the banquet prepared by the Queen. On this occasion the King repeated the question he had put to his consort on the previous day, when she answered in these words, "If I have found favour in thy sight, O King, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request for we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the king's damage." The King, thereupon, inflamed with anger, inquired with a voice of thunder, "Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?" To this the Queen replied, "The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman." The King instantly rushed from the apartment into the palace garden, whilst Haman, seeing that "evil was determined against him," implored the Queen to intercede for his life. Presently the monarch returned, and ordered his attendants to cover the culprit's face, as a sign of his being sentenced to death. One of the chamberlains then mentioned the gallows fifty cubits high which Haman had erected for the object of his own hatred and

vengeance. Ahasuerus at once ordered the fallen minister to be hanged thereon, and his house to be given to the Queen, who bestowed it on Mordecai.

By this discomfiture of the Jews' principal foe, the decree issued against them did not become void, it being the law of the country that no royal command, bearing the royal seal, could ever be rescinded. At Esther's intercession, leave was therefore given to the Jews to defend themselves to the utmost if attacked, it being expected that very few would attempt to carry out the original order under such circumstances. However, as many as 500 of the assailants appear to have been slain in the capital; among them were Haman's ten sons, who, at the Queen's request, were hanged on the gallows; "but on the spoil laid they not their hand."

To celebrate the providential warding-off of the conspiracy by which the very existence of the Hebrew nation was placed in jeopardy, an annual feast was instituted, and even at the present day, the 14th and 15th of the month of Adar are kept by the Jews, the former as a fast, the latter as a day of rejoicing-Purim, a

The Feast of Purim.

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Persian word meaning lots, because it was by the casting of lots that Haman fixed the time for their extermination. It may be added that on the day of Purim, which in the current year, 5630 of the Jewish era, falls on the 17th of March, 1870, it is a time-honoured custom with the Jews to send presents to one another, and on the eve of that day they are in the habit of reading in their synagogues the book of Esther, engrossed for that purpose on a scroll of parchment, called Megilath Esther. I have dwelt on this subject at great length to bring home to the reader's mind a thorough consciousness of the Lord's wonderful and gracious dealings with His people, whose providential preservation becomes in the instance recounted more particularly striking on account of the vast disproportion of their enemies' and their own physical resources.

CHAPTER IV.

The Persian Satraps. --Revolt against Darius Ochus.-Alexander the Great.-Ptolemy Philadelphus.-The Septuagint.-Alexandrian Jews in Prosperity.-Antiochus.-The Temple dedicated to Jupiter Olympius. The Asmonean Princes.-Pharisees.--Sadducees.— Antipater-Herod the Great.-Birth of Christ.

BUT we must now return to Jewish history proper. After the death of Nehemiah, 415 B.C., the Persian satraps by whom the Jews were ruled, seem to have confined themselves exclusively to levying the annual tribute, apart from which all internal affairs were left to the conduct of the Jews themselves, the high-priest being naturally considered the head of the nation. The Persian reign over the Jews was, on the whole, a mild one. Only once we hear of an · attempt to revolt against Darius Ochus, king of Persia, and for this Palestine was severely punished by fines and devastation, and once more a large number of Jews were carried away as captives to Babylon. Whatever may be historical in the apocryphal Book of Judith must have.

Alexander and Alexandria.

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occurred at this time. Peace was again restored, till Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian empire, and made Palestine a province of his own, about 330 B.C.

In this period the Talmud mentions Simon the Just as high-priest. He seems to have been the last of the above-mentioned "men of the great synagogue," who since Ezra's time kept up a regular succession; and to him we owe, as already remarked, the final revision of the canon of the Old Testament as we have it at this day. Alexander, to whom it is said Daniel's prophecy concerning his conquests was shown, was so gratified that he granted the Jews exemption from tribute during the sabbatical year, and gave freedom to all the Jews in Media and Babylonia. To this king also is traced the origin of the important Jewish community of Alexandria which in later times became highly important, for it is stated that Alexander induced some 100,000 Jews to settle in his new Egyptian city. Other parts of Egypt too contained numerous Jewish colonies, for on the destruction of the first temple by Nebuchadnezzar many Jews fled to Egypt and throve there. Later again, when Palestine was wrested