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intent upon worldly pleasures, and immersed in worldly cares?, Nay, what would it be, even if you lived constantly with one, who, though moral and orderly, and maintaining an outward propriety of conduct, could not understand your views, nor enter into your feelings; to whom you could not speak on religion so as to be understood, and sympathized with, and advised, and comforted; with whom you could not take sweet counsel on the things most interesting to you, and most necessary for your peace? Where would be your comfort? where the serenity and composure of your mind? where a satisfied conscience? where your growth in grace? Alas, even if you retained your own religion, these would be all irrevocably destroyed.

Let the influence which such an unsuitable union would have upon the well-ordering of a family be also considered. What prospect could there be that the sabbath day would be spent as it ought? One party would desire that it should be sacredly devoted to the great purposes for which it has been set apart, namely, a regular attendance on the services

of public worship, rest and retirement from business and company, spiritual conversation, and the religious instruction of those who need it at home. The other, having no deep sense of the duty of a right observance of the Lord's day, nor any spiritual pleasure in the services of the Lord's house, would be glad to embrace every excuse for nonattendance, would not scruple unnecessarily to occupy the time of servants, would urge the receiving or the joining with parties of visiting or pleasure, or otherwise would spend the irksome hours in unbecoming employments or listless indolence. And where again, during every day of the week, could there be any concert and co-operation in the bringing up of children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? What hope of the constant observance of family prayer, and of any due regard to the eternal interests of the household placed under your care? Alas, all these things, even if you retained your own religion, would be wholly neglected, or at least most imperfectly and insufficiently performed. But would there not be an alarming

danger lest you should lose your own religion altogether? Unhappily observation proves that this is too commonly the consequence. The spiritual feeling, having nothing to cherish and strengthen it, but on the contrary every thing to cool and deaden it, begins imperceptibly to decline; it cannot support itself under such a constantly counteracting influence; it withers and dies. Perhaps there may be even something of judicial punishment; and God withdraws that special grace of his Spirit, without which it is impossible. either to begin or to continue to serve him. Then the mind of one who has so fallen away either flees for refuge to an incessant round of dissipation, and becomes more vain and worldly even than others; or it seeks, and thereby easily finds, some cause of quarrel with religion, by which it may endeavour to justify itself; or it falls into a hatred of those principles and habits in which it can no longer delight; or it sinks into despondency, and cries in bitterness of heart from day to day, "Oh, that it were with me as in months past!"

Such are the lamentable effects which may be dreaded when spiritual persons unite themselves to those who are destitute of the principles of true and vital religion. And this apprehension, I trust, will induce all such most sacredly to regard the Apostle's prohibition, and particularly in the case of marriage, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." And in like manner I trust they will remember his divinelyinspired directions, and, when they marry, will marry "only in the Lord."

II. I now proceed, secondly, to take notice of the other particular which seems to have been a point of anxious desire in Abraham's mind respecting his son, namely, that Isaac, even though he should take a wife out of his father's kindred, should nevertheless not be induced by her and her family to return and settle in the country out of which they had been called, and so to desert that which God had promised to give them.

When Abraham required a solemn oath of his servant, that he would not take a wife to Isaac of the daughters of the Canaanites,

but would go to his father's house, and to his kindred, and take a wife for his son, the man naturally observed "Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land; must I needs bring thy son again to the land from whence thou camest?" In answer Abraham strictly charged him, saying "Beware that thou bring not my son thither again;" and he told him that he should be free from the obligation of his oath, only if she refused to accompany him into Canaan. Moreover the patriarch added, in the full confidence of faith, "The Lord God of heaven, which took me from my father's house, and from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware unto me saying, unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence."

I have before observed to you that Abraham stands in the holy scriptures as a pattern of faith. He had been called out of his own country; he had had a promise given him that the land into which he had been brought

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