3. We cannot hold back from Christ's cause with impunity.. It can do without us, but we cannot do without it. " Whosoever will save his life," said our Lord, " shall lose it." If religion is a reality, to live without it is to suppress and ultimately to destroy the most sacred portion of our own being. It is a kind of suicide, or at least a mutilation. If it is possible for man to enjoy in this life intimacy and fellowship with God, then to live without God .is to renounce the profoundest and most influential experience which life contains. If Jesus Christ is the central figure in history, and if the movement which He
' C. 11. Spurgeon.
540 OPPORTUNITY
set agoing is the central current of history, then to be dissociated from His aims is to be a cipher, or perhaps even a minus quantity, in the sum of good. It may, indeed, in the meantime facilitate our own pleasure, and it may clear the way for the pursuit of our personal ambitions; but when we look back on our career from the end of life, will it satisfy us to remember the number of pleasant sensations we have had, if we have to confess to ourselves that we are dying without having contributed anything to the real progress of mankind and without ever having seen the real glory of the world?
Not once or twice in our rough island-story, The path of duty was the way to glory : He that walks it, only thirsting For the right, and learns to deaden Love of self, before his journey closes, He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting Into glossy purples, which outredden All voluptuous garden roses.
Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory :
He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands.
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To v/hich our God Himself is moon and sun.^
IV.
Every Opportunity is a Special Call.
" Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this ? "
1. Mordecai sees the exigency of the time. He sees some-
, thing more. He believes in an over-ruling Providence. He
has watched the gradual grouping of events, and knows they
^, have not come by chance. A little while ago it might have
^ Tennyson, The Duke of Wellington.
ESTHER IV. 14 541
struck him as strange that a Jewess should sit upon the Persian throne ; but now he understands it. One higher than Ahasuerus circled with the coronet Esther's brow; One who does nothing without a meaning and an end. The man, in his high-souled faith, reads God's reason, and understands why Esther has been exalted. "She has come to the kingdom for such a time as this.". The life of thousands is placed in her hands. Now she has an opportunity of accomplishing her Divine destiny, and. shall she not be equal to the occasion ?
^ These words instantly lit the whole career of Esther with a new and solemn meaning. It was, then, not for nothing that she was queen, and it was not an accident that had set her upon the throne. This was the crisis to which, throughout the brilliant, happy years, she had all unconsciously been borne ; and now she was to prove to the world whether she was a queen in name only or also in deed and truth. The honour of queen she had enjoyed ; the higher honour of the heroine she had yet to achieve. The appeal of Mordecai flashed a light upon her destiny. In a moment she saw the drift of the past, the meaning of the present, the vastness of the opportunity ; and she swiftly made up her mind. " 1 will go," she said. '■' Let all the Jews fast for me ; and, though it is against the law, I will appear before the king ; and if I perish, I perish."^
2. Grod's providential purpose; man's present opportunity: that is how we are to read the lesson of this marvellous history. A purpose clearly written on the face of events, and to be readily deciphered from their grouping; but still so written that men must open their eyes if they would see it, and open their heart if they would understand it. In former days, when the people were hurrying from their bondage, when they stood in danger, with a sea in front, and an army behind, a Voice spoke bidding Moses stretch his rod over the sea, that a way might be made for the ransomed to pass over. Now we have no voice, but circumstances gather about us ; tlie rod is thrust into our hand, and we miss our deliverance if we do not see that we must wave the rod. In olden time Moses was bidden strike the rock, and water gushed forth. Now we see the thirsting multitudes, and again the rod is put in our grasp. There comes no water if we do not see that we must strike. We are not in intellectual and religious infancy. We