human wishes, and the blindness and evils of our passions, at the same time exhorting them to place their happiness in religious and moral duties. And of the emptiness and fragility of worldly grandeur, these times afforded two striking instances; Xerxes, who in a mad expedition against Greece, threw away an army of ten hundred thousand men; and Themistocles, who, after saving Athens by the defeat of that multitude, was banished.

Pilgrim. Now, father, if you please, let us hear farther of the Jewish concerns.

Cleophas. And they contain particulars not unworthy of notice; for that people now rejoicing in the exercise of their religion, and the enjoyment of ease and freedom at home, after a harsh servitude in a foreign country, were on the point of being extirpated root and branch.

Pilgrim. Surely they did not return to their former provoking impieties.

Cleophas. The case was this, Xerxes had been succeeded by his son Artaxerxes Longimanus (also styled Ahasuerus), who repudiating his queen Vashti, married a Jewish maiden called Esther. Mordecai, her uncle, not paying to Haman the king's favourite, the homage required, this haughty courtier surreptitiously obtained an order for slaying, on a fixed day, all the Jews, young and old, and of both sexes, wherever they were found. Imagine the consternation and agonies of a people, thus, by royal authority, devoted to destruction; the mutual lamentation of parents and children, of husbands and wives: whilst the enemies of the Jews insulted over them, and prepared weapons for the massacre. But all moderate persons openly said, "The king's goodness had been surprised, and exclaimed against the inbuman adviser of such a decree." Now the Jews had nothing but death before their eyes; when, behold, God who is wonderful in all his works, averts the danger, Scarce had the order reached the

farthest borders of the land, when fresh expresses, who had been strictly commanded to use all possible expedition, bring advice of a revolution at court: That Haman, at whose instigation the order had been issued, was hanged on a gallows above seventy feet high; that Mordecai, who had given information of a plot against the king's life, was advanced to the highest honour; and that at the request of queen Esther, the former order was repealed, and in case of any injury offered to the Jews, they were allowed to repel force by force."-This their enemies at first refused to credit, till they had the mortification of seeing it formally published. On this signal deliverance, a sacred writer of ours says, "The Jews had light and gladness, and joy, and honour, and in every town a feast and a good day; and the people of the land became Jews, and the fear of the Jews fell upon them."

Pilgrim. Men being apt to be lifted up with prosperity, did not the Jews entertain some hopes that their former monarchy would be restored?

Cleophas. Very small ground was there for any such conceits. Indeed the government of their priests went on in quiet and good order. Eliasib, who had succeeded Jehoiakim in that office, held it above forty years and on his decease it was conferred on Jehoiada. Yet from the natural mutability of all worldly things, this was no sure foundation for any higher hopes: for, omitting the bloody wars which exhausted Greece, that country was afflicted with a strange pestilence; the hands, the feet, and even the heads of some dropping off; great numbers, impatient of the burning heat which attended this distemper, threw themselves into any waters, where they miserably perished. Other countries also groaned under wars and other deleterious calamities.---Amidst such sudden changes, and such accumulated miseries, what encouragement for hope? On which account Socrates, Hippocrates, Aristophanes, and

other philosophers of these times, taught, that the good of the soul demanded our chief attention; and their dogmas they recommended by their shining examples.

Pilgrim. The good of the body, however, is not to be neglected.

Cleophas. To be sure; and the histories I am relating to you chiefly turn on the concerns of the body, worldly prosperity and adversity, yet as documents to bring us finally to the permanent felicity of the soul.

Pilgrim. What became of the Persian monarchy? Cleophas. Longimanus dying, after a reign of fortyfour years, the crown devolved to Darius Nothus, in whose eighth year Johannan was made ruler of the Jews; which dignity he held fifty-three years. Nothus was succeeded by Artaxerxes Mnemon, who, after giving his brother Cyrus a decisive defeat, reigned thirty-six years. After him Ochus sat on the Persian throne twenty-six years, and made very consi derable conquests.

Pilgrim. Certainly very remarkable things must have happened in these times.

Cleophas. Many, indeed. But what signify to us the ransacking of Rome by the Gauls, the great philosophers of Greece, Plato, Aristotle, and others; or the splendour of king Mausoleus' tomb, which was extolled as one of the wonders of the world.--All such things are too mean, and withal too perishable, to be made any account of: For where are now the walls of the vast Babylon, that prodigious work of queen Semiramis, the circuit of which was at least twenty-two miles, the height twenty-five yards, and on the breadth three carriages might go abreast; some hundred thousands of men were employed about them for many years; where her army of 1,700,000 foot, and 200,000 horse, with which she overcame Zoroaster, an Eastern monarch, whose forces amounted to 400,000.