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not overlook. There are some who deem themselves too sinful to be saved; some whose cup of iniquity is indeed well-nigh full, and who, when aroused to a sense of it, are overwhelmed with terror. What must they do? Whither must they betake themselves? We are not surprised though they should try reformation, for where there is true repentance there will always be renunciation of sin. But let the sinner be in the very agonies of dying, pressed down under the tremendous load of high-handed transgression, and having no time left for reformation of life, what must he do? whither betake himself? We have to announce to him the great truth that "the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin," and that "him that cometh unto God through him shall in no wise be cast out." And with these Scriptures syllabled in his ears and lodged in his heart, we have no difficulty in telling him what he must do, and whither he must betake himself. He must go in unto the King-not one whose wrath he has to dread, but in whose redeeming love he has to confide; not waiting till he is better, but urged by the desperateness of his case to instant action, and throw himself in all his conscious helplessness on his mercy. O no! There is no hope, no help, no remedy, no refuge for you, but this. Look where you will, try what experiment you may, everything else will be in vain. Your darkness and despair will only be deepened apart from this. But go in unto the King, and even though your darkness be as midnight, there shall gleam forth a star of hope; and though your despair be even as death, there shall be awakened in you the pulsations of a new life. You must perish if you do not. You can but perish if you do. So let your resolve be that of Esther, and Jesus will bid you a cordial and happy welcome. "I will go in unto the king, and if I perish, I perish."-McEwan.

Go gather together all the Jews.Great is the power of joint prayer; it stirs heaven and works wonders. Oh, when a Church full of good people shall set sides and shoulders to work, when they shall rouse up themselves

and wrestle with God, when the pillars of incense shall come up into his presence, and their voices be heard as the voices of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder (Rev. xiv. 2), what may such thundering legions have at God's hands! Have it they will: Coelum tundimus, preces fundimus, misericordiam extorquemus, said those primitive prayer-makers (Rev. ix. 13); the prayers of the saints from the four corners of the earth sound, and do great things in the world; they make it ring. It was the speech of a learned man, If there but one sigh come from a gracious heart (how much more, then, a volley of sighs from many good hearts together!) it filleth the ears of God, so that God heareth nothing else.

I also and my maids will fast.-She herself would be at the head of them, as Queen Elizabeth also told her soldiers at Tilbury camp for their comfort; and a Cæsar used say to his soldiers, Go we, and not Go ye-non ite, sed eamus; and as Joshua said, I and my house will serve Jehovah (Josh. xxiv. 15). Esther's maids must fast-must fast and prayor they are no maids for her.-Trapp. "Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own."-Shakespeare. Heroical thoughts do well befit great actions. Life can never be better adventured than when it shall be gain to lose it. There can be no law against the humble deprecation of evils: where the necessity of God's Church calls to us, no danger should withhold us from honest means of relief. Deep humiliation must make way for the success of great enterprises: We are most capable of mercy when we are thoroughly empty. A short hunger doth but whet the appetite; but so long an abstinence meets death half way, to prevent it. Well may they enjoin sharp penances unto others who practise it upon themselves. It was the face of Esther that must hope to win Ahasuerus; yet that shall be macerated with fasting that she may prevail. A careful heart would have pampered the flesh that it might allure those wanton eyes; she pines it that she may please. God, and not she,

must work the heart of the king. Faith Faith teaches her rather to trust her devotions than her beauty.-Bishop Hall.

A well-known author once wrote a very pretty essay on the power of education to beautify. That it absolutely chiselled the features; that he had seen many a clumsy nose and thick pair of lips so modified by that awakening and active sentiment as to be unrecognizable. And he put it on that ground that we so often see people, homely and unattractive in youth, bloom in middle life into a softened Indian summer of good looks and mellow tones. Secular education may do a great deal; but sacred education will do vastly more. The true beautifying power for woman is the gospel, is that principle of benevolence which it ever infuses. How nobly beautiful, as well as grandly heroic, must Esther have now appeared as she resolves to save her people at the expense of her own life if need be.

