far above all the native princes of the kingdom; even to the first seat
in counsel, to the highest honours in the realm, and to constant
companionship of the monarch.

As, with trains of slaves and flatterers, he was hastening to the
audience of the monarch, or returning loaded with marks of royal favour,
he passed Mordecai the Jew, seated alone