WARNING TO THE WICKED.

67

tinued to escape, and to deaden conviction by saying, There will be time enough hereafter. You have been thrown into trouble, and then fear overtook you. The trouble has been removed, and then you have become as thoughtless as before. How long is this to last? You say, "Not always." "But when," we ask, "are you to submit to the Lord, and to renounce your sins?" If not now, oh, remember the doctrine we have this day had under review-that repentance may be too late. May the Lord give us wisdom to understand His dealings, and to improve the day of merciful visitation. Amen.

IN

LECTURE IV.

CHAPTER II. 5-20.

the last lecture, which embraced the opening verses

of this chapter, the topic which chiefly engaged our attention was that of the overruling providence of God, which converts even the sins and follies of men into instruments for working out His sovereign purposes. There was nothing in the transactions referred to that could in any sense have been called miraculous; and yet the deliverance of the Jews, which, as we shall see, was effected through the instrumentality of Esther, was as really brought about by the hand of God as was their escape from Egypt by the passage which He opened up for them through the Red Sea. And so in the history of every man there are divine interpositions, which, although to us they may appear the simple results of the common laws of nature, are as illustrative of the allcontrolling power of Jehovah as were those miracles by which bread was rained from heaven for the supply of Israel's wants in the wilderness, and water drawn for their refreshment from the flinty rock. The miracles recorded in the Scripture, which consisted in works performed by superseding or setting aside the ordinary laws of nature, were necessary for the confirmation of

MORDECAI AND ESTHER.

69

the truths revealed in the Scripture, as truths dictated by the Spirit of God. But the more closely we inspect the whole scheme of providence, the more satisfied we shall be that even those parts of it, those events which present to our view nothing that is accounted mysterious or miraculous, are as truly regulated by divine power and wisdom as if we actually saw that wisdom and power immediately exercised in the disposal of them. And if no other lesson than this were to be derived from an examination of this book, it would be profitable for us to direct our attention to it.

In the verses which form the subject of the present lecture, there is laid before us the opening scene of the strange and eventful history of Esther. Look first to ver. 5-7: "Now in Shushan the palace there was a certain Jew, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite; who had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captivity which had been carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away," &c. It is singular that it should have ever been imagined, although it has been by some, that it was Mordecai who had been carried from Jerusalem to Babylon, at the time when Jeconiah, also called Jehoiachin, was dethroned, and led into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. In that case, he must at this time have been considerably more than a hundred years old, which is altogether inconsistent with the part he is represented as performing in this book. It is evidently Kish, his great-grandfather, who lived in Jeconiah's

70

MORDECAI AND ESTHER.

time, and who was carried to Babylon, on which supposition Mordecai would be a man probably in the prime of life at the period referred to in the text. His cousin Esther, or Hadassah (which was her Jewish name), had been left an orphan. Whether Mordecai had any family of his own we are not informed; but, moved with compassion for her in her desolate and unprotected state, he took her to his house, and brought her up as his own daughter. The maiden was fair and beautiful, it is said the expressions mean that she was of graceful form and beautiful countenance and from what is brought out in the history, the endowments of her mind were in harmony with the graces of her person. Sad, however, might the destiny of the lovely orphan have been, but for the kind and tender-hearted Mordecai. If she had been cast upon the world without friends and without a home, the very beauty and accomplishments with which she was so highly gifted might have rendered her only a prey to some of those designing and selfish wretches whose chief object it is to seduce and ruin those who are fair and beautiful as she was. But the eye of the Lord was upon the helpless maiden, to protect and guide her; and Mordecai had her brought to his house as her home. No doubt he felt that he was sufficiently rewarded for his benevolence, in watching over a creature so interesting as Esther must have been-in marking her progress, and receiving the tokens of her confidence and affection. But there were other rewards in store for him, which he dreamt not of, to recompense his work of faith and

labour of love. In taking her into his house, and charging himself with the expense of her education and maintenance, he may have been regarded by some of his covetous neighbours, especially if he had a family of his own, as laying himself under a burden which a prudent man would have rather endeavoured to avoid. But he thought not of this. He acted according to the spirit of the divine law, and the impulses of his own generous heart; and that from which selfishness would have turned away as a burden, he found eventually to be in every respect a precious treasure. A blessing followed him because he had pity upon the orphan.

Now, there are some remarks very obviously suggested by this part of the narrative. I should say that here we have a fine example of the practical power of true religion, in leading to a benevolent regard for the comfort and well-being of the unprotected. It cannot be denied indeed, that specimens of the same kind of benevolence are to be found among the heathen. The ties of kindred have been felt and acknowledged where the light of divine truth was never enjoyed, and there are on record acts of generosity and self-denial performed by men ignorant of the Bible, which put to shame the selfishness of many who live under the teaching of the word of God. But there is this difference; that Mordecai, in what he did for Esther, acted only in accordance with the maxims and spirit of the law which came from heaven-only did what the law positively enjoined, and what, as professing to be subject to it, it became him to do. One manifest purpose of the Mosaic dis