Mrs. C. : —

" My Vert Dear Friend,— The kind part you take
in my happiness 'demands my warmest thanks ; and I
beg you will accept them, multiplied by those which my
dear partner presents to fon. Yes, my dear friend, I
am married in my old age, and have a new opportunity
of considering a great mystery, in the most perfect type
of our Lord's mystical union with his Church. I have
now a new call to pray for a fulness of Christ's holy,
gentle, meek", loving Spirit, that I may love my wife as
he loved his spouse, the Church. But the emblem is
greatly deficient : the Xamb is worthy of his spouse,
and more than worthy ; whereas I must acknowledge
myself unworthy of the yokefellow whom Heaven has
reserved for me. She is a person after my own heart ;
and I make no doubt we shall increase the number of
the happy marriages in the Church militant. Indeed,,
they are not so many but it may be worth a Christian's
while to add one more to the number. God declared it
was not good thwt man, a social being, should live alone,
and therefore he gave him a help meet for him : lor the
same reason our Lord sent forth his disciples two and
two. Had I searched the three kingdoms, I could not
have found one brother willing to share, gratis, my weal,
wo, and labours ; and complaisant enough to unite his
fortunes to mine'; but God has found me a partner, a
sister, a wife, to use St. Paul's language, who is not
afraid to face with me the colliers and bargemen of my
parish until death part us.
