I have confessed to one Philistine habit; let me plead guilty to another. I prefer to read a book rather than hear a lecture, because in the case of the book I can turn to the last page first. I do like to know before I start whether _he_ marries _her_ in the end or not. You cannot do this with a spoken discourse, for you have to wait the lecturer's pleasure, and may discover to your chagrin, not only that the end is very long in coming, but that when it does come, it is of such a nature that, had you foreseen it, you would certainly not have been present at the beginning. The real interest of a love story is its process: though you may read the consummation first, you are still anxious as to the course of the courtship. But, in sober earnest, those people err who censure readers for trying to peep at the last page first. For this much-abused habit has a deep significance when applied to life. You will remember the ritual rule, "It is the custom of all Israel for the reader of the Scroll of Esther to read and spread out the Scroll like a letter, to make the miracle visible." I remember hearing a sermon just before Purim, in Vienna, and the Jewish preacher gave an admirable homiletic explanation of this rule. He pointed out that in the story of Esther the fate of the Jews has very dark moments, destruction faces them, and hope is remote. But in the end? In the end all goes well. Now, by spreading out the Megillah in folds, displaying the end with the beginning, "the miracle is made visible." Once Lord Salisbury, when some timid Englishmen regarded the approach of the Russians to India as a menace, told his countrymen to use large-scale maps, for these would convince them that the Russians were not so near India after all. We Jews suffer from the same nervousness. We need to use large-scale charts of human history. We need to read history in centuries, not in years. Then we should see things in their true perspective, with God changeless, as men move down the ringing grooves of change. We should then be fuller of content and confidence. We might gain a glimpse of the Divine plan, and might perhaps get out of our habit of crying "All is lost" at every passing persecution. As if never before had there been weeping for a night! As if there had not always been abounding joy the morning after! Then let us, like God Himself, try to see the end in the beginning, let us spread out the Scroll, so that the glory of the finish may transfigure and illumine the gloom and sadness of the intermediate course, and thus "the miracle" of God's providential love will be "made visible" to all who have eyes to see it.