HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Ver. 13.-The bathos of CO'lljesswn. After all necessary allowances and substitu- tions have been made, it may be very jnstly said that Shakspere's Wolsey is essen- tially dwarfed by Scripture's Haman, and that not the finest of Shakspere's five act plays-wonderful products of human genius ae they are-but must yield to the ten briefer chapters, with their five chief characters, of our Book of Esther. The book is indeed a consummate epic of the human heart. Its photographs ii.re vivid and accurate, but they are not the facsimile of a countenance alone, but of things revealed and laid bare, in the fallen type of man, by the moat skilful anatomy. What an extraordinary proclamation it makes, at one and the same time, of the vanity of human greatness and of the greatness of human vanity. How forcibly does it remind us of that Scripture that saith not in vain, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; " and there bids us hold our breath awhile. We can scarcely go on to say, "Who can know it?" for we find it manifestly set forth as known by One at all events, whose finger guides us to the observation of it, and whose pencil limns it. Certainly the present passage lays bare such a heart to the core of it, and at the core it is bad. It ie of an aggravated type. It reveals a miserable creature on his own showing, judged by his own standard, and at the confession of his own lips. We have no difficulty in understanding the description which Haman gives of himself. But the difficulty would lie in crediting the pl1enomenon of any man, knowing his own symptoms so well, being ready to speai( them so frankly, where they are what they are be.re, Let us notice-.- OH, l", 9-14.] THE BOOK OF ESTHER. 113
I. SOME STRIKING AND DISCREDJTADLE FACTS WHICH HAMAN'S OWN LANGUAGJr. REVEALS AD0UT lIIMSELF. Haman finds himself in trouble. He analyses it himAelf, and unhesitatingly publishes the results And in doing so he shows these two things about himself :-1. He can confess without penitence, without shame. In confession one would have hoped to find a favourable symptom. But it aggravates the case if what in ten thousand other instances would have been some redeeming feature, is none here. His confession proves that his trouble is of the smallest kind, and of the smallest quantity. He is exalted with honour, he is laden with wealth, he is closely surrounded with a profusion of earthly blessings. It is the very point of his own representation that he had touched the summit of success. But there was a humble man, no competitor whatever of his, low down on the rungs of the ladder, nor seek- ing to climb higher. He did not cross Haman's path, but Haman sometimes crossed his. This m&n, not for whim, nor to affront, but for his religion's sake, did not make the obeisance which the rest around were making to this rising or risen sun. Hsman did not know the loss by feeling it. He did not know it till some one, who owned to the gift of not being able to do anything so well as mischief, informed him of the fact. And on this omission, recurring at a critical moment of Haman's glory, it is that Haman confesses to himself, to his wife, to his friends specially called together, that all his wealth, glory, promotion are "nothing" to him while Mordecai with- holds his obeisance. This is the confession he makes without one expression of penitence, without one sign of shame. 2. He is content to have self-knowledge without realising any of the benefits that might accompany it. It is not every one who knows his nature's and his own disease so well. There are few who could speak the plague of their own heart so plainly. There was also, apparently, freedom from that form of deceptioa which in things of high moment must ever be the worst-self-deception. Yet if we want to commend Haman for all this, it is impossible. We have to take away more with our left hand than we give with the right. He is not ignorant of self, yet he has no idea of improving self. He is not self-deceived, yet he is not awake to the enormity of his danger. He describes his own loathsome symptoms, yet loathes them not. He speaks them, to boast them. II. THE TERRIFIC FORCES OF EVIL WHICH UNDERLAY THOSE FACTS. 1. Immoderate ambition. From the moment that his lip made the confession which it di<l make, Haman should have seemed to hear it as charging him to come down and "avoid ambition." His confession should have sounded the knell of ambition, since, if not, it were certain to sound another knell. 2. The intense worship of self. Haman must be all, and have all. He cannot let an obscure exile in the land have a thought, a liberty, a conscience, a will of his own. He cannot tolerate the slightest infringe- ment of his own rights. 3. The rankling of unforgivingness. A forgiving spirit would have saved Haman all the destruction that was about to descend upon his head. No wound of any sort whatsoever has such a determined bias towards a fatal result as the wound received and not forgiven. Do whatsoever else you will for that wound, this undone, it is almost certain that, if in itself not fatal, it will become so. 4. A greed that had grown with getting, an appetite that increased with feeding, and which was now rapacious as the grave. Haman had everything except one thing which he would never have missed unless he had been told of it. The ,vhole day was bright but one moment of it, and then it was only overcast. The whole sky was fair and shining except one little touch of it. The whole prospect was glorious except for one duller spot. Life was a luxurious banquet, immensely to his taste, and there were no fingers of a hand writing dread things on the wall to spoil, but it was spoiled. Haman says it was utterly spoiled, profoundly unsatisfactory. One little diminution of dignity, one little drop of incense withheld, one little humble, harmless presence, fascinates him, as a basilisk would, nor releases him till he is lured to his ruin. "Dead flies cause the apothecaries' ointment to stink," says Solomon; and "the buzzing of an insect too near the ear may," says Pascal, "thwart a thought !Lnd put back a discovery fifty years ; " but who can defend the man who says, "I have millions of money, multitudes of titles, honour and glory beyond any ono beside, 'yet all this availeth me nQthing, so lorig as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate.' " • isTHER, i 114 THE BOOK OF ESTHER. [orr. v. 9-14,