who can understand the greatness of this joy, and describe it to us? Ah, we shall never comprehend it until we shall have the fortune of hearing those words addressed to ourselves.
That joy shown by similes. But to have somo little idea of it, imagine that the son of a great king is about to choose a bride out of some princely or royal family; what hopes and fears are excited as to the object of his choice who is to be raised to royal dignity! Now if this good fortune, which is considered a great thing in the eyes of the world., should fall to the lot of some poor and noble young lady, who is chosen and publicly proclaimed queen on account of her beauty and virtue, what a change would take place among all the people! What felicitations and joy in the happy family! And what would be the sentiments of the bride herself? We find in the Holy Scripture an example of this kind in the person of Esther, who being an orphan was adopted and cared for by Mardochai. Meanwhile King Assuerus had divorced his queen Vasthi, and had caused ail the most beautiful maidens to be assembled from all his provinces in order to select one of them as his queen; no one, says the Scripture, dared appear before or approach the king, “unless the king desired it, and had ordered her by name to come.” Poor Esther! what were thy thoughts then? What wert thou thinking of when the king called thee? Yet thou art to be the one preferred before all the others. As soon as Assuerus saw her he “loved her more than all the women,…and he set the royal crown on her head, and made her queen instead of Vasthi.”[1] Consider, my dear brethren, the great joy that must have filled the heart of Esther at this unexpected piece of good fortune.
Further explained by similes. Let us represent to our imaginations a far more ordinary stroke of good luck than that. A lottery, as often happens in large towns, is published in the newspapers, offering for a few shillings the chance of winning hundreds and thousands of pounds. Suppose now that all the preliminary arrangements have been made, the time is come, the prizes and the names of the winners are drawn and read out in public before the people; as is generally the case in such things, a child is seated on a stage between two judges, and with one fiand draws out a scrap of paper on which is written the prize, with the other a second scrap containing the name of the winner. How the people then
- ↑ Nisi voluisset rex, et eam venire jussisset ex nomine. Adamavit eam rex plus quam omnes mulieres, et posuit diadema regni in capite ejus, fecitque eam regnare in loco Vasthi.—Esth, ii. 14, 17.
