deserve to be blessed with its lengthened enjoyment; and this children do, who honour their parents. To those from whom they received existence they gratefully acknowledge the obligation, and are therefore deservedly rewarded with the protracted enjoyment of that existence to an advanced age. The nature of the divine promise also demands explanation: it includes not only the eternal life of the blessed, but also the term of our mortal existence, according to these words of the Apostle: " Godliness is profitable to all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." [1] Many very holy men, it is true, Job, [2] David, [3] Paul, [4] desired to die, and a long life is burdensome to the wretched; [5] but the reward which is here promised is, notwithstanding, neither inconsiderable, nor to be despised. The additional words, " which the Lord thy God will give thee," promise not only length of days, but also repose, tranquillity, security, which render life happy; for in Deuteronomy it is not only said, " that thou mayest live a long time;" but it is also added, " and that it may be well with thee;" [6] words which the Apostle repeats in his Epistle to the Ephesians. [7]
These blessings, we say, are conferred on those only, on whose piety God really deems it a reward to bestow them, otherwise the divine promises would not be fulfilled. The more dutiful child is sometimes the more short-lived; either because his interests are best consulted by summoning him from this world, before he has strayed from the path of virtue and of duty, according to these words of the Wise man: " He was taken away lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul;" [8] or because, when the gathering storm threatens to burst upon society, carrying anarchy and ruin in its desolating career, he is called from the troubled scene, in order to escape the universal calamity. Thus, when God avenges the crimes of mortals, his virtue and salvation are secured against the dangers to which they might otherwise have been exposed; or else, he is spared the bitter anguish of witnessing the calamities of which, in such melancholy times, his friends and relations might become the victims. " The just man," says the Prophet, " is taken away from before the face of evil." [9] The premature death of the good, therefore, gives Note, just reason to apprehend the approach of calamitous days.
But, if Almighty God holds forth rewards to remunerate filial dutifulness, he also reserves the heaviest chastisements to punish filial ingratitude and impiety: it is written: " He that curseth his father or mother shall die the death:" [10] " he that afflicteth his father and chaseth away his mother, is infamous and unhappy:" [11] " he that curseth his father and mother, his lamp shall be put out in the midst of darkness;" [12] " the eye that mocketh at his father, and that despiseth the labour of his mother
