Matrimonial Counsel.

Since you are not one, but two, give me leave to remind you of a few things separately, and you first who are the husband. You should never forget, that your wife hath put her person, together with her fortune, into your hands, as into those of the man she loved best, and confided most in; and that she did this, in a pleasing expectation of finding in you a generous and strenuous protector against all ill treatment from others, and all the distresses and troubles, which a man is better able to repel than a woman. To your stronger arms and more courageous bosom her feebler nature hath fled for refuge in the bustle of a crowded and boisterous world, through which she knew not how otherwise to make her way. How base, how unmanly a breach of trust would it be in you, to treat her with coldness, contempt, or cruelty? to become her chief oppressor? and to force from her broken heart the melancholy wish, to be again where you found her, exposed alone to a world, hard indeed and deceitful, but less insensible and treacherous than you? It is true, she is not without faults; and who is? But is she to be broke off those by methods fit only to be taken with a beast? Have you no pity for her weakness; you who must be lost for ever, if infinite pity is not afforded to your own? It is the property of a coward only to use any woman ill; of a treacherous and cruel coward to use that woman ill, who hath no protector under heaven but you; and to whom you made the warmest protestations before, and the most solemn vows at, your marriage, of love as lasting as your life. What man in the world would hurt a dove or sparrow, though but a brute, to which he had neither offered nor promised protection, if it should fly to his breast from the talons of a hawk? But if you will not hear me, hear the word of God, to you and to all married men ; "Ye husbands, dwell with your wives according to knowledge,

Are you?

CONQUER BY KINDNESS.

giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel.

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Hus

bands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church;" for which He thought it not too much to give His life. "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church." Take notice that you are here (without any condition of proper behaviour on the part of your wife), forbidden to treat her with bitterness, and commanded to shew her that love which Christ hath for His Church, and you have for yourself, and to do her honour. Nay, you are to see that you love your wife even as yourself," though she should be not a hair less infirm and faulty than yourself.

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On the other hand, you who are a woman, and married, should never forget you are either. You should, at all times, and in every instance, bear in mind that, as a woman, gentleness and pliancy to everything but vice is your distinguishing character. The person and face of an angel, without these peculiar ornaments of your sex, will not make you beautiful, nor even tolerable. There is nothing conceivable so unnatural, or so shocking, as you are, when you put on a masculine, not to say a boisterous, spirit, and set up for an object of fear. As you were made to be loved, not dreaded, you are furnished with every preparative for the former, by the kind indulgence of nature; and not with one for the latter, unless you will ascribe to nature that which she most abhors of all monstersan affectation of rudeness and imperious violence, accompanied with so much fearfulness of mind and weakness of body. And as a married woman, you are still further from your natural element if you aim at a superiority over your husband, whom you are obliged by nature, by Scripture, and by your vows, to obey. As one weak, you sought at first for a protector; have your vows of submission given you so much strength, that nothing but that protector will now serve you for a slave?

You want to carry all your points, and do what you please; and we, in a violent stretch of courtesy, will grant you have none but good ends in view, but must, at the same time, take leave to demur to your manner, both in point of agreeableness and prudence. If the agreeable way in everything is the best, it must be more so in you, who was peculiarly calculated to please. How do you shock us with the reverse! Your manner is likewise altogether foolish, and shews you know not where your power is placed. It is not placed, as you imagine, in a knack of disputing, nor in the brandish of a high hand, nor, when these fail, in fits, either brought on by struggles too violent for your wretched frame of body, or opportunely pretended, as the last shift. No, your power lies in managing the softer and gentler passions. Here you might be irresistible, and do everything, did not the insolence of your spirit set you above this amiable method. In the other way you can do nothing that will not cost you a thousand times more than it is worth. But I foresee you will be more apt to be angry at the most useful advice from a man, than at your own folly and pride; I therefore earnestly beseech you, as you regard your vows, and fear God, to hear Him at least, who saith unto you and all other married women, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord; for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church. Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Let the wife see that she reverence her husband. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands." This last precept is followed by another, enjoining meekness and quietness of spirit, and forbidding an expensive vanity in dress. Compare your conduct, and the spirit it proceeds from, with these words of God, and judge for yourself, whether you know better than He does what you should do. Consider also, that these precepts

DO YOU MEAN TO AMEND ?

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are positive, unconditional, and leave you no excuse for a failure in your duty, let your husband's behaviour be what it will.

Now tell us, both of you, whether, after all, you are determined to go on as heretofore, and give us a proof of less sense in two pretenders to rationality, than we often find in two oxen or sheep, who grow more tractable, and go more quietly in their yoke, the longer they have carried it; whether you are still resolved, at your own expense, to shew the world a monster, with one body and two heads, each of them furnished with two faces, to smile or frown on each other, as dissimulation or rancour shall set their features; and whether, in a word, you can think of any longer racking your minds between the wide extremes of fond and angry fits, in so swift successions, that all the good part of mankind are amazed, how, after such transports of tenderness, you can ever hate each other; and all the bad, how it is possible, from hatred so keen, to return again to instances of endearment not exceeded between those who never quarrelled. Here is the very sting of your condition. These starts of affection serve but to give you a more thorough sense of the mutual hatred which immediately follows, and fills you with bitterness of soul. Could you live asunder, or avoid all occasions of kindness, you might at length take sanctuary in indifference. A palsy might take the place of this ague in your passions, and once for all benumb those too exquisite feelings, which contrariety, at present, rubs into rawness, and keeps perpetually alive. Time, which alleviates other miseries, would then cease to aggravate yours. What an enemy would you think him, who should deprive your food of all its relish, or cook it for you with gall; who should rob your nights of sleep, poison every moment of your time with grief or vexation, throw all your affairs into confusion, and ruin both the morals and fortunes of your children! This enemy you are (I do not say to each other, but) you, the husband, to yourself; and

you, the wife, to yourself; for want of considering that you cannot hurt or vex her, nor you hurt or vex him, without equally hurting, vexing, and tormenting yourself, for you can have but one and the same condition.

BISHOP PORTEUS.

It was well for the interests of religion, that during a very difficult period, viz., from 1787 to 1809, the see of London was filled by a prelate so judicious and so faithful to his Master, as Dr Beilby Porteus. The services which he rendered, as the opponent of the slave trade, as the early patron of the Bible Society, and as the assiduous promoter of the better observance of the Sabbath, deserve to be held in lasting memorial.

Enforced by his own well-known personal worth, his sermons produced a great impression. A series of lectures on Matthew, which he delivered on the Fridays of Lent, drew together a concourse, such as had seldom been seen at a weekday service; and the reader will not the less rejoice at their popularity, because he feels that in order to be popular now, such a course would need to possess attractions which he cannot detect in the published specimens.

Beilby Porteus was born at York, May 8, 1731, and died at Fulham, May 13, 1809.

The Centurion.

The next remarkable feature in the character of the centurion is his humility. How completely this most amiable of human virtues had taken possession of his soul, is evident from the manner in which he solicited our Saviour for the cure of his servant: how cautious, how modest, how diffident, how timid, how fearful of offending, even whilst he was only beg