DOMESTIC PEACE AND HAPPINESS.

[REV. H. H. MILMAN.]

N every relation of domestic life, whether nearer

IN

or more remote, if differences of opinion should arise, as sometimes they will unavoidably arise, few can have studied human nature so imperfectly as not to have discovered that the peaceful influence of the kind and gentle, is more efficacious than the angry vehemence of the intemperate. Supposing that we feel, without any improper or unbecoming assumption of superiority, the painful conviction that the Christianity of our dearest and most intimate friends is defective. Be assured that men judge, in general, according to the Scriptural precept of the tree by its fruits. The noiseless and unpretending exercise of the Christian virtues, will work with tenfold greater force than the repeated argument or the earnest exhortation. Excepting, or scarcely perhaps excepting, the miracles wrought by our Lord and his apostles, the lives of the early Christians were the most effective means of the conversion of the world. The sudden change of so many of all orders from cruelty and licentiousness, and ungodliness, to humanity, to purity, to rational piety, through the blessed hope of everlasting life in Christ Jesus, was the great standing miracle of God's grace and power. It was the harmony, the peace, and the holiness of Christian families, which extorted by degrees the homage, and even at length the imitation of mankind.

When it was seen how entirely Christian brethren

became brethren; how Christianity sanctified every natural duty, and warmed, as it were, the blood of kindred to each other; how, wherever the ties of tender relationship existed, it wound them more closely around the heart, and when they were severed by inevitable death, spoke the consolatory assurance of a better and more enduring world, in which earthly attachments might revive for an eternal duration, men began to acknowledge that they hated the Master and the faith alike, without a cause.

The promise made to the Christian not merely of the world that is to come, but of that likewise which now is, was not without clear and intelligible meaning. If, then, the members of a Christian family, instead of harassing each other with unnecessary disputation, would take the apostle's explicit advice, in provoking" each other to good works ;" instead of vying in the knowledge of doubtful points, would vie in the exercise of the acknowledged Christian virtues, we should not apprehend the possibility of the misapplication of our text. We say not that any point of Christian knowledge, or any part of religious practice, can be entirely unimportant, but we may say that there are few of such importance as for an instant to demand the sacrifice of Christian love, Christian meekness, and Christian forbearance.

There are, even in the apostle's estimation, difficult and doubtful points in Christianity: there must be till we have more than the understanding, and holiness as perfect as that of the angels. But it is impossible to misapprehend the meaning of the simple precepts in the apostolic writings, which enjoin both

we

the particular relative duties of different ages and different classes of society, and the general spirit of meekness and charity, without which, though understand all mysteries and all knowledge, though we give our body to be burned, it profiteth nothing." That Christianity which, by any delusion, however apparently accordant with the language of Scripture, engenders in the heart a spirit of pride, and therefore of strife and dissension, belies its name, betrays its carnal origin. Without natural affection, was one of the marks by which the apostle noted the unconverted and unregenerate world. Where natural affection does not prevail, and prevail in the highest degree, we listen not to the Scriptural language which may be for ever upon the lips; we regard not the assertion of superior religious knowledge; we tremble rather than are convinced at the asserted or implied participation in the grace of God's Holy Spirit; and in so doing we are assured that nature, and the God of nature, the Law and the Gospel of Jesus Christ excuse, or rather imperatively enforce our apprehensions of the dangerous, the unrenewed condition of those hearts. "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen," says the apostle, "how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" He who loveth not those who are more closely connected with him than by the ties of Christian brotherhood, how shall he pretend to Christian love either of man or of God?

Let us not consider the whole of Christianity to consist in those virtues, which might and did exist before the revelation through Christ; but be assured

that without those virtues, our faith in Christ is barren and ineffective, and consequently our hope in Christ without reasonable ground or warrant. "Where envying and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work; but the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace, of them that make peace." And if there be a thought which may hallow, as it were, the earnestness of family devotion; if a consideration which may heighten the consolations of the Gospel in the hour of severest trial, even in the last crisis of mortality, is it not the conviction that as the members of a Christian family have embraced one faith, acknowledged one Lord, been baptized with one baptism, they may share in one hope, in one reliance for salvation on the same Redeemer; kindred in blood, kindred in affection, they may likewise be kindred in immortality?

"Behold," says the Psalmist, "how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" And how is the joy, the beauty, the sanctity of that unity, which in the Christian family may comprehend the most remote as well as the most intimate relations, the faithful servant, the " stranger that is within our gates,"-exalted and amplified by the well-grounded trust, that the society commenced on earth may be perpetuated in heaven; that the fellow pilgrims who have shared each other's joys, borne each other's sorrows, assisted each other's steps along the dangerous wilderness of life, shall enter into the same rest: that the voices which have so often united in the daily prayer may also join in the hallelujah of thanksgiving before the throne of grace!

THE IMPORTANCE OF IMMEDIATE

REFORMATION.

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AKE the most favourable view of the case.

TAKE

Admit, that as you approach the boundary of all mortal things, you are thoroughly awake to a sense of your condition, and that you see the necessity of an entire change in the temper of your minds; yet changes of this kind are not, in the ordinary course of events, the work of a day, a month, or a year; still less are they brought about at the closing hour of a wasted and mis-spent life. You may grieve, you may confess your transgressions; you may deplore your habitual and determined resistance to the truth; you may offer up your prayers; but this is not repentance, the blessed repentance which will bring you effectually, as sinners, to the mercy-seat, or by which you can make your peace with Heaven; it is not the repentance which is able to correct and purify, to amend and save. If you are sincere, and have nothing else to distract you, the number and magnitude of your transgressions will arise in awful retrospect, and conscience will unfold scenes, which if you are not more or less than human, you cannot behold without amazement. 66 Innumerable evils have compassed me about. Mine iniquities have that I am not able to

taken fast hold upon me, so

look up; they are more than the hairs of my head,