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say, His invitations are addressed to sinners, and none need them more than you. You are lost without Him: then make the great effort to lay hold of Him. Job said: "Though He slay me I will trust in Him." You may say: "If I perish I perish, but it shall be at the foot of the cross, looking to Jesus." And I can tell you, my friends, that none ever perished there, putting all their trust in the Lamb of God. Amen.

LECTURE IX.

CHAPTER V. 1-8.

N the last lecture, we saw Mordecai urgent in request

IN

ing Esther to go to the king and plead for her countrymen. His arguments were very weighty, and to this effect, that if the royal edict were put in execution, she herself would not be exempted from the general massacre; that even if deliverance came from some unexpected quarter, she would certainly suffer for her timidity and selfishness: and that she should regard her advancement to the throne as brought about just to render her useful in the present emergency. These arguments produced the desired effect upon her mind; but she knew, at the same time, that in a case where matters so momentous were at stake, and where the success of her undertaking depended upon the temper and feeling of the king when she presented herself before him, something more was needed than a brave heart. The blessing of Jehovah—who, in the language of His own word, "has the hearts of kings in His hand as the rivers of water, and turneth them whithersoever He will"-she felt to be indispensable toward the prosperous issue of her enterprise; and therefore she would have Mordecai engage all the Jews in Susa in the exer

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cises of prayer and fasting, while she herself was to be occupied in the same way for three successive days, so that unitedly they might implore the blessing which alone could work out for them deliverance and enlargement. Then she would face the danger, and perish in the attempt to save her people, if such should be the will of the Lord. This brings us now to the subject of the present discourse. Ver. 1, 2: "Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king's house, over against the king's house: and the king sat upon his royal throne in the royal house, over against the gate of the house. And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, that she obtained favour in his sight and the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the sceptre."

It is impossible for us to understand precisely the arrangements of these royal palaces, which were the abodes of licentiousness and luxury, and which were so studiously shut up from the view of the multitude without. Thus much is known, however, from the examination of ancient ruins, and from the construction of similar buildings in the East at the present day, that there was such separation between the apartments which the king employed for the transaction of public affairs and those which were occupied by his wives and concubines, that there could be no free communication between the two places except by express royal permission. And what Esther had to do implied the departure from all estab

lished usage. She had to come out of her own special residence, and to tread upon ground which no one might presume to occupy, but with leave granted by the king. This seems very strange to us, but such was the law in Persia; and we must therefore connect with Esther's conduct the idea that it was bold and hazardous beyond what any in her place had done before. When Vashti was degraded, it was because she would not submit to an order of the king which involved the humiliation of her sex. She had, or at least might justly suppose she had, the judgment of all the right-thinking in the kingdom upon her side; and but for the king's intemperate excitement, and the too great facility of his counsellors, her case would have borne the fullest examination. But it was against all known law, and in a way hitherto unheard of, that Esther had to act, when she came forth from her own proper apartments, and presented herself before the king, as he sat in the place where none could be received except on leave formally asked and obtained.

دو

But now let us look particularly to the account which is given of this remarkable interview. "It came to pass,' it is said, "that on the third day, Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king's house." I had occasion to mention, that when the beautiful Jewess was first brought into the king's presence, she made little account of such ornaments as those with which the other competitors for the royal favour decorated themselves. Having a better taste and a more modest bearing than they, she sought no extraneous

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adorning to enhance her charms; and though perhaps she herself was of all the least sensible of this, she needed none. But now, on the occasion referred to in the text, she pursues a different course. She arrays herself in her queenly attire, and is decked in all the splendour which the most giddy-minded votary of fashion could have selected to set off to advantage the graces of her person. And why this change? it may be asked. Had Esther become corrupted by the prevailing manners of the court, and learned, like those among whom she lived, to put an undue value upon things which were dazzling to the eye, and which she had formerly regarded as among the vanities of life? No! There were other and more satisfying reasons for her acting as she did on this occasion. Two of these are very obvious. In the first place, it would have been altogether unlawful for her to appear in a mourning garb, and unbecoming in her to have dressed herself in mean apparel, when she was to go into the king's presence in public. There is something due to rank and station, which is felt among ourselves, that would prevent any one from waiting upon a superior without some attention to dress and outward equipment generally. would indicate, not superiority to vulgar prejudice, but absolute coarseness of mind and feeling, to overlook such arrangements, trifling though they may appear intrinsically to be. And at the court of Persia there was still more attention paid to such matters: so much so, as we have seen, that Mordecai could not even sit in the king's gate clothed in sackcloth. For Esther, then,

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