---

The young women are mentioned here as under the teaching and authority of the aged. What now are some of the first elements which Paul insists on in the education of a Christian family? He omits many things which one would have supposed to stand high in the list of young ladies' accomplishments; for example, music, dancing, and the art of binding themselves into the shape of sand glasses. Perhaps the apostle thought them sufficiently advanced in such acquirements, and that therefore he might pass them over in silence. He insists, however, that these aged governesses shall teach the following great elementary principles.

1. That the young woman be sober, wise, of a sound mind, prudent and discreet members of the Church of Christ. The first element, then, in the education of your daughters is wisdom or prudence; and if you begin anywhere else with them, you begin at the wrong end. This wisdom or prudence is not easily defined, but it will appear in the entire character and conduct of their future life; it will enable them to avoid the snares which the ungodly lay for them, and conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the name and the religion of their Redeemer. This prudence is opposed to rashness, enthusiasm, and impulsive resolutions, to which the young mind, and especially the young female mind, is naturally inclined.

2. Then secondly, they are to love their husbands, for without this the house will become a pandemonium, and profligacy and impurity fill the land. Their love to their husbands should be ardent and unchangeable, yielding neither to the seduction of strangers nor to the husband's coldness and neglect at home.

3. To love their children. It may be asked, Is not this love natural? and if so, where is the necessity for teaching it? I answer, bad habits in society can eradicate many of the principles of our nature, and make us more degraded and unfeeling than the brutes. Edmund Burke relates that J.J. Rousseau would not keep his children in his house, but sent them to be brought up in an hospital; and then remarks, "that bears love their young, and lick them into shape, but bears are not philosophers." In India the natural love of our offspring was conquered by the tyranny of a terrible custom, and millions of female infants were destroyed in infancy by the mother's hands! Is the murder of infants altogether unheard of among us? Are there no Foundling hospitals within the bounds of Christendom? Then remember that the Isle of Crete was one of the wickedest places in the world, and the inhabitants mere heathen, and you shall see the force of the exhortation to "love their children." It is an awful fact, which I first heard of in Hamburgh, that in the continental cities there is a class of old wives, real old devils, who are called "child murderesses," and whose office it is to save the mother and destroy the child! In this way myriads of innocent infants are sacrificed, and no eye but the eye of God, the mother, and the murderess, ever knows anything about it!

4. They are to be discreet, which is the same as sober, mentioned in the fourth verse; chaste, viz., placing all their happiness in their husbands and families alone; keepers at home, that they may attend to the affairs of the household, and be an example to their children. It is not the duty of a married woman with a family to engage much in public business, even though it should be of the most important kind. Her place is the family circle, and her duty is to stay at home. We may say the same of much visiting. It is impossible to gad about and take care of the family at the same time; and as to the mother handing over her children to the care of servants, and then giving herself little or no concern about them, I say with Edmund Burke that such conduct would be a slander on the instinct of the brutes!

5. Good; they are to be good wives, faithful and diligent in their household duties. Good is a very expressive word, and is used to denote the highest excellence (Acts 11:24). Good (from which our word God comes, the Good One) I take in its most general acceptation to signify the disposition to bless; it is the fountain of kindness within, from which love, mercy, and all gentle and kind actions flow; "obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God be not blasphemed." The great duty of the wife is obedience, and in this she is a type of the Church's obedience and submission to Christ. Love is common to both, though the natural order is that his should go before and hers follow after, as in the case of Christ and the Church; then obedience is her special duty, even as protection and defence are his. The command, probably, has a special reference to wives who were united to unbelieving or heathen husbands, and teaches that grace never delivers us from the obligations of nature — they are, though believing, to be obedient to their husbands though unbelieving, and the husband, though unbelieving, is bound to love, support, and protect his wife, though she is a believer in the gospel.

(W. Graham, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;

WEB: and that older women likewise be reverent in behavior, not slanderers nor enslaved to much wine, teachers of that which is good;