followers fell at Thermopylæ, while the Persians were yet anticipating conquest and triumph.

We think, then, that it has been satisfactorily shewn that there are not even plausible grounds for imagining that the search for a successor to the discarded Vashti was begun later than the earlier half of the sixth year of Ahasuerus. Nay, we may ascend a little higher, and safely add, that it is thoroughly consistent with the statements of the scriptural historian to believe, that the first proposal to institute the inquiry after a new queen was made before the close of his fifth year. For it was in his third year that Ahasuerus separated himself from Vashti. And as it is not likely that his anger lasted very long after the excitement of the banquet had passed away, we may readily suppose that, before the close of his fourth year, kindlier feelings towards her whom he had rejected were already rising in the royal breast. This circumstance would soon become evident to his watchful counsellors, who would at once see the necessity of setting themselves to discover one whose beauty might win the regard of the king, and prevail upon him to raise her to the dignity which Vashti had forfeited.

It is plain, then, beyond reasonable question, if we are to follow the scriptural record, that the "quest for fair virgins" throughout the provinces of the empire did not commence later than the fifth year of Ahasuerus, while it had its origin in the king's relenting remembrance of Vashti, and to have come under the influence of such a remembrance, most assuredly does not prove Ahasuerus to have been a reckless and debased sensualist.

The writer, whose faulty theory we have been examining, thus peremptorily sums up his case:

"In fine, these arguments, negative and affirmative, render it so highly probable that Xerxes is the Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther, that to demand more conclusive evidence would be to mistake the very nature of the question."

This positive style of assertion sometimes operates as a spell upon the unwary reader, unconsciously inclining him to take for granted that no writer would express himself in such strong language unless he felt assured that he had the very best grounds for doing so. As we cannot, however, for one moment class Mr Loftus with such readers, we can only express our unfeigned surprise that he should too hastily have lent the sanction of his name to statements and assertions which he does not seem to have duly investigated. Let us examine the true value of the authoritative language of the last short extract.

It is generally allowed that Xerxes left Susa on his intended expedition against the Greek republics, in the spring of 481 B.C. The ensuing winter he spent at Sardis, and, in the spring of 480, proceeded to the Hellespont, and crossed over into Thrace. When his naval forces had been utterly defeated offSalamis, in the month of October, the baffled and humbled monarch resolved to return into Asia, leaving Mardonius with a large army to carry on the war. A march of forty-five days, marked by every form of hardship and suffering, brought him, and the force which accompanied him, once more to the Hellespont. In the December of 480, he recrossed the strait into Asia, and again entered Sardis. The battles of Platea and Mycale were fought on the same day, and this day is supposed to have been about September 22, 479 B.C. "The Persian

monarch," says Mitford," remained in Sardis to see the sad relics of his forces which found means to fly from Mycale, and to receive the calamitous news of the still greater loss of his army in Greece. Shortly after, he removed to his distant capital of Susa. On his departure, he ordered all the Grecian temples in his power to be burnt; whether supposing the Deity offended with his long-suffering of them, or that he thought to gain popularity among his subjects of the upper provinces by this sacrifice to the prejudices of the Magian religion." It is also certain that he halted for a short time on his return at Babylon. For M. Rollin writes that Xerxes, as he passed through this city, "destroyed (defaced and plundered) the temples there, as he had already dealt with those of Greece and Asia Minor, doubtless from the same principle, and out of hatred to that sect of the Sabæans who made use of images in their devotions, which was a thing extremely detested by the Magi. Perhaps, also, the desire of making himself amends for the charges of his Grecian expedition, might be another motive that induced him to destroy them." Allowing the defeated monarch to have been influenced by both these motives, we shall probably not greatly err, either in thinking the latter to have been as strong as the former, or in believing that Xerxes did not reach Susa much, if at all, sooner than the earlier part of the month of November, 479 B.C., in the seventh year of his reign.

Bearing in mind this probable date of the arrival of Xerxes at Susa, let us turn to the Book of Esther, where we read— "So Esther was taken unto king Ahasuerus, into his houseroyal, in the tenth month, which is the month Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign. And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained grace and favour in his sight

more than all the virgins; so that he set the royal crown upon her head, and made her queen instead of Vashti."

But this month of Tebeth is commonly supposed to correspond nearly to the latter half of December and the former half of January. And can Mr Loftus cast his eye over the first and second chapters of the history of Esther, and bring himself to believe for a single moment that Ahasuerus, when he placed upon the head of Esther the crown which Vashti's disobedience had forfeited "in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth"-i. e., somewhere between the middle of December and the middle of January-had returned only a very few weeks previously to Shushan, after a prolonged absence of two years and a half, which had been marked by all that was most calculated to mortify the pride and exasperate the temper of a vindictive Oriental despot-by notorious failure, disappointment, calamity, and shame?

Nor is this all. In the reign of the Ahasuerus of whom we are speaking, the Persian empire had no recognised queen from the time of the repudiation and deposition of Vashti in his third year, until his marriage with the fair Jewess in the seventh year of his reign. But when Xerxes had left Susa on his way to Greece, and was residing at Sardis for a time, in his fifth year, his wife Amestris was with him there; nor does there seem to be any reason to doubt that she was as really queen of Persia as Vashti. Xerxes, therefore, did not divorce one queen in his third year, and then wait until his seventh year before he gave the forfeited crown to another.

