developed this law in their families. They forbade
marriage with Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans, and ungodly persons. With them,
piety was the first desideratum in marriage. The sense of the Christian
church has ever been against religious inequality in marriage. It has
always been felt to be detrimental to personal piety and to the general
interests of Christianity. It limits and neutralizes the influence of the
church, brings overwhelming temptations to lukewarmness in family religion,
and is, in a word, in almost every instance, the fruitful cause of
spiritual declension wherever it is practiced.

Let me, then, exhort you to marry only in the Lord. Such an union will be
blessed. Daughter of Zion! marry such a man as will, like David, return to
bless his household. Son of the Christian home! marry no woman who has not
in her heart the casket of piety. Make this your standard; and your home
shall be a happy, as well as a holy home, and

"In the blissful vision, each shall share
As much of glory as his soul can bear!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

"Give me enough, saith wisdom; for he feareth to ask for more;
And that by the sweat of my brow, addeth stout-hearted independence;
Give me enough, and not less; for want is leagued with the tempter;
Poverty shall make a man desperate, and hurry him ruthless into crime;
Give me enough, and not more, saving for the children of distress;
Wealth oftentimes killeth, where want but hindereth the budding."

The children's patrimony is a vital subject. It involves the great
question, what should Christian parents leave to their children as a true
inheritance from the Christian home? We shall return but a very brief and
general answer.

The idea of the home-inheritance is generally confined to the amount of
wealth which descends from the parent to the child. And this is indeed too
often the only inheritance of which children can boast. Many parents, who
even claim to be Christians, enslave both themselves and their families,
to secure for their offspring a large pecuniary patrimony. They prostitute
every thing else to this. And hence it often happens that the greatest
money-inheritance becomes the children's greatest curse, running them into
all the wild and immoral excesses of prodigality; and ending in abject
poverty, licentiousness, and disgrace; or perhaps making them like their
deluded parents, penurious, covetous, and contracted in all thei