crimes."

The history of modern nations is not without examples of similar evils
entailed upon those who, professing themselves the heads of a purified
church and a reformed faith, choose (from motives of pride or policy) to
seek an alliance with the adherents of a dark, cruel, and persecuting
superstition. Such a marriage precipitated the Stuarts from the throne
of England, cost one king his life, and the family a kingdom; and the
marriages of policy among princes, contravening the rules of God's word,
are often followed by most disastrous results, and hasten the evils they
are contracted to prevent.

In private life, also, the marriage of those who have renounced this
world for a higher portion, with the worldly and the ungodly, is
generally a source of sin or of sorrow. There can be little congenial
feeling between the spiritual and the earthly; and the servant of God
who chooses a wife from the daughters of sin and the devotees of
pleasure, places himself in a position of peculiar trial.

The spirit of the wife pervades the household. The husband may rule, but
the wife influences. His voice is obeyed, but the wishes of the wife are
consulted. Her friends are the welcome guests. His associates gather
around his board and claim his leisure hour, but her voice whispers to
him in his retirement. She comes between God and his soul. The strongest
of men was shorn of his might by the companion of his bosom; the wisest
was led into foolishness and idolatry by the influence of a corrupt
woman.

We are prone to think of the period to which we have been referring as
one of barbarism, and of the nations of Israel and Judah as ignorant and
uncivilized. Does it not seem as if the very heavens must have been
shrouded and the course of nature changed during the perpetration of
such bloody crimes? Does it not seem as if a natural darkness must have
overspread the land? And yet it was not so. The sun shone in his
brightness, the skies were as serene, the rain and the dew descended,
the vine and the olive ripened, and the flowers shed forth their
sweetness, and all the bustle and show of life went on, as at other
times. The people were oppressed, but the courts of Israel and Judah
were splendid and luxurious; and they doubtless boasted of their
advancing refinement, even when they were sinking into corruption and
depravity. It has ever been the policy of the monarchs who are guilty of
the most atrocious crimes, who shrink from no