several hundred miles away, and I have always found that a man who would build up a strong church must be constantly at it, trowel in hand.  On the 17th of March, 1853, the venerable Dr. Wylie conducted for us a very simple and solemn service of holy wedlock, closing with his fatherly benediction, one of the best acts of his long and useful life.  The invalid mother of my bride (for Colonel Mathiot had died four years previously) was present at our nuptials, and for the last time was in her own drawing-room.  Mrs. Mathiot was a daughter of Mr. Samuel Culbertson, a leading lawyer of Zanesville, and was a lady of rare refinement and loveliness.  She had been a patient sufferer from a painful illness of several months’ duration, and peacefully passed away to her rest in September of that year.

Of the qualifications and duties of a minister’s wife, enough has been written to stock a small library.  My own very positive conviction has always been that her vows were made primarily, not to a parish, but to her own husband; and if she makes his home and heart happy; if she relieves him of needless worldly cares; if she is a constant inspiration to him in his holy work, she will do ten-fold more for the church than if she were the manager and mainspring of a dozen benevolent societies.  There is another obligation antecedent to all acts of Presbytery or installing councils—­the sweet obligation of motherhood.  The woman who neglects her nursery or her housekeeping duties, and her own heart-life for any outside work in the parish does both them and herself serious injury.  If a minister’s wife has the grace of a kind and tactful courtesy toward all classes, she may contribute mightily to the popular influence of her husband; and if she is a woman of culture and literary taste, she can be of immense service to him in the preparation of his sermons.  The best critic that ministers can have is one who has a right to criticize and to “truth it in love.”  Who has a better right to reprove, exhort and correct with all long suffering than the woman who has given us her heart and herself?  There are a hundred matters in the course of a year in which a sensible woman’s instincts are wiser than those of the average man.  There is many a minister who would have been spared the worst blunders of his life, if he had only consulted and obeyed the instinctive judgment of a loving and sensible wife.  If we husbands hold the reins, it is the province of a wise and devoted wife to tell us where to drive.

It is very probable that my readers have suspected that this portraiture of a model wife for a minister was drawn from actual life; and they are right in their conjectures.  In the discourse delivered to my flock on the twenty-fifth anniversary of my pastorate was the following passage, to whose truth the added years have only added confirmation, “There is still another sweet mercy which has been vouchsafed to me in the true heart that has never faltered and