Any person who reads the scriptural history of Esther, will soon see that, if we wish to ascertain which of the Persian kings named by the Greek writers is to be identified with Ahasuerus, it enters into the very nature of the question that the king to be selected must have passed a large portion of the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh years of his reign at Shushan (Susa) or its vicinity. He may, of course, have paid occasional visits to Ecbactana, the summer residence of the sovereigns of Persia. This one consideration absolutely forbids our believing that Xerxes was the same as Ahasuerus.

We are not to suppose that this*" myrtle of Israel" was in the cheerless and trying position which might have been her lot in the palace of a Sennacherib or a Nebuchadnezzar. These two kings had been cruel ravagers of Judea, and the latter had even destroyed Jerusalem and burned the temple of the Most High. Ahasuerus was the legitimate sovereign

Hadassah, Esther's original name, has for one of its significations that of "myrtle."

not only of the Jews and Israelites on the east of the Euphrates and Tigris, but he also inherited the province of Judea, which the great Cyrus, the well-known friend and benefactor of the Jews, had left as part of their inheritance to his successors on the throne of Persia. His grandfather, Darius Hystaspes, had permitted and assisted the Jews to complete their second temple, and he and Cyrus had far exceeded all other Gentile potentates in kindness to the race of Abraham. And the very suggestion of the malignant Haman, that the Jews, who were dispersed throughout the empire, possessed among themselves property to the value of ten thousand talents, goes far to shew that their fathers must have passed their lives with little of annoyance and oppression from the Persian government. Probably herself a native of Susiana, Esther had no personal recollections of Jerusalem and Palestine to make her feel as a captive in a strange country. Her lord was her own lawful sovereign, and the lawful sovereign of the Holy City and the land of her fathers. As to the religious creed of her royal husband, neither the Assyrian idol Nisroch, nor the Chaldean Bel, was feared or worshipped at Shushan. There is reason to believe that Sabianism, the religion of the ancient Persians, had been greatly purified during the reign of Cyrus* and his successors, and that Esther, by becoming queen of Persia, incurred no risk of being commanded by her lord "to bow down to and worship graven images." Deeply attached to the welfare of her own people, and regarding Mordecai with the affection of a daughter to a father, it would ever afford her the highest gratification to use her influence with the monarch in endeavours to promote their interest and happiness. Yet how greatly changed would be our estimate of her security and comfort in her lofty position at Shushan, could we possibly bring ourselves to believe, against the clear and combined testimony of scriptural and secular† history,

* It is thought by some, and not without probability, that the views of Cyrus may have been influenced to a certain extent by his intercourse with Daniel.

+ Can we read the scriptural history of Esther, and think that the following declamatory effusion-"The king who beheaded his engineers because the elements destroyed their bridge over the Hellespont, who so ruthlessly slew the eldest son of Pythius, because his father besought him to leave him one sole support of his declining years, was just the despot to devote a whole people (the Jews), his subjects, to indiscriminate massacre; and by way of preventing that evil, to restore them the right of self-defence, and thus to sanction the slaughtering of thousands "-is to be accepted as part of a probable proof that Ahasuerus and Xerxes must have been one and the same king? Will not both Mr Loftus and the writer in the "Biblical Cyclopædia" acknowledge, that it would be childish and absurd to reverse the order

that the Ahasuerus who divorced Vashti, and raised Esther to the dignity of queen of Persia, was no other than the fierce and despotic Xerxes of Herodotus.

The limits prescribed to this paper, and which we have, perhaps, already somewhat exceeded, permit us merely to state our belief that Artaxerxes Longimanus, the son and successor of Xerxes, was the Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther. We trust that we have, at all events, proved, that the husband of Vashti cannot be identified with Xerxes.

ART. VI.-THE WHIRLWIND AND THE WRATH TO COME.

If it were revealed from heaven that the Author of creation intended to discourse upon His own wondrous works in the audience of His creatures, what a congregation would flock together to listen! The lovers of science would confidently expect to have all vexed questions on astronomy, geology, and many other things set at rest for ever. How high would expectations rise, how fixed would be the attention! God may do this hereafter, but at present He is doing something far more important, and that as regards the works of His hands. In His Word, while discoursing to us respecting His glorious perfections and all-adapted salvation-while describing man's condition, character, duty, and destiny-and while unfolding the future of earth's history, He continually uses His own works as illustrations. Thus, "The heavens declare His glory," the earth and its fulness illustrate His tender mercy and righteous wrath; while all things above, around, and beneath, by being mixed up with the utterances of prophets concerning the coming future, tell to the listening ear of the devout student of prophecy, how terrible of events in this comparison, and to assert that "the king who devoted a whole people (the Jews), his subjects, to indiscriminate massacre (at the urgent suggestion and artful dictation of his confidential favourite and minister, on the ground of their inveterate disaffection and disloyalty); and who, when he had discovered his folly and rashness, by way of preventing the execution of his cruel decree (in the only manner which remained in his power), allowed them the right of self-defence, and thus sanctioned the slaughtering of thousands, was just the despot to scourge and fetter the sea; to behead his engineers, because the elements destroyed their bridge over the Hellespont; to slay ruthlessly the eldest son of Pythius, because his father besought him to leave him one sole support of his declining years; and (to name but one more unworthy action) to dishonour the remains of the valiant Leonidas?"