Affliction enduring without any complaint the sharpness of the pang, and the violence of the storm, and the heft of the chain, and the darkness of the night--waiting until a Divine hand shall be put forth to soothe the pang, and hush the storm, and release the captive. A wife abused, persecuted, and a perpetual exile from every earthly comfort--waiting, waiting, until the Lord shall gather up His dear children in a heavenly home, and no poor Vashti will ever be thrust out from the palace gate.
Jesus, in silence and answering not a word, drinking the gall, bearing the cross, in prospect of the rapturous consummation when
"Angels thronged their chariot wheel, And bore Him to His throne, Then swept their golden harps and sung, 'The glorious work is done!'"
Oh, woman! does not this story of Vashti the queen, Vashti the veiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vashti the silent, move your soul? My sermon converges into the one absorbing hope that none of you may be shut out of the palace gate of heaven. You can endure the hardships, and the privations, and the cruelties, and the misfortunes of this life if you can only gain admission there. Through the blood of the everlasting covenant you go through those gates, or never go at all. God forbid that you should at last be banished from the society of angels, and banished from the companionship of your glorified kindred, and banished forever. Through the rich grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, may you be enabled to imitate the example of Rachel, and Hannah, and Abigail, and Deborah, and Mary, and Esther, and Vashti.
"Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"--ESTHER iv. 14.
Esther the beautiful was the wife of Ahasuerus the abominable. The time had come for her to present a petition to her infamous husband in behalf of the Jewish nation, to which she had once belonged. She was afraid to undertake the work, lest she should lose her own life; but her uncle, Mordecai, who had brought her up, encouraged her with the suggestion that probably she had been raised up of God for that peculiar mission. "Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther had her God-appointed work; you and I have ours. It is my business to tell you what style of men and women you ought to be in order that you meet the demand of the age in which God has cast your lot. If you have come expecting to hear abstractions discussed, or dry technicalities of religion glorified, you have come to the wrong church; but if you really would like to know what this age has a right to expect of you as Christian men and women, then I am ready in the Lord's name to look you in the face. When two armies have rushed into battle the officers of either army do not want a philosophical discussion about the chemical properties of human blood or the nature of gunpowder; they want some one to man the batteries and swab out the guns. And now, when all the forces of light and darkness, of heaven and hell, have plunged into the fight, it is no time to give ourselves to the definitions and formulas and technicalities and conventionalities of religion.