Affectionate Advice.

CHAP. I.

The important nature of the marriage union-The mar ried pair exhorted not to grow remiss in the attentions formerly paid to each other-A hint on the treatment of relations.

As the minister of a benevolent religion, it is not enough for me to have joined your hands together at the altar. It becomes me to follow you from thence with my earnest prayers, that you may long enjoy together every comfort implied in the solemn benediction lately pronounced over you. Let me now add a few useful considerations, with respect to the relation into which you have entered.

It is an important relation; the most so, of any you are capable of forming in this life. It is not your own hap

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piness only, but that of others also, that may be affected by an improper behaviour in this connexion. It is a union constituted with a view, not merely to the reciprocal benefit of the two persons who agree to form it, but likewise to the manners and happiness of society at large.

Smaller communities are the nurseries of larger ones. At a certain time of life, a transplantation is made; and the larger field of society takes its character from those qualities which were brought into it from the little enclosures of family life; you are therefore not to consider yourselves merely as two friends who have agreed to share each other's trials or enjoyments; but as the founders of a little community of rational and immortal creatures, who may hereafter found other small communities, and from whom in process of time a multitude may spring. To this multitude stationed here and there according to the allotments of divine providence, you may

give a cast of character, the influence of which may be matter of pleasure or of pain both to themselves and those with whom they are connected, long after you have ceased to act in the present scene. And does it not deserve, even on this happy occasion, at least one moment's reflection, that though you may never move far from the spot on which these observations are addressed to you; yea, and ere long be forgotten even in this little circle; yet that the effect of what you may be doing here, the good or evil influence of your conduct on this circumscribed spot, may take such a range, as to be felt where the name of even your country is scarcely known?

But even this, though a large view of the possible extent of your influence, is comparatively but a confined one. It may be felt to eternity. The members of your family are immortals. Such also will be their successors.They will not only have a place in society, but an account to render to God.

.*

Before him they must appear, at the great audit of the world, to receive according to the things done in the body, whether they be good or bad; and to you they may be in some measure indebted, for the terror, or the transport they may feel at that solemnity.

From these considerations, see the importance of your new connection, and accept of that advice, which your minister feels it his duty to address to you. He means not to throw a gloom over that joyful scene which now surrounds you. Long may it continue such! and he will partake of those felicities, of which you are the principal receivers, by the pleasure with which he will contemplate them. He is conscious of the best intentions, in suggesting ideas which may infuse into your minds a salutary seriousness. He believes, that you will be gainers by listening to those who admonish, as well as to those who congratulate you on this occasion.

* 2 Cor. v. 10.