mestic duties, that they cannot attend to their religious ones. "Where there is a will, there is a way;" and wherever the heart is right before God, there can be no doubt that every woman in this country is usually able to attend divine service once in the course of the sabbath at least. And those who are regularly observant of public worship, will not fail in time of being privately religious as a matter of course.

Suffer me therefore to entreat you of the female sex, who have any feeling of Religion or of common propriety about you, to do all that you can with your neighbours and friends, who are negligent in this respect, to remind them of "the error of their way." How many of them, in the poorer walks of life especially, complain that their husbands are unkind to them!-When will women learn that the most probable cause of their husbands becoming kind and affectionate to them will be their becoming religious—when will wives learn also that the best way to make their husbands religious is for themselves to become so, and to set them a good example?—Does not St. Peter say that the husbands may be "won by the conversation of the wives;" and does not St. Paul say that "the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife;" and does he not ask very naturally, "what knowest thou, O wife, whether

thou shalt save thy husband?" It is the Religion of the Holy Gospel alone that has raised the condition of women in all Christian countries, and elevated them, from a state of slavery, and miserable subjection, to an equality with men. Those women therefore who continue insensible to all the privileges which the Gospel has conferred upon them, are in a state of unhappy degradation indeed, and they must cease to wonder if their condition is not so satisfactory as they could wish it; while, least of all should they complain that their husbands behave unkindly and unworthily to them, until they have tried to win them over to a religious life by their own religious example.

2. I would say to all married men that in the same proportion that their conduct towards their wives resembles that laid down in Holy Scripture, in the same proportion will they increase their own happiness. A bad husband was never a happy man; and, what is more, he cannot be a religious one. Let the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians be your study; and then when you are told to "love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it"— when you read that "he who loveth his wife, loveth himself"-when St. Paul tells you to "give honour unto the wife as unto the weaker

vessel" remember that each act of faithful and conscientious obedience to such precepts-precepts divinely inspired, and tending so materially to the comfort and happiness of society-will give you the sweet satisfaction of knowing that you endeavour to do your parts towards the alleviation of womans' many wants, weaknesses, and sufferings that you are exhibiting a very amiable example to those around you, and fulfilling a very material and important part of your duty both to God and to man. The very best thing that can be said of a man, according to my estimation, would be that he is a good husband-the most dreadful proof of selfishness, heartlessness, and of utter worthlessness, would be that he is a bad

one.

Lastly, I shall briefly address myself to those amongst you, both male and female, who are unmarried. Remember this, my young friends, for it is a divinely inspired sentence, “Marriage is honourable in all." Nevertheless, I would impress upon the minds of all of you at the same time another sentence uttered by the wisest of men—“ Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." All the great train of events and circumstances which befall you in life will proceed from the way in which you regulate your heart and affections. Form no ma

trimonial connections which are disapproved of by your parents and best friends; and above all, and let me impress this upon the recollection of young women in particular, encourage not the addresses of those who live without the fear of God before their eyes, or of the openly profane, or of the drunken, the profligate, or the licentious. If you do, Marriage, instead of being to you what God intends it to be, a solid and substantial blessing, will prove a most dreadful curse, and you will find yourselves at length in the wretched condition of the woman whom Solomon mentions as "forsaking the guide of her youth." Let God, and God's Word, let your parents, and all those who would counsel you well, be your guides, and avoid all companions who are not of the same way of thinking. Pray for God's guidance and blessing in every thing that you do, and then you may safely trust that the married state will prove to you, as God will render it if you choose,-one step on your road to everlasting life.

LECTURE XVI.

VISITATION AND COMMUNION OF THE SICK.

James v. 14, 15.

IS ANY SICK AMONG YOU? LET HIM CALL FOR THE ELDERS OF THE CHURCH; AND LET THEM PRAY OVER HIM, ANOINTING HIM WITH OIL IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; AND THE PRAYER OF FAITH SHALL SAVE THE SICK, AND THE LORD SHALL RAISE HIM UP; AND IF HE HAVE COMMITTED SINS, THEY SHALL BE FORGIVEN HIM.

THE whole of the passage contained in the words of the text relates probably to the miraculous cures performed upon the sick by the Apostles and other Ministers of the first Christian ages.

You will find that St. James there directs that when any Christian brother is sick, he is to send for one of the elders of the Church, who shall pray over him, and "anoint him with oil.”

The anointing with oil was most probably the sign by which the Apostles connected the performance of a miracle of healing with their own.