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 acts of cruelty, to promote that despotism which may banish the remembrance of their enormities, and to dazzle and blind the eyes of their people by the glare and splendour which surrounds their court.  And thus these guilty monarchs, by the patronage of the licentious festivals of heathen worship and the alluring rites of a corrupt religion, compelled their people to sin.  They drowned the voice of conscience and prevented all reflection.

All history has shown us that, as nations have been verging to their ruin, they have yielded themselves to criminal excess and sensual indulgence; and the boasted periods of splendour and high refinement have been but the preludes to long seasons of national calamity or entire overthrow.  Thus we may suppose it to have been with the ancient descendants of Israel.  The courts were splendid and all the arts were patronized, while the thin veil of refinement was thrown over deeply corrupt manners.  The people, departing from a holy faith, were sinking into a sullen debasement, or giving themselves to sensual indulgence and brutal ferocity.

Modern nations have followed in the footsteps of the ancient world.  The same idols are still worshipped under other names—­the same passions rule the unholy heart.