though it was misery to consign to corruption and the dust that which had never been strong with the vigour of manhood,-yet, tell us, was that youth in the manhood of Christ? were there the tokens of a matured Christianity? was there the power of the sanctifying Spirit? O, then, what though as a youth he has died, in Christ he has died as 66 66 an hundred years old." His labour has been short, but his rest will be long; his trials have been brief, but his triumph will be glorious; his life has been childhood, but his manhood is eternity. In youthfulness he lay down, but in maturity he shall awake; "in weakness he was sown, in power he shall be raised," be raised with the honours of the venerable and the ancient, and the twenty or the one hundred years shall be forgotten in the countless centuries of a blissful futurity. Go, then, sorrowing parent, or relative, or friend, dry thy tears, and lift up thy head; lift it up to the home of thy beloved, and muse on the blessedness wherewith his Saviour now surrounds him. Yes, lift it up to that sinless clime, his bright inheritance; but let it be in faith, or that gaze shall be profitless; let it be with the inquiry, whether your own" redemption draweth nigh;" whether you, as he, shall be found in the Lord; whether where he is, you shall be also? And gathering thence fresh motives to holiness, and fresh fervour to thy prayers, let, O, let thy spared life and protracted years be employed in seeking, through the same. Saviour, a like glorious immortality,-lest that youth, in the brightness of his resurrection-body, surpass that of thy longer but less faithful age! The last portion of the verse selected relates to so obvious a truth, that we shall attempt little more than to embody its lessons in a closing exhortation, with especial reference to that period of time at which we have been permitted to arrive. And again, we shall not enter on the fact so much as the principle it contains. The fact that "the sinner," of whatever age, shall, when he dies, "be accursed," is not what men require to be taught, but which, well knowing, they endeavour to forget. The principle we conceive to be, that the longer a man lives as a sinner, the more will he be accursed; because he will have more despised the riches of God's goodness, more tampered with God's warnings, done more "despite to the Spirit," and more hardened himself in iniquity. Length of days, therefore, is no such advantage as careless transgressors too often imagine, bringing as it does so much more to be answered for. The long-suffering of our Lord is indeed to be accounted "salvation." O, that more frequently it were so! but long-suffering abused is misery increased, and the sinner of a hundred years old shall writhe beneath a curse measured by his term of existence, and proportioned to his more multiplied impieties. This then, brethren, we urge on your meditation, as the contrast to what we have already set before you. Alas! with what a sad inconsiderateness we generally go from year to year, 66 one passing away, and another coming in its stead," without weighing as we ought the fresh accountableness each bears upon its wings. We may perchance reflect, particularly at moments such as this, when we stand at the very verge of one which can never more return, on the uncertainty and fleeting character of life, acknowledging it a vapour which appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away." We turn, it may be, to take a parting look on incidents with which its course has been studded; we think once again of the void places in society, which when the year began were so well filled; we glance once more at the graves where those once dear are buried, perhaps recollecting with a sigh, that ere another round of the seasons has gone, we in like manner may be mourned: but then, having done this, turn we not back hastily to gaze again on the future, and to drown the sad recollections of the past in the prospects and pleasures just opening on our sight? Certainly we feel, and are forced to feel, we may not be allowed to outlive the new year, and that therefore it becomes us to prepare to meet our God;" but then we feel also we may, and a thousand hopes and a thousand wishes conspire to make us count this the more probable issue; and thus powerless becomes the solitary warning we have drawn from the retrospect. But, forget though thus we may the past, and put away thus 66 |