cheerfulness and confidence you would feel if they were afflictions of his sending. But you have chosen them. Hence painful reflections of mind. Hence you may expect to hear as the inquiry of conscience, and as the censure of Providence: Hast thou not procured this

unto thyself. Thou hast done foolishly; from henceforth thou shalt have wars.' Yea, something of this kind must be expected: 'If my children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments: if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments: then will I visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquity with stripes.' He has said ‘If ye walk contrary to me, I also will walk contrary to you.' And he is a faithful God. And he is

able to make good his word. He can take satisfaction out of our chosen delights. He can remove them in his anger. He can leave them to produce leanness in our souls. Though he forgives the iniquities of his people, he takes vengeance on their inventions.

To which we may add, and these are natural and unavoidable consequences, the painful anxiousness of living with those from whom you

fear that you shall be separated forever; and the peculiar disagreeableness of being connected with those who are incapable of the principal part of your affection. Love them you may indeed as husband or wife; but not as believers; not as followers of our Lord, to whom you are allied by stronger ties than human, and which can never be dissolved. Must not this be a vast deduction of happiness; a bitter ingredient in the cup; a kind of daily death?

CHAPTER IV.

THE MISCHIEF HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED.

WE may take another view of the breach of this law, and see the evils that resulted from it as natural effects, or as judgments from God, as they are held forth in the scriptures of truth.

This was the particular sin for which God. drowned the old world.

Some of Lot's daughters married in Sodom, and perished in the overthrow.

Both Ishmael and Esau married irreligiously, and both were rejected, and turned perse

cutors.

The first blasphemer that was stoned by God's command is marked as an offspring of one of these marriages—his mother had espoused an Egyptian.

The first captivity of the Jews after their settlement in the Holy Land is ascribed to this cause. The whole passage is very instructive. It is said that the remains of the nations' were to prove Israel, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandment of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves therefore the anger of the Lord

ESSAY ON MARRIAGE.

27

was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia and the children of Israel served Chushan-rishathaim eight years.'

David married the daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur, by whom he had Absalom,the disgrace and curse of his family.

The case of Solomon is a warning to all ages. His son Rehoboam, that lost the ten tribes, sprang from one of these forbidden marriages -his mother was an Ammonitess.

The marriage of Ahab is thus awfully noticed: 'And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethball, king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him. But there was none like unto Ahab, who did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.'

What was it that Ezra so grievously lamented, and so sharply reproved? It was, that the holy seed had mingled themselves with the people of the land.'

And what says the zealous reformer, Nehemiah? Their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews' language, but according to the language of each people. And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, Ye shall not give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their daughters unto your sons, or for yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things! Yet among many nations was there no king like him, who was beloved of his God, and God made him king over all Israel: nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin. Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives!'

'Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.'