of the- satisfaction which a bad conscience shall have become able to yield, of the content a bad conscience will in the possibility of things provide. He has actually filled up the measure of his iniquities (as appears very plainly), and, worse by far than Judas, whose conscience sent him to hang himself, he "sits down to drink" with his king I 2. A leading instance of the destruction of the tenderest relic of perfect human nature. For in the last analysis we must read here, the extinction oJ S'ltmpathy I It is true there may have been left with the man who could do what Haman did sympathy with evil, and yet rather with the evil ; sympathy with the gratuitous causing of woe and the causers of woe. But this is not what we dignify with the name sympathy. This sweet word, standing for a sweeter thing, has not two faces. Its face is one, and is aye turned to the light, to love, to the good. 'Tis a damning fact indeed among the possibilities and the crises of human nature, and of the "deceitful and desperately wicked" human heart, when sympathy haunts it no more, has forsaken it as its habitat, hovers over it no longer, fans the air for it with its beneficent pinion for the last, last time I Oh for the Stygian murkiness, the sepulchral hollowness, the pestilent contagion that succeeds, and is thenceforward the lot of that heart I The point of supreme selfishness is reached when all sympathy has died away. For those whose terrible woe himself had caused, it is Haman who has less than the least pity, and no fellow-feeling with them whatever I The lowest point of loss which our nature can touch here is surely when it has lost the calm energy of sympathy-to show it or to feel it. The proportion in which any one con- sciously, and as the highest achievement of his base skill and prostituted opportunity, either causes unnecessary woe or leaves it unpitied, unhelped, measures too faith- fully the wounds and cruel injuries he has already inflicted on the tenderest of pre- sences within him, the best friend to himself as well as to others. The wounds of sympathy are at any time of the deadly kind, and it only needs that they be one too many, when at last she will breathe out her long-suffering, stricken spirit I For him who is so forsaken it may well be that "he sits down to drink." For the knell is already heard, and "to-morrow he dies."-B.
EXPOSITION. § 7. he quitted the environs of the palace, and CHAPTER IV. "went out into the midst of the city," :MoUll.NING OF MoRDEO.ll, AND OF THE where he gave free vent to his grief and JEWS GEJIERALLY, ON HEAll.ING OF THE alarm, "crying with a loud and bitter cry." DECREE (eh. iv. 1-3). Ha.man had no The signs of mourning were not permitted doubt kept bis intentions secret until the within the walls of the royal residence, and king's consent to them was not only granted, Mordecai could come no nearer than tho but placed beyond his power to recall The space before the gate, where he probably sat Jews first heard of the terrible blow impend- down in the dust "astonied" (see Ezra ix. 4). ing over them by the publication of the edict. Nor was he long alone in his sorrow. In Then they became acquainted with it quickly every province-and therefore at Susa, no enough. The edict was for a while the talk less than elsewhere-" there was great mourn- of the town. Placarded openly in some con- ing among the Jews, and fasting, and weep- spicuous and frequented place, every loiterer ing, and wailing" (ver. 3). The proscribed read it, every gossip spoke of it, every one race made bitter lamentation-" lay in sack- whom it threatened could with his own eyes cloth and ashes," humbled itself before see its exact terms. Mordecai soon " per- God, and waited. As yet no thought of ceived all that was done" (ver. I)-perused escape seems to have occurred to any, no the edict, understood whence it had origin- resolution to have been ta.ken. Even :Mor- ated, was fully aware that he himself and his decai's thoughtful brain was paralysed, and, whole nation stood in the most awful peril. like the rest, he gave himself up to grief. HiB first impulse was to rend his garments Ver. 1.-lllordecai rent his clothes, Com- and put on sackcloth and ashes; after which pare Ezra. ix. 3, 5 with the comment. The OH. IV. 1-17.] THE BOOK OF ESTHER. 83