6. Sympathy in your calling. Nothing contributes more to sustain a man and to urge him forward in the duties of his calling, than the lively sympathies of his wife. If she discovers a pleasure and a pride in his employment and his success, if she gives him her cheering support in his trials, if she enters with warm and lively interest into the very objects which most engage his own heart, he is rendered more than doubly strong and happy.

Whatever his employment be, she must have that sympathising spirit which will adopt it as soon as she is married, and love it for his sake. I recently heard a lady, whose husband is the owner of a large manufactory, on which he has bestowed much time and interest, incidentally remark that nothing affords her so much pleasure as to visit the establishment; that she frequently spends whole hours with the greatest delight, in examining the beauty of its machinery, and the elegance and results of its operation. Now I will venture to say that this greatly adds to her husband's happiness.

It is always a proud and happy moment for the devoted husband, when the eyes of her for whom he so much lives and labors, gaze with delight upon what his hands have wrought, or his mind conceived. It is strange that so many wives are insensible to this fact.

Now unless a lady has lively sympathies, she cannot enter into the spirit of this idea; she will

never think it is not quite as well to let her husband toil on alone, without even being once cheered with perceiving that she appreciates his labor and takes pleasure in it; and the consequence must almost inevitably be, that his affection towards her and his care for her esteem will abate, and he will at length punish her by seeking his sympathy and happiness from some other source.

Make it a primary object, therefore, if you would taste the sweets of domestic happiness, to seek for your wife a person of a lively and sympathising spirit. Depend upon it no beauty of person or grace of manner, or learning, or wit, will ever atone for the absence of this. Without this, you will not long love her with a full heart; and with this, even in the absence of many other desirable qualities, you can hardly fail to love her with a constant and growing affection.

7. Religion. Of all the virtues that can adorn a wife, this is transcendently the most important. An irreligious young man once said to me, "I make no pretensions to religion myself, but I would much prefer a religious wife." He discovered good sense in the remark, but I would never advise a pious lady to marry an irreligious man.

It is truly surprising, that in a world of so many excellent females any man in his sober senses, and especially a Christian, should ever think of taking up with an irreligious person for his wife.

"Be ye

not unequally yoked together with unbelievers ; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrightousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial ?"

Alas! for that Christian who has a vain, earthly, ambitious, fashionable wife. She will clip the wings of his devotion; she will pull down his spirit from the skies, if indeed it was ever there; she will make the family altar an unwelcome place to him; she will, despite of him and unperceived by him, infuse the moral deadness of her own heart into his; she will sadly impair and perhaps utterly destroy his usefulness as a Christian; she will never let him rest, till she has moulded his religion into a shape that will gratify her worldliness, and has demonstrated to all beholders the utter folly of ever being wedded to irreligion, with a view to ef fecting its subsequent regeneration. And if he at last succeeds, after an almost useless life and many sorrows, just to escape from perdition, which it is to be feared few such do, he will come off better than he has reason to expect.

If a man is already united in marriage to an irreligious person, he must of course endure it; but let him never fail to consider this his greatest source of danger. Let him pray constantly and set a double watch against the least approach to her irreligion. While treating her with the utmost

tenderness, let him still never follow her a step in her conformity to the world, but give her the only alternative to abide with him or go alone; and let him never cease to hold it among his greatest of all desires and efforts, to secure her conversion to Christ.

But it is not enough that your wife should be merely Christian, in some low or indifferent sense. If you would know the sweetest of domestic bliss, and secure your own highest usefulness and glory, her piety must be of an eminently pure and elevated character. Her heart must be bathed in Heaven. She must be richly imbued with that unearthly, sweet, contented, amiable, benevolent spirit of her Saviour, which by frequent communion with God has learned to look away from this world, and to bear you above all its vexations and disappointments; which will relieve you of one of the greatest of all anxieties, by making you feel that whatever ills may betide you in this changing world, they cannot destroy the happiness of your wife, cannot clothe her sunny face with either frowns or sorrows, cannot in the least disturb the heaven-born serenity of her spirit. O, what a treasure is such a wife!

When you come in from the dust and heat of business, almost distracted with care and anxiety; when you look around upon your little ones, and perhaps forgetting the Master you serve, begin to

indulge solicitude for their temporal necessities, ere you are aware she will steal you away from earth, gather you some sweets and roses from the celestial paradise, and enable you to return to your cares with other hopes and with renewed vigor.

Above all things then, if you have any regard to your temporal peace as well as to your everlasting happiness, let elevated, consistent, well-formed piety be the essential character of her who is to be the chosen companion of your bosom. But remember that to be worthy of such a companion, you must yourself possess the same character.

Let no regard to money, have place among the motives which determine your choice. It is doubtful whether ever a man married for money, who did not or will not see cause to regret it. This is too sacred an institution to be debased, with impunity, by such sordid motives. Not only does the law of God most sacredly guard it against them, but even public sentiment is so wakeful and jealous to protect the sacredness of this institution, that the community are always ready to suspect the man who weds an heiress; and it is only by most convincing demonstrations in his subsequent conduct, that he can persuade them of the integrity of his motives, and induce them to look upon him with the same respect they would if he had married a destitute person.