It is with him as with Esther in her undertaking for the Jews. If she should go, and the king not hold forth the golden sceptre to her, she was but a dead woman; but then if she did not go there was no other way to save her and her nation from ruin, and therefore she resolves, "I will go in unto the king, and if I perish I perish :" so here, if I go to Christ (thinks the trembling sinner), and take sanctuary in him, it may be justice may pursue me thither. Oh! but if I go not, then there is nothing for me but certain destruction; thereupon he resolves, I will go to Christ, I will lay hold on him, and if I perish I will perish there; if wrath seize on me, it shall find me in the arms of Christ; if I die, I will die at his feet. When Joab had fled for refnge to the tabernacle, and caught hold of the horns of the altar, Benaiah, sent to execute him, bids him leave his sanctuary: "Thus says the king, come forth." Nay," says Joab, "but I will die here;" if there be no mercy for me, no remedy but I must die, I will die here. Says also the believing soul, but if I must die, I will die here; if justice smite me it shall smite me with Christ in my arms; though he kill me, yet will

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I rely on him; here will I live or here will I die; I will not quit my hold, though I die for it.-Clarkson.

The bloody plot being thus laid by Haman, the king's minion, behold the footsteps of God's favourable signal, and eminent presence for his people and with his people in their deadly dangers, and that in raising up in them a very great spirit of faith, prayer, and mourning, and by raising an undaunted courage and resolution in Esther: "And so I will go in unto the king, and if I perish, I perish" (Esther iv. 16). This she speaks not rashly or desperately, as prodigal of her life, but as one willing to sacrifice the same for the honour of God, his cause and people, saying, as that martyr, "Can I die but once for Christ?” Esther had rather die than shrink from her duty. She thought it better to do worthily and perish for a kingdom, than unworthily and perish with a kingdom. Here was a mighty preference of God in raising Esther's heroical courage and resolution above all those visible dangers that did attend her attempt of going in to the king against the known law of the land.-Brooks.

Behold us willing to suffer in this life the worst it may please thee to bring upon us; here lay thy rod upon us; consume us here, cut us to pieces here, only spare us in eternity!-St. Augustine.

The heroic response of Esther might well send her foster-father home content. It was the full reward of all his care in years gone by to have a daughter worthy of Abigail, and Ruth, and Deborah, and Hannah. She would not act on impulse, but came to a resolution which was not to be put in force for three days. It is an advantage to any one, more to a woman than to a man, to move forward rapidly on the wave of a warm impulse; but she relinquished that advantage, and looked steadily at the worst issue. "If I perish, I perish." Her resolution was humble and prayerful. Let those who will, despise prayermeetings and special requests; remembering the young men of Babylon, and the company in the upper room before Pentecost, believers can afford to sit easy under the world's scorn.

"Fast

ye for me: I also and my maids will fast likewise."

That was the secret of Esther's heroism. When the third day came she put on her royal apparel, and did not appear unto men to fast; but meanwhile there was "another King" to whom she could go without delay, with whom she could remain longer, and to whom she could pour out all her heart. The mere force of contrast with the exclusive monarch of Persia brings up comforting and tender thoughts of the Lord Jesus, who does not debar from his presence the weary and heavy-laden, but bids them come; who has chosen the contrite heart as his earthly dwelling-place; who proclaims it as the glory of his home above that there he shall wipe away all tears.

A seraglio is a sad enough place, with its year-long monotony, its petty jealousies, its gilded restraints; but when, as the curtain now falls, we see Esther, with firm-set lips, going to arrange for a long prayer-meeting with her maidens, we feel that this queen has brought a good thing into a sad place. The religion of the heart is never monotonous. Mordecai also moves homeward with a new light in his strong face, to gather such of his brethren as are within the capital, that they may strengthen one another in seeking "the God of Israel, the Saviour who hideth himself." For three days there is silence. After, we shall see Esther and Mordecai again in their place, acting with plenty of decision and vigour; but let us not forget this " pause more full than speech," this "hush more sweet than song." A. M. Symington, B.A.

