All this good advice by a man who never married. He lived on to fifty-eight years of age, in eminent bachelorhood. Indeed, it was better for Paul to remain in single life, because he went on such rapid missionary expeditions that no companion could have endured the hardship. Celibacy in some cases is better. Such persons accomplish under such circumstances that which could not be accomplished in the other style of life. I have known men who remain unaffianced in order that they might take care of the children of a deceased brother; and what would become of the world without the self-sacrifice and helpfulness of the maiden aunts I cannot imagine. Among the brightest queens of Heaven will be those who took care of other people's children. Alas for that household which has not within easy call an Aunt Mary! I know that there are caricatures, and ungallant things sometimes said; but so far as my observation goes, they are quite equal in disposition to their married sisters. The state of celibacy is honored again by such persons as Macaulay and Washington Irving in literature, and Florence Nightingale and Miss Dix in philanthropy. But while Paul remained in the single state, he kept his eyes open, and he looked off upon the calm sea of married life, and upon the chopped sea of domestic perturbation. He comes forth in my text to say, "Let every one in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband;" implying that the wife ought to be lovable, so there might be something to love, and the man ought to be honorable, so there might be something to reverence. It is A MOST CONGRATULATORY THOUGHT that the vast majority of people in the married state are well mated. When the news is first announced in the outside world of the betrothal, there may be surprise and seeming incongruity, but as the years pass by it is demonstrated that the selection was divinely arranged. There may be great difference of temperament, great difference of appearance, great difference of circumstances. That is no objection. The sanguine and the phlegmatic temperaments make appropriate union, the blonde and the brunette, the quick and the slow, the French and the German. In the machinery of domestic life there is no more need for the driving wheel than for the brakes. That is the best union generally which has just the opposites. The best argument in behalf of marriage as a divine institution is the fact that the vast majority of conjugal relationships are the very best things that could have happened. Once in a while there is a resounding exception to the good rule, the attempt being made to marry fire and gunpowder, with the consequent explosion in the divorce courts; but in the vast majority of instances the conjugal relation is a beautiful illustration of what the Psalmist said when he declared, "God setteth the solitary in families." Taking it for granted, then, that you are well mated, I proceed to give you some