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him, filling his soul with the most envenomed resentments and tormenting passions. There can be no happiness on earth till there is self-denial and trust. There is no happiness till we begin to crucify selfishness, and to trust in God as the portion of our souls. Even if Haman had been wronged, which was not the case, how much more Godlike would it have been to forgive? There can be no happiness without God's favor. For it is life, and His loving kindness is better than life; but we cannot love God, nor enjoy His favor without loving our fellow-men. Our Lord's rule is, that with what measure we mete to others, it shall be measured to us again. If we do not forgive one another our trespasses, our Heavenly Father will not forgive us our trespasses against Him. And even now, in this life, in the course of Providence, every man's observation for a few years is sufficient to show him, that men generally meet with those evils which they have been the means of inflicting on others. There is more justice in the world than is generally admitted. The world is very apt to treat a man as he treats it. At least, in the long run, he is sure to reap what he has sown.

3. We see here how great a misfortune it is to have friends and counsellors who are ignorant, wicked, or evil disposed. There is a great deal of truth in the proverb, Save me from my friends, and I will take care of my enemies. It is sad, when a man's bosom counsellor is not true and faithful. And there is always danger to be apprehended when the advice of a professed friend is pleasing to our own angry or revengeful feelings. There are no enemies so bad as those of our

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own household; but a man's worst enemy is himself. As long as he is true to himself, neither men, nor devils, nor women can hurt him. How much of Haman's wickedness is justly to be charged upon his wife, we have no moral chemistry by which, at present, to ascertain. But, as in many other cases, so here, if not at the bottom of the business, a woman is in it. Lord Bollingbroke is reckoned among philosophers and great men, but one of the most sensible things he ever said was this: "When I am making up a plan of consequence," said he, "I always wish to consult with a sensible woman." Women are noted for their wit on emergencies, but in this history it was more than Greek with Greek-it was woman against woman-and, at one time, it looked as if the wife of the Amalekite would outwit the Queen of Shushan. Both have been at work, and, to-morrow, both are to make their final demonstration. But she has the victory who trusteth in Him that keepeth Israel, for He neither slumbereth nor sleepeth. If Haman's wife had been a meek, quiet, prudent, intelligent, God-fearing woman, her advice, at first, had been altogether of a different sort, and her bearing toward her husband, when he hastened home from court, almost heartbroken with disappointment and rage, would have been altogether different from what it was. Instead of adding fuel to his malignant passions, she should have endeavored to moderate and restrain them. And, instead of bruising a heart already broken, by adding taunt and reproach to grief, she should have sought to calm him, and make him feel that, with her, in his own home, he was still with friends, respected and beloved, however much

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he had suffered at court. It may be true of young men, as Schiller says, that they carry the stars of their destiny in their own bosoms, but it is not true of married men. Wives carry the stars of their husbands' destinies in their bosoms. The husband's fortune is more fully in the hands of his wife than anywhere else. It is for her to conform to his circumstances. This is both her respectability and happiness. I know not where to find sublimer exhibitions of fortitude and virtue than have been made by women who have been precipitated suddenly from affluence to absolute want. Then, again, a husband's fortune is in his wife's hands, for she, more than anybody else, can help him to make it, and to take care of it. I do not mean that she is to write his brief for the Supreme Court, or that she is to ride in his gig to see his patients for him, or that she is to manage his office; but I do mean, that his health, his vigor, both of body and mind, and his moral strength, depend upon her, and that it is only with these we have a right to expect him to succeed. It is her's to make his home happy, and to gird him with strength by sympathy and counsel. When his spirits are almost overwhelmed, she alone, of all human beings, is the one to minister to him. Her nursing is as sovereign to his sick soul as it is for his ailing body. It is her gentle tones only that can steal over his morbid senses with more power than David's harp. And when his courage is almost gone, her patience and fortitude will rekindle his heart again to dare and do, and meet anew the toils and troubles of life. When I think of Haman's wife, and her bitter reproach when he came home, I am not so much astonished at his wickedness,

as that he did not go further. I wonder, when she chided him, he did not go and hang himself on the gallows she had caused him to have built for Mordecai.

What a misfortune it was that Haman had not a Sweet CHRISTIAN HOME to retire to after the terrible disappointments and bitter experiences of that day! Yes, a sweet quiet Home. But you tell me I forget that he was a man of large estates, great honors, and the owner of a princely palace. True, but a palace is not always a Home. What is a home? It is something for which many of earth's babbling tongues have no term. A home is not a mere residence for the body, but a place where the heart rests and the affections nestle and dwell and multiply. A Home is the place where → children romp and play, and learn to love, and where the husband and wife toil smilingly together, as they trudge up the hill on their way to a better world. If men are not happy anywhere else, O let them be happy at home. Have you not stood before the picture, "the soldier's dream," until you could hear your own breathing? But why so much enraptured with that picture? Is it not because you see the soldier by his bivouac fire fast asleep?-but to-morrow's drum is to awake him to battle and to death. Sleep on, then, happy dreamer. See in the visions of that heart of hearts, that can meet death at the cannon's mouth, your sweet " wee ones" and loving wife, with streaming hair and outstretched arms, welcoming you back from the wars. Yes, it is of Home the tented or the dying soldier thinks. And it is of Home the sailor thinks, on his lonely watch, far away on stormy seas. And the traveler, amid the feathery palm trees, and while gazing on the birds of

bright plumage and gorgeous flowers, why does he seem to be staring on vacancy? "His heart is far away." Seas and lands and mountains, are all past in a moment, and he hears not the birds on starry wings that warble their Asiatic notes for him, but the lark that used to sing above his father's fields; and again he sees his fairhaired brother with a light foot chasing the butterfly by the spring branch, or the sweet sister that left them all to go and sing in the choir of the angels. Home! none but the weary and the worn, the traveled and the soiled of earth can know what it is. And our Home in heaven, the new Jerusalem-shall we not long for it, as birds about to migrate to those sunny lands where there is no more winter, 66 nor any more sorrow, nor any pain, nor any dying?" Just in the proportion that a good woman is a blessing, in the same proportion is a bad woman a curse. Woman's mission is a high and grand one. She is connected with everything that belongs to our race that is noble, refining and hopeful.

Great is the calamity, then, for a community to be under the influence of such opinions or sentiments as are degrading to its women. One bad woman can do more harm in society than a dozen of bad men. An ambitious, ungodly woman as a wife, or a mother, or a member of society, is a poisonous Upas, whose deadly influences are continually exuding and permeating the surrounding atmosphere. As she is man's best helper in meeting the cares of life, and making his way upward to God and heaven, so when she is herself without the fear of God, she is his most dangerous companion, and will utterly destroy his soul and body, and cast him down to perdition sooner, I had almost said, than

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