Woman's self-devotion.-Courage is a noble feminine grace-courage and selfdevotion. We are so accustomed to associate courage with physical strength that we do not often think of it as preeminently a feminine grace when the feminine nature has been fully unfolded and trained, but it is. The reckless rapture of self-forgetfulness, that which dominates and inspires persons and nations, that which is sovereign over obstacle and difficulty and peril and resistance, it has belonged to woman's heart from the beginning. In the early

Pagan time, in the Christian development, in missions and in martyrdoms, it has been shown; in the mediæval age as well as in our own time; in Harriet Newel and Florence Nightingale; in Ann Haseltine as truly and as vividly as in any Hebrew Hadassa or in any French Joan of Arc. You remember the Prussian women after the battle of Jena, when Prussia seemed trampled into the bloody mire under the cannon of Napoleon and the feet of the horses and men in his victorious armies, Prussian women, never losing their courage, flung their ornaments of gold and jewellery into the treasury of the State, taking back the simple cross of Berlin iron which is now the precious heirloom in so many Prussian families, bearing the inscription, "I have gold for iron." That is the glory of womanhood; that passion, and self-forgetfulness, that supreme self-devotion, with which she flings herself into the championship of a cause that is dear and sacred and trampled under foot. It is her crown of renown, it is her staff of power.—Dr. Storrs.

"Fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink for three days."-They were not called with Esther to go in unto the king. A far less dangerous service was required from them. But, what they can do, and are called to do, they must do as conscientiously as Esther. There are many great works which are beyond our strength, or out of the line of our calling; and yet we may and ought to take a part in them, by strengthening the hands of those who are called to undertake them. Paul had many helpers in his work of the gospel, even among those who could not, or to whom it would not, have been allowed to speak in the Church. We all ought to be fellow-helpers to the truth. When many go abroad to spread the gospel amongst heathens, we find it our duty to continue in the land of our nativity; but, without removing from it, we may promote the work in which they are employed, by our contributions, or at least by our prayers.

There are some who beg the prayers of others, and yet pray little for themselves. Esther, who requested the Jews

to fast for her, told them that she also would fast, and would abstain as strictly from food as she desired them to do. She had been accustomed to a wellfurnished table; but she was not thereby disqualified from afflicting her soul by fasting when she saw it to be her duty. She, no doubt, observed the annual fasts prescribed to the Jews, and she determined to observe this extraordinary fast which she herself prescribed. She hoped to obtain mercy from the Lord, that she might escape death by the laws of Persia, and might be the instrument of the salvation of her people. But, if she miscarried, her fasting and prayer would be proper acts of preparation for her latter end.

"I and my maids will fast."—Some, it is probable, of Esther's maids were heathens when they came into her service. Yet, we find her promising that they would fast. She can answer for them, as Joshua for his household, that they would serve the Lord. If mistresses were as zealous as queen Esther for the honour of God, and the conversion of sinners, they would bestow pains upon the instruction and religious improvement of their female servants. If women may gain to Christ their own husbands by their good conversation, may they not also gain the souls of their servants? and if they are gained to Christ, they are gained to themselves also. Esther expected much benefit from the devotional exercises of her maidens. Paul expected much from the prayers of his converts. Those whom we convert from the error of their ways will be our joy and helpers upon earth: they will be our joy and crown of rejoicing in the day of Christ. "I and my maids will fast."—Esther could not join in the public prayers of the Jews, when they met together out of many families, to strive together in their prayers to God. But she will fast at home, not only by herself, but with her maidens. There are public fasts in which all are expected to join. There ought likewise to be secret and family fasts observed by us, according to the calls of providence, and the situation of our affairs, or the condition of our souls. “And then will I go in unto the king,

If the Lord.

