childlike souls may often, without suspecting it, touch and influence the lives of others for good. Sometimes even bad men feel in their consciences the power of simple goodness. Sometimes, also, those who are wavering at a critical moment of temptation may be checked and turned aside from iniquity by some casual intercourse with an honest and guileless soul. Simplicity and unworldliness are spiritual forces as mighty as they are subtle. They generate an atmosphere which it does men good to breathe. Even Christian people are apt, in seeking to promote the kingdom of goodness, to lean too much on material resourcesto assign far too much importance to earthly wealth and to ecclesiastical position and strategy. But it is character, in the long run, that tells. When a man's "heart is pure," he "has the strength of ten." When a woman is unselfish and unworldly-sweetly and simply and truly good-her influence is as a spiritual magnetism, drawing others towards goodness. To the mind of Christ the babe was a natural emblem of what He wished His disciples to be in spiritual character; and to those who are babes in spirit God gives power as against "His adversaries." Let us

seek, therefore, to cultivate the childlike heart.

Let us also seek to keep our own souls open to the influences of childhood and of the childlike. It is not only through Bible and worship and sermon and sacrament that God works upon our hearts: He has also other and less direct methods of appealing to us. The human atmosphere in which we live is laden with divine and subtle influences which are seeking to penetrate us at every pore of our spiritual being. Let us never shut our hearts against any of these indirect

appeals whereby God would move us to a higher life. Whatever tends to crush the evil lurking within uswhatever rebukes our worldliness-whatever tends to waken better thoughts and holier desires and purer affections-let us welcome as the very breath of heaven! Let us open our hearts to the influences of childhood, and to the lyric melodies of purity and unselfishness. "Out of the mouth of babes has God established strength": and we are none of us so strong in our conflict with sin that we can afford to despise any passing influences that may help us to "still the enemy and the avenger."

VASHTI.

[Reprinted from The Manchester, Salford, and District Congregational Magazine, July, 1883.]

THE one act of Vashti which is recorded in the Book of Esther-her refusal to appear before the king's guests, at the king's commandment-would be quite sufficient to give us the key to her character, if only we had been definitely informed as to the motive of her conduct. But this is just what we are not told. One thing, however, is clear; she must have been a woman of great courage. When we think how the women of an Oriental harem are treated as the vassals and toys of their husbands, we may well wonder at the daring self-assertion manifested by Vashti on this occasion of the royal banquet. She knew the man with whom she had to deal; she knew his passionate temper and revengeful cruelty; she knew that to disobey him thus, before his nobles, would be most mortifying to his pride; and yet she disobeyed him. Perhaps, indeed, she over-estimated her own influence over him; and knowing also his weakness, imagined that she would be able to manage him, after his wrath had spent itself. But, however this may be, she could not have thus defied the despot,

unless she had been a woman of high spirit and unusual courage.

Whether, however, her tact was equal to her bravery, whether she was as gracious as she was highspirited, and whether she had sufficient justification for her conduct, are points which are more open to question. It is often taken for granted that for Vashti to have appeared, under any circumstances, in the presence of these nobles and princes with her face unveiled, would have been an utter violation of the customs of her country, and therefore of the modesty of her sex. Even Josephus seems to have taken this view of the matter; for, with reference to this very incident, he speaks of the "laws of the Persians" as "forbidding their wives to be seen by strangers." Now, if this could be proved, if it could be shown that Ahasuerus was attempting to magnify his royal authority by placing his mere whim above those laws of modesty which were recognized by the whole community, we might well pay our tribute of unqualified admiration to the woman who had the courage to disobey the despot. But, on closer investigation, it does not appear that this was the case. It seems, indeed, that in modern Persia it is regarded as a violation of decorum for a wife to be seen, with unveiled face, by any man except her own husband. But this does not appear to have been the case among the ancient Persians. Doubtless, even then, their women were kept in a certain seclusion; we read of Vashti as giving a separate banquet to the women in the palace. But we read also of Haman as being present at a banquet which Esther had prepared for him and for the king-present, moreover, at her

express wish and invitation. Haman, too, in boasting of this, says, "Yea, Esther the queen did let no man come in with the king unto the banquet that she had prepared but myself": from which it seems that he would not have regarded it as at all surprising if other men had also been invited. This, of itself, is enough to show that the seclusion of women in Persia was not then so rigid as has been often supposed. Then, again, Herodotus-writing about half a century after the death of Xerxes (who is now usually identified with Ahasuerus) tells how certain Persian ambassadors, having come to Amyntas, the king of Macedonia, to demand his submission to Darius, were entertained by Amyntas at a splendid banquet. He tells also how, when they began to drink, one of the Persians thus addressed Amyntas:-"It is a custom with us Persians, when we make a great feast, to introduce our wedded wives, that they may sit beside us. Since, then, you have received us so hospitably, follow this our custom." Amyntas informed them that the Macedonian manners were very different, that with them it was the custom to keep the women separate from the men; but that, as the Persians were now his "masters," he would grant what they had requested. It does not appear, therefore, to have been considered an unbecoming thing in ancient Persia for women to appear in public, in the company of men. And this seems to be further confirmed by the attitude of the counsellors of Ahasuerus, when he asked them what ought to be done to Vashti according to law." It is not, indeed, strange that these courtiers should have fallen in with the angry mood of the king by counselling the divorce of Vashti.

66

M