Meffreth then returning to the requisites of a feast, says that the fifth is the courtesy of the ministers. In that made by King Ahasuerus, it is expressly said, “The king had appointed to all the officers of his house, that they should do according to every man’s pleasure.” How fully will that requisite be obtained in the heavenly banquet! exclaims Meffreth, when even Christ “shall gird Himself and make” His servants “sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.” (Luke xii. 37.) The sixth requisite of a feast is sweet music, and here Meffreth speaks of the music of the heavenly city as heard by St. John in Patmos. The seventh requisite is abundance of light, and on this he quotes the Apocalypse xxi. 23, “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” The eighth requisite is the delicacy of the victuals, and this he applies to the varied delights the redeemed will have in the society of the saints and of the angels in their differing orders and ranks. The ninth requisite is duration. The banquet of Ahasuerus lasted but seven days, whilst that of Christ will be for ever and ever. And lastly, a feast must be peaceful and calm. When Ahasuerus made his banquet, he prepared “beds of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble.” How much sweeter will be the rest of the redeemed in the green pastures of Paradise, beside the ever-flowing waters of comfort! In another sermon on the same Gospel, Meffreth strangely inverts the subject just given, and makes the certain man to be the devil, and he describes with equal power the great feast of emptiness which he prepares. The properties of a feast are of course in this case wanting in every particular. For abundance of light there is outer darkness; for sweetness of music there are never-ending cries of despair; for calm and tranquillity there is strife and discord, and instead of those who are at that fearful feast having delicacy or variety of food, they are themselves the food on which the never-dying worm so sweetly feeds. The commencement of the second sermon for the same Sunday after Trinity is so thoroughly characteristic of Meffreth’s worst style, that I must give it in his own Latin. “Experientia, quæ est rerum magistra,”—note this pompous and stately beginning, and see what it introduces—“sæpe ostendit, quod mus, quandoque intrat promptuarium macilentus, ibique invenit lardum, carnes vel caseum et hujusmodi (and all that sort of thing) comedit, et impinguatur, cumque dominus venit quærens murem, vult fugere per foramen arctum, per quod intravit, sed præ pinguetudine non potest exire, sicque capitur et necatur.