It is a puzzling book. There is a great deal in it that is revolting. The background on which Esther's deed of heroism was done is ugly and repulsive. She lived in a social state that was degraded and base, containing in it customs and habits that almost sicken us who, through Christ's mercy, have been lifted into comparative purity and sweetness. You remember the story. A dissolute Persian monarch, in a drunken frolic, requires of his queen to do a deed that ran against all that was womanly within her, and she refused. Mercilessly he deposes her from the throne, and he sets to to select another queen. The fair maidens of the land are collected, and in a very disgusting fashion presented to the tyrant, and from among them he chooses the beautiful young Jewess Esther, and makes her his queen. One cannot but pity her for having lived in such a time, for having had to play a part on such a stage of the world's story. One may even fairly ask the question, if it had not been nobler if she had not been presented by her guardian in such a revolting competition? But it is no good for us finding fault with the actual course of the world's story. If God was not too fine to lead men in all the bygone days—polygamy and such like practices were tolerated in the Old Testament time, because of the lowness of men's hearts, as Christ explains to us—it is a mistake in you and me being too fine to recognise God where God was numbering Himself among transgressors, that He might lift mankind to His own level. And then the narrative proceeds; presents to us a succession of cruel, unscrupulous intrigues, mainly between Esther's guardian, Mordecai, (a Jew whom one cannot admire and love, taking the picture of him drawn in this book) and the king's favourite courtier, Haman. In the course of the rivalry between the two, the very existence of God's people throughout the Persian empire is imperilled. Partly through Haman's scheming, but also through dauntless devotion to what they believed to be the cause of God, and which was the cause of God, in spite of the earthliness and imperfections attaching to its soldiers and defenders, partly by evil fixed to them, partly through nobility and goodness, a drama is presented to us, a struggle of heroism and bravery, and in the centre of it is that young queen doing a deed that we cannot but call Christlike.