counsel, to the highest honours in the realm, and to constant
companionship of the monarch.

As, with trains of slaves and flatterers, he was hastening to the
audience of the monarch, or returning loaded with marks of royal favour,
he passed Mordecai the Jew, seated alone--unknown, unheeded, without
rank or wealth--by the gate of the palace. "Yet Mordecai bowed not,
neither did reverence to Haman." The two men seemed to represent to each
other their respective nations; as if all the hate and malice of the
race, and of long ages of national bitterness, were concentrated in an
individual. They met as the Israelite and the Amalekite; and the
memories of centuries of aggression and injuries, of shame and defeat,
were crowded into the present moment. Mordecai saw in Haman, not only
the foe to his race, but the crafty, unprincipled, unholy counsellor,
who had already alienated the heart of the monarch from his youthful
bride, and whose pernicious influence was spreading blight and
corruption, misery and destruction--through an empire.

Every feeling of the Jew, every principle of an upright, sincere heart
forbade Mordecai to pay the homage demanded of him by Haman. Every
sentiment of national pride, of family honour, of personal dignity, of
self-respect, arose to deter the descendant of Israel from showing
honour to the hereditary foe of his people and the persecutor of his
faith.

Haman, at the same time, saw in Mordecai the descendant of those who had
triumphed over his nation and destroyed his ancestors. The descendant of
Agag, the captive of Saul, he might naturally vent his indignation upon
the tribe that humbled his house and subjected his nation and destroyed
his ancestors. The contempt with which Mordecai regarded him roused all
the ancient malignity of the Amalekite, and his hot blood called for
vengeance.

Yet he thought it a foul shame to lay hands on Mordecai alone. The ruin
of one man would not heal his wounded pride. He meditated a deeper and
more deadly revenge. He resolves to sweep the remnant of the Jews from
the face of the earth!

The proposed plan displays at once all his cruelty and malignity, and
all his crafty influence over Ahasuerus, while it proves the king too
much immersed in pleasure, or too much subjected to his artful
favourite, to regard the welfare of his subjects or the interests of his
kingdom.

Superstitious and idolatrous, Haman cast lots day after day, for
successive days, that a