away? The boys will discover that as they grow older. Sometimes we call that spirit party-spirit, but in its essence it is nothing less than envy. It would have been sweet if we could have done this or that, but some one else has done it and it is torture. We must remember that God has many instruments. We must pray and struggle for a new humility. We must take as our spiritual motto for the week that 'God fulfils Himself in many ways.'

THE next thing that we observe is this, there is no mistaking one who has been with Jesus. When they saw the boldness of Peter and of John, they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus. That is not the mere statement of a fact of history. It does not mean that it dawned on the council then that these men had been in Jesus' company. John was on friendly terms with the authorities, and I fancy that all of them had heard of Peter. It means that when they saw the boldness of the two, they recognised the spirit of Jesus Christ. Like a flash, the demeanour of Christ upon His trial rose up before them; it was He who spoke through the two prisoners. There is no mistaking one who has been with Jesus. He may speak out as Simon Peter did; or like John he may not open his lips; but the world has an instinct for the Master's presence, and can tell when a man has truly been with Christ. I dare say you have all heard the eastern story of the lump of clay that exhaled an exquisite fragrance. And when some one asked it how it smelled so sweet, it replied that it had been lying near a musk-rose for days. There is an unmistakable fragrance in a life that dwells continually near the Rose of Sharon.

AGAIN this noble truth breaks from these verses, that

loyalty to God is our first duty. It must have been hard for Peter to disobey the council. I think it would

be harder still for John. They were both Jews, both steeped in Jewish feeling, nor had they lost their reverence for Jewish rule. Now comes the moment of crisis in their history. They are faced by the greatest choice to which a man is called. On the one hand is the past -the world-authority. On the other hand is the clear will of God. We know what Peter and John chose in that hour. It was very simply and very quietly done. Yet the future would have been far different for them both, and the story of Christendom would have been altered, had they swerved from the will of God in that decision. We can never tell the issues of our choices. They reach far further than we ever dream. We only know that when we choose as Peter did, we may leave the future with John's and Peter's Lord. The scene reminds us of Luther at the Diet, refusing to comply or to retract, and saying, 'Here stand I. I can do nought else. God help me. Amen.'

LASTLY, we mark this in the story, the great argu

ments for a risen Christ are facts. It was not the preaching of Peter that silenced the council. It was the presence of the man who had been healed. It was a man, touched by the power of heaven, who was the sure witness of an ascended Lord. It is by facts that we prove the resurrection. It is by the long history of Christendom. It is by the experiences of countless hearts that are inexplicable save for a living Christ. Men may deny that rising from the dead. They may think it is but an idle tale. But when they behold the man who has been healed, like the Jews they can say nothing against it.

I

FORTY-FOURTH SUNDAY

Morning

HAMAN AND MORDECAI

Passages to be read: Esther v. 9-14; vi. 1-14.

NSTEAD of telling her desire to the king immediately, Esther chose to delay matters for a little. There is a Latin proverb, Cunctando restituit remdelay will sometimes save the situation; and though it is true that delays are often dangerous, sometimes (as here) they are tokens of true wisdom. Esther made a great feast for the king and Haman. Then she invited them to a second feast on the morrow. You can imagine how Haman's heart would glow, as he stepped forth from the banqueting chamber of the queen. His dreams were golden. His sky was full of glory. He had reached the pinnacle of his desire. Then suddenly, and in his proper place at the king's gate, he stumbled on his hated Mordecai-and there was no reverence here; no bowing or salaaming. It was intolerable to this intoxicated courtier. He hurries home, and unbosoms himself to his wife and to his friends; somehow, they must get rid of Mordecai. Lady Macbeth would have had him stabbed in the dark; but Lady Haman had a more politic way. Let them get ready a gallows (of twice the usual height), and then get the king's permission for a hanging. And so the gallows was built, and the gallows was used; but whom it was used for, we shall see by and by.

NOW that very night King Xerxes could not sleep.
Now
'I think the king is but a man, as I am,' says
Shakespeare in his great play of Henry V.; and the

But

attendants who watched King Xerxes tossing, would doubtless be whispering that to one another. They would smile to think that he commanded a hundred and twenty-seven provinces, yet could not command an hour's refreshing sleep. Generally, when an Eastern king was wakeful, he called for music. If he was a saint like David, God's statutes were his songs. to-night, nothing would please this fevered autocrat, but that one of his chamber-boys should read to him. 'How do you know,' a Bedouin was asked, 'that there is a God?' 'In the same way,' he replied, 'that I know in looking at the sand when a man or beast has crossed the desert-by His footprints in the world around me.' And so in this story we hear nothing of God, but we feel that He knoweth what is in the darkness. The book that was brought was the Annals of the kingdom. The page that lay open bore Mordecai's name. For the first time Xerxes heard of the plot upon his life (ii. 21-23), and how it had been frustrated by Mordecai. reward this Jew in royal fashion-and with that good resolve he fell asleep. Then dawns the morning, and Haman is in the court, and the king's mind still runs on Mordecai. He summons Haman into the bedchamber, and asks, 'What shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour?' And how Haman, thinking that the man in question was himself, suggested a royal procession through the streets; and how his heart grew like a stone, when he heard that the man was Mordecai, all that brings our splendid passage to a close.

Now

He would

OW the first thing to impress us in these verses is how the lack of a very little may spoil all. Haman would have been supremely happy, but for this one Jew who sat in the king's gate. When he went home from the banquet of Queen Esther, he talked to his friends of nothing but his glory. I have no doubt they had heard it all before, but a king's favourite can take many liberties.

To crown all, there was this second banquet, to which the king and he had been summoned on the morrow. Yet whenever Haman caught a glimpse of Mordecai, his golden cup was filled with bitterness (v. 13). Had Mordecai only done him reverence, the sun would have shone in its full glory on Haman; but Mordecai refused to do obeisance, and somehow that took the brightness out of all. I think that the boys in Shushan envied Haman. If they had his horses and his chariots, would they not be happy? But as they grew older they would come to see that all the horses and chariots in the world, and all its feasts and all its gardens, might lose their charm through the lacking of one thing. Very often that one thing is love. The lack of love will take the glory from things, as certainly as Mordecai did. It is thus that in the new-found love of God, a man finds everything becoming new.

AGAIN, our passage teaches this very clearly, that

nothing is so blind as vanity. We have a proverb that tells us love is blind, but vanity is blinder still. In that glorious story Waverley, when Captain Waverley goes to church for the first time in his regimentals, Scott remarks,' There is no better antidote against entertaining too high an opinion of others, than having an excellent one of ourselves at the very same time.' He means that Captain Waverley was blind to the bewitching glances of Cecilia Stubbs, he was so taken up with his own new uniform. A blindness like that had fallen on the heart of Haman. He thought there was no one in the kingdom but himself. It never occurred to him that any one else than he could be the man whom the king delighted to honour. His vanity had made him very blind, and being blind he fell into the ditch. Will the girls especially keep that in mind? They will misread so much, if they are vain. The unutterable pity about conceited people is that they miss all that is best and worthiest in others.