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perhaps, better than from any other stand-point of this history, is to beware of the first risings of evil passions.

"For there is nothing in the earth so small that it may not produce great things,

And no swerving from a right line, that may not lead eternally astray."

The personal slight as he considered it, from which we date the rising of Haman's envy, was only the key that opened the gate of a sweeping flood of old hatred, the prejudice of race and an animosity descended from the sires of many generations. But it was the spark that set on fire his treasured up vengeance, a vengeance that had been so long treasured up and added to, that in the explosion it overshot itself. For in trying to wreak it on all the Jews, he lost his revenge on Mordecai, and paid the forfeit with his own neck.

5. We see again that human prosperity is wholly unavailing in the hour of calamity. The glory of Haman yesterday only enhances his disgrace to-day. As mere wordly prosperity does not contain, in itself, the true principles of human happiness, so it does not produce in the human heart the means of enduring adversity. It enfeebles rather than strengthens the mind. It foments desires and raises expectations not proper, and then fails to satisfy them. It fosters a false delicacy that sickens in the midst of indulgence, and by gratifying our sickly appetites, blunts our desires for what is healthful. And thus the story of the sybarite, whose rest was disturbed by the rose leaf doubled on his couch, is realized. The real cause of Haman's wretchedness was not in the stiffness of Mordecai's knees, but

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in his own heart and mind, that were distempered by his prosperity and alienation from the truth. And should not this reflection make us moderate in our desires for wealth, and in our pursuit of earthly pleasures? They are not soul satisfying while we have them, and besides corrupting the mind when abused, they enfeeble it, and engender internal misery. They that will be rich pierce themselves through with many sorrows. Riches lead us among precipices. At the very moment Haman thought himself nearest the accomplishment of his fell designs, that moment a righteous providence was digging the pit for his fall. It was his own hand that plucked the thunderbolt on his own head. His prosperity ruined him—it wove around his head the web of destruction. It is true

"He had been ill brought up and was born bilious;"

He was sprung from an accursed family, but there was no fatality that doomed him personally to so terrible a destiny. It was his bad or neglected education, and the influence of his wicked wife, that brought out his own depravity and crowned it with so fearful a catastrophe. His success, for a long time, but inflamed his pride, and his pride increased his envy, and his envy swelled his revenge, until he was resolved to have the blood of the whole race to which Mordecai belonged. But his plans all miscarried. He failed and lost his own life.

6. It is then an unfair, limited, and partial view of Providence to say that GOD's favors are not wisely and equitably distributed among men. Jacob's complainings on the supposed death of Joseph, and the hard neces

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sity that required Benjamin to go down to Egypt, were

all wrong. The very things that he said, in the agony of his heart, were all "against him," on the contrary, were all working together for his good. As in the raging tempest, every drop of the waves is as obedient to the laws of nature, as are the water drops of the spring branch, that babbled away its sparkling streamlets in the sun the long summer day at the foot of the hill, or by the door of the home of our early youth; so all things in earth and in hell in their wildest excesses, as Iwell as in their calmest flows, are subservient to God's will. There is no event beyond his Almighty power. All times, and all the passages of life are full of melody, if we only believe; if we would only hear of them with love in our hearts to God, and with filial trust in Him, and with good will toward our fellow men. "The Lord God is a sun and a shield; He giveth grace and glory, and no good thing doth He withhold from them that love Him."

The purposes of God are not to be judged of by the events of a moment, nor by the occurrences that are near together. The chain of Providence has many links, some are so high, and some are so far away, that at present we cannot see them, nor can we judge correctly of it till we see the whole chain together. Sometimes God seems to look one way and work another, and to bring about his own ends by unlikely means. Thus we may say, with reverence, it was his purpose to raise up the needful deliverer for his people, at the time of their great extremity. To accomplish this, and yet leave his agents free, He casts around and fetches instruments together, that in the ordinary course of

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things would never have met. Vashti is to be dethroned. The seraglio is to be filled with Persia's fairest レ damsels. Esther is only to please the king. Mordecai is to displease Haman, and Haman is to be disgraced, and Mordecai is to become Grand Vizier in his place, and the Hebrews are to be saved. And all this is done without a single failure. Every thing comes out just right at the right time, and every agent works all the time as if the gratification of his or her own purpose was the only, and the ultimate end in view. The external appearances of Mordecai and Haman, at the opening of the history, are by no means equal, nor were they a true index to the happiness of the one, or the misery of the other, even the very day before Haman's fall. All Persia was envious of Haman, when he was the most thoroughly wretched man in the empire. His honors and riches availed him nothing, so long as Mordecai sat at the king's gate. I know not where to find a confession more humiliating and expressive of deeper wretchedness than this. It was an internal fury that consumed him. Opulence and pleasure could not tame his envy into submission. The sad tale of grief or bereavement, or of losses and persecution, may grow light by being poured into the listening ear of sympathy or of friendship, but where is a man to find relief from a bad disposition? It must have been an astonishing decree of torment that made Haman break through all reserve, and confess that the envy of his own heart made him completely wretched, amid such honors and wealth as should have made him perfectly happy. His domestic council to whom he laid open the cause of his misery must have been greatly astonished, and by such a

confession he must have sunk very low in their estimation. Ah, it were better to have all the evils of poverty or distress heaped upon us, than to have the heart stung forever by the darts of envy. When suffering from affliction in our own person, or in our families, or from the loss of friends or property, the mind can exert itself and suggest relief, and the mind properly speaking is the man himself. But when the cause of our suffering is the disorder of the mind itself-the outbreak of passion, or the gnawing and ever consuming worm of envy, within the very heart-then the last resource is attacked, and the very powers of thought which are for our relief are converted into instruments of torture. The envious man is a candle burning out at both ends; melting away from the heated stick at the lower end, and consuming by the flaming wick at the other. Envy, as the Roman said, has no feast days. It enjoys nothing; even its own advantages are tormented with what others possess. "Invidia festos dies non agit."

7. You must learn, my young friends, to discriminate between real and apparent happiness. Human nature is a poor weak thing, and is the same in all ages and countries. All Persia supposed Haman happy, and envied his honors; but you see how miserable he was— "Even all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew, sitting at the king's gate." The wicked are not so happy after all in their boasted prosperity. "To the wicked there is no peace. They are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. They travel with pain all their days. Trouble and anguish prevail against him. Terrors make them afraid on

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