which is not according to the law.". She would not go in unto the king till she had made her supplication to the Lord, and till the Jews had given her the assistance of their prayers. She was sensible, that though "all men will intreat the ruler's favour, every man's judgment comes from the Lord;" and that the hearts of kings are turned by him according to his pleasure. What, therefore, she desires in the first place is, that she may obtain comfortable assurance of the Divine favour. be on her side, she is safe. If the Lord favour her suit, she need not fear the coldness of Ahasuerus, or the mortal enmity of Haman. "The floods may rage. They may lift up their voices and make a mighty noise: but the Lord on high is mightier than the waves of the sea, or the voice of their roaring." But when the fast is over, she will go in unto the king. She will not think that her duty is done when she has prayed and fasted. She will seek, by the use of proper means, to obtain that blessing which she has been asking. The insincerity of our prayers is too often discovered by our sloth and cowardice. We ask blessings from God, and, as if he were bound to confer them, not according to his own will, but according to ours; we take no care to use those means which he hath appointed for obtaining them, or we do not use them with requisite diligence. Esther will go in unto the king, although she could not go in without violating the laws and risking her life.-Lawson.

"He that believeth doth not make haste;" but neither doth he linger like the slothful. Fasting and prayer are preparatives, not substitutes, for active duties. "The Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward." Good resolutions, when difficulties and dangers must be broken through, should be speedily performed; and we should not damp them by prolonging religious exercises. Having spent the time allotted to fasting, Esther rose from the ground, laid aside her sackcloth, and put on her royal apparel. The apocryphal additions to this book

represent her as appealing to God, that she always abhorred these signs of her high estate. That her adorning was in the hidden man of the heart, that she did not glory in her crown and embroidered garments, and would have been willing to have thrown them away for the sake of conscience and the good of her people, is all true. But why should she have abhorred them in themselves? There was nothing sinful or necessarily contaminating in their touch; they were given her of God; they were the badge of the rank to which she had been raised; and had she appeared without them, or worn them in an awkward, slovenly manner, she would have dishonoured her husband, and defeated her laudable enterprise. Esther did not adorn herself to attract the regards of Ahasuerus, but because she felt it incumbent on her to appear in a manner becoming her station. There is no sin in persons dressing according to their rank. The king's daughter may be all glorious within, though her garments are of wrought gold; and the plainest and coarsest garb may conceal a proud and haughty spirit.-Lawson.

Our flesh is always timid when it has to encounter a hazard. My Christ, in his Divine majesty, stands at the entrance into the faith, and sounds the free invitation to each and all, ever

frequent, ever dear, ever happy. One should succour his neighbour in peril and need, and especially the brethren in the faith even at the peril of one's own life. We are born for good not to ourselves, but to others, and thus God oftentimes shows us that through us he aids our own country and the community. Faith is the victory that overcomes the world. We may use ordinary prayer for important blessings. Life can never be spent better than when it is the aim to lose it.-Starke.

A woman is sometimes wound up to firm and determined action when the lives of her kindred are at stake, which surpasses the marvels of heroic story, and sends a wild pulsation of startled admiration to vibrate through all hearts to the end of time. Who can read of Deborah delivering Israel from ruin without rapture? or Margaret Roper breaking through a London crowd to kiss her father, Sir Thomas More, about to be beheaded? or Joan of Arc-that light of ancient France-who, a mere girl, delivered her country from invaders, and restored the crown to her sovereign at the high altar of Rheims? or

"Her, who knew that love can vanquish death—
Who, kneeling with one arm about the king,
Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath,
Sweet as new buds in spring" ?— B. Kent.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH. VERSE 17.
A GOOD MAN'S CHARACTERISTICS.

I. Mordecai went his way pondering. Mordecai was a man of thought, as is plainly seen from the whole course of this narrative. His course of conduct was evidently the result of intense thought. And this was a special occasion for thought. He would still require to ponder deeply, for we must think not only to form our plans, but also after our plans are on their way to accomplishment. This is characteristic of a good man, that he thinks. David often speaks of thinking. "When I thought to know this." "I thought on my ways." The prophets were men of thought. The question was asked, "How knoweth this man letters, or learning, having never learned." The answer may be given-that Jesus was supernaturally endowed, and he exercised himself to acquire knowledge. studied the Old Testament writings, and the ways of men. He thought. He increased in wisdom. There was mental development in the man Christ Jesus. The apostles thought. Goodness is helpful to, and is the provocative of, thought. It enables the mind to see clearly. It stimulates the mind to think deeply. To pray well is to study well. To live in the pure atmosphere of goodness is to

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