impugner of the deity of the LORD, and Pelagius the propounder of the sufficiency of the human will. All these, and thousands more rising up in the ancient and mediæval world, alike from the regions of the ecclesiastical and political strife, form the procession of those I have called essentially proud. An indefinite pride which they counted a virtue, consumed, by a gradual consumption, their vitality, while it lent a brilliant, but sickly lustre, to their eye.

Widely different, and vastly more numerous, are the followers in that other wake: men proud of something; an attribute, a talent, or a circumstance. Nebuchadnezzar, boasting of his vast dominion; Sardanapalus, tenacious to the death of indomitable purpose. Xerxes, proud of millions; and Leonidas, proud of tens. Pompey, proud of being leader of the aristocratic East; and Cæsar, proud of guiding the destinies of the more popular West. Alexander, boasting of worlds which left no more to conquer. The Crusader, and the Knight of the fourteenth century, consciously proud of the possession of indomitable valour and a righteous cause; the Cid, the scourge of the Moor; and Edward, the conqueror of France. All these but suggest the multitudes

which crowd over the historic pathway of the world, whose eye gazed upon some distinctive feature of their own, and who thanked GOD that they were not as other men are. They suggest to us that if so many have gone before as the types of these classes of character, many more are likely to be formed upon their mould in the most private pathways of the busy and tempted world. One word in conclusion.

If members of the former class would correct their faults and prepare to meet GOD, they must first try to realize definite and dogmatic Christianity; they must hold and gaze at the creed, as if it were a limited, impersonating form of truth, revealed by GOD. They must get rid of their tendency to subjectivity and contemplation, leading them into scepticism or latitudinarianism in their views of religion, and consent to become dogmatic. They will find it hard work, but the essential feature of their work is that they worship an idol made without hands, even "self."

ARISE TO

AT THIS TIME, THEN SHALL THERE ENLARGEMENT
AND DELIVERANCE
THE JEWS FROM AN-
OTHER PLACE; BUT THOU AND THY FATHER'S

HOUSE SHALL BE DESTROYED: AND WHO KNOWETH
WHETHER THOU ART COME TO THE KINGDOM FOR
SUCH A TIME AS THIS?"

1. THE portraiture of Esther in Holy Scripture is very distinct and beautiful. She is one

of those whom a few touches have been sufficient to give to our eye with high finish and clear characteristic features. And more than this, she forms one of a drama whose scenes are very perfect: Ahasuerus, Vashti, Mordecai, and Haman. Each of these has his own definite character, and works out his own

part in the scene to which they were called of GOD. But while this places before us a perfect arrangement as it were of many scenes which now occur continually before our eyes in the world; (such as the machinations of designing men, the pride of their power, the persecution. of the good and powerless, the gentle influences of the holy by degrees working their end for the subversion of evil and the establishment of justice through the recoil of the designs of the wicked on their own head,)—a light is thrown on the background which is usually enveloped in darkness and shadow to our eye, and we see the Hand which guides it all—the machinery by which all is moved, and the end to which each action tends.

However similar the scenery may be to that of the ordinary events of life in the world, equally similar are the motives and ends of both. What seems to be the accidental combination of political arrangement, is really the direct ordering of heaven. What seems the singular coincidence of individual influence working beneficially is really the immediate plan of Providence; and what appears the paradoxical recoil of the scheme of the wicked on their own head is to be found among the eternal