When Mordecai saw what was done, he rent his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city and cried with a loud and bitter cry. He published--he could not conceal--his grief and terror; and his crafty foe perhaps exulted in his misery. The long struggle between the Amalekite and the Israelite seemed now to be concluded. The fall of the Jews seemed to be sealed. All the power of the Persian empire was arrayed against them. They were prisoners in her different provinces, appointed to execution! All human power and authority and presumption of success was on the side of Haman, and against his intended victims. Mordecai had no hope on earth. His trust was alone in the God of his fathers--the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob--the God often defied by Amalek. In his distress he presented himself, clothed in sackcloth, at the gate of the royal palace; but no one arrayed in the garb of sorrow might enter the haunts devoted to luxurious pleasure. Yet the sight of his distress and the tones of his deep grief arrested the attention of the attendants of the queen, and her chamberlain reported the circumstances to her. No tokens of sympathy, no expression of condolence, however grateful, could assuage the grief of Mordecai in this hour of terror and alarm; and even though commanded by the queen, he declined to lay aside the tokens of wo, while he diligently sought to convey to the secluded Esther an account of all the machinations of Haman, and the assurance of the imminent danger to which her nation was exposed, and in which she was involved. He not only sent her a copy of the edict which condemned the Jews, but he charged her to supplicate the king on their behalf. The young queen must have felt like one awakened from a sleep to find herself upon the brink of a precipice. Her situation was full of danger. The flush of royal favour was past. She was neglected and forgotten. Her splendid palace was indeed but a prison, and her lordly consort might prove her executioner. For a long time she had not seen the king or received the least token of royal favour or remembrance, and a new favourite might have succeeded her in the court of the capricious voluptuary. Yet she was sternly charged by Mordecai to rouse herself, meet the peril, and, if possible, save her people, while he taught her to recognise the designs of a wise Providence in her elevation. "Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"