CHAPTER III.

PRACTICAL LESSONS.

Ir is not very difficult to see that Peter, at the time he wrote this Epistle, was fast approaching that better rest where he should no longer be an out-door but an in-door servant of his Lord and Master Jesus Christ. There runs through the whole of these Epistles a fatherly and affectionate sympathy, the most touching in itself, and most grateful to every one who feels the ills, and aches, and trials, and troubles of this present world. There is also mingled with all his consolatory suggestions much practical morality; precepts, beautiful, and pure, and just-so just, that when you compare them with the level of the heathen morality of the day in which Peter lived, you are constrained to infer and there is no escape from the inference—that Socrates, and Plato, and Seneca, and Cicero, and the great moralists of heathen times, wrote as human nature guessed, but that Peter wrote as the Holy Ghost from heaven inspired him.

He begins this chapter by an address to wives: "Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands." This is plainly the duty of the wife, and constantly repeated in the New Testament; but, singular enough, whilst the wife is commanded invariably

to obey, there is not one instance of the husband being commanded to rule. Now, there is in this a delicate but real wisdom. To obey is the difficult thing, and therefore the wife is told to obey; to rule is very gratifying to flesh and blood, and therefore the husband is never told to rule: the tendencies of human nature were seen by him who inspired the precept, and guarded against in the admonitions that are here given.

Then, in the next place, you will notice that even that subjection is not the subjection of a slave to a master, of a subject to a tyrant; but it is a subjection rather in order than in feeling, in dignity, in duty; for as you will perceive, according to the whole of this very chapter, and the references that are given in it, woman is raised to a dignity in the light of Christianity, to which she was never raised before, and is not raised in any heathen land. Go to China, where the female infant is left upon the streets to die. Go to Hindostan, and the Hindoos, so sympathized with by manywhere the mother carries her babe in her bosom, and casts it into the Ganges, and thinks it is a sacred act; and if asked why she does so, she answers, It is only a girl." Go to Hindostan, where the woman grows up, and becomes a wife: she is degraded, and treated as a chattel, not a woman; she is sunk beneath all the level that man occupies. In some countries, she is merely a toy; in other countries, she is a slave. Only in proportion as the light of Christianity blends with the laws and statutes of the realm, and saturates the hearts of the people, does woman rise to her just and her proper dignity-the companion, not the subject and the slave, of man. It is with great quaintness, though with great force, that Matthew Henry remarks, "Wo

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man was not taken from man's foot, to indicate that he was to trample her to the earth; nor from man's head, to indicate that she was to rule him; but from man's side, to indicate that she was to be his companion and his equal."

"Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands;" and why?"that if any obey not the word "—that is, the gospel preached-they may by you, by your meekness, gentleness, chaste conduct, be won to embrace the gospel. And here is the true position of woman: her position is that of quietness, of meekness, of gentleness, of persistency in what is good; and every woman should know that these influences exercise a power upon man which no argument, and no retaliation, can ever for one moment yield.

Then he goes on to allude to the adorning of woman; and he says, "Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart." Is this, now, an absolute prohibition of all outward ornament? I answer, unquestionably not. You must not take as an absolute inhibition what is really relative. For instance: “Labour not for the meat that perisheth; but labour for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life." That is not a prohibition to work for one's bread; on the contrary, every precept in the Bible shows that if any man will not work, neither should he eat; and that the way to be able to give something, is the submitting to very hard work to earn something. But the meaning of the passage is, Labour not so much or so zealously for the meat that perisheth as for that which endureth to eternal life. So here, let the adorning of a wife, let

her ornament, let her chief glory, let her main attraction, not be the plaiting of the hair, and wearing of gold, and putting on of apparel; but let her true ornament, that which she should think most of, that which constitutes her intrinsic and real beauty-let it be the ornament which the vulgar eye cannot see, but which the discerning eye cannot mistake,—the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God, and ought to be in the estimate of man, of great price. It is, therefore, relative.

The apostle then lays down several practical moral precepts. "Be ye all of one mind; render not evil for evil; eschew evil, and do good. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous." And then he says, “Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?" Here is a very important lesson; the path of safety is always the path of righteousness. Whenever you have any doubt about a path that leads to prosperity and happiness, always select that which is right; and in the long run you will find it is most expedient.

He says, in the fourteenth verse, what will sound so strange to a heathen, "If ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye." Why, the heathen could feel, If I have done wrong, and suffer for it, I shall be satisfied; but how apt are we to say, if we have done what is right, and receive suffering in return, This is intolerable. And yet the inspired penman says, “If ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye." You have a precedent in the great exemplar, Christ; you are treading in the paths that were trod by apostles, and saints, and martyrs, and them of whom the world was not worthy. Do not, therefore, murmur that the bitter

cup is put into your hands; but say, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me ;"—for flesh and blood does not like suffering;—but if it be otherwise, then "the cup which my Father giveth me to drink, shall I not drink it?"

Then he says, "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts"-keep a sense of his presence, a sense of responsibility to him, a recollection of his promises, a knowledge of his holy will. "And be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." Now, here is a very important maxim. How true is it, that so few Protestants now are able to say why they are Protestants. But you will find that the poorest Roman Catholic is able to explain his faith; and I commend highly the Roman Catholic priest for so instructing his flock. The only thing that one regrets is, that Protestants, with a pure faith, and with facilities of instruction vastly greater, are not more frequently able to give a reason for the faith that is in them. If we only learnt this in time, there would not then be so many great and noble persons going over to the Church of Rome. It is because they have no real faith in them, that they grasp at the plausible pretensions of the Roman Catholic Church. If they knew their own creed, and the solid and immoveable foundations on which it stands, and the irresistible arguments by which it can be defended, they never would leave the living bread of God for the gilt gingerbread of the Pope of Rome.

Then he goes on to state, that we have an example in our sufferings; for Christ suffered for our sins.

Then there is a passage which has been the subject of much misapprehension,-" By which also he went