INFLUENCE OF CHILDREN ON PARENTS. 27

himself, learns to live as a man and a Christian for the sake of his children. Then spring up the ideas of social relationships and order, as things which we do not make, but which are every-where about us, and ready to do us service if we will use them, provided for that end by God, and types of that abiding and divine kingdom which is in heaven: then do our children lead us towards the true apprehension of eternal life, while we see it shadowed forth to us in the perpetuation of our name and character upon earth by them after we are dead. And while these are the benefits to the parents, we are to consider on the other hand, that upon the birth of children depends (as Hooker says) first the replenishing of the earth with blessed inhabitants, and then of heaven with saints everlastingly praising God.'1 And if

'Further

1 So the Homily on the State of Matrimony. more it is also ordained, that the Church of God and his kingdom might by this kind of life be conserved and enlarged; not only in that God giveth children by His blessing, but also in that they be brought up by the parents godly, in the knowledge of God's Word; that thus the knowledge of God and true religion might be delivered by succession from one to another, that finally many might enjoy that everlasting immortality.'

men coupled this recollection of the immortal worth of the beings whom they bring into the world, and to the bringing up of whom they thus solemnly pledge themselves, with the thought-witnessed to alike by Scripture and experience that their children are begotten in their own image; if they considered that whatever their own habitual character is, either good or bad, such must they expect to be the disposition with which their children are born; that the sins which they permit in themselves will re-appear as hereditary moral diseases in their children; and that virtues of a Christian life which they have only acquired by many conflicts of faith and patience, will, by God's blessing, become in their children as natural and constitutional beauties and graces, like the seeds of some hot-house flower springing up in the open air of a southern climate ;—if they duly thought of these things, how earnestly would they watch over and keep their own hearts, how habitually would they seek to 'put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and to be renewed in the spi

MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY.

29

rit of their mind, and to put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.'

The second cause why marriage was ordained is the promotion of holiness.

Nature is always oscillating like a pendulum between the extreme points of its range-day and night, summer and winter, birth and death, perpetually succeed each to each in a continual round: spirit is always progressing from truth to truth, from glory to glory, yet so progressing that it never loses the lower as it ascends to the higher, but gathers all into one, into a unity in which there is no succession of parts, but a harmony of all present at once. How then have we erred, age after age, in trying marriage by the law of nature instead of by that of spirit: one age set up celibacy to the disparagement of wedlock, another thinks it cannot honour marriage without denouncing all those who would dedicate themselves to God by a single life, and now

1

1 It is worth noticing that Luther did not set the example which his Protestant successors have followed in this respect.See his Commentary on Genesis, V. 32.

there seem to be some signs of a new oscillation and re-action, against marriage, and in favour of monastic life. The consequences of these partial views are plain in history, though from their greatness not easy to be measured. We cannot easily over-rate the witness which the monks and nuns of the middle ages bore for the reality of man's spiritual being, in a generation of wild and savage men hardly risen out of mere animal existence, when for the sake of Christ and His kingdom they were content to sacrifice even the deepest of earthly feelings and hopes: but not less widely spread than this blessing, has been the curse of an unmarried parish clergy, cut off from human sympathy with their country and with their flocks, and in some at least of the countries of Europe ceasing to be teachers of anything but the grossest vice and immorality. So, on the other hand, an impartial observer must confess that our Protestant depreciation of celibacy has produced much bad fruit along with the good: side by side with our English reverence for marriage, and love of home, there has grown up a spirit of self-indulgence which, by weakly

EVILS OF TOO EARLY MARRIAGE.

31

substituting a premature and reckless marriage for virtuous self-denial, is constantly undermining that reverence and that love, no less than if it more boldly broke through bounds which it has not the bravery to submit to. If those who openly set at nought the law of marriage are justly condemned as vicious and profane persons, are they much better who, in no very different temper, take upon themselves the duties and responsibilities of husbands and fathers before they have either the maturely formed character, or the industriously acquired competence, which are the necessary conditions of their fulfilling those duties? We need not I think go to the cellars of Liverpool or Manchester, in which myriads of families are born and die in a state morally and physically far worse than that of beasts, for the facts which give an answer to this question: these homes, these husbands, wives, and children, do not more clearly-though more obviously and coarsely-tell us what marriage may become, even in a Christian land, than many a household and its inmates who maintain some respectable show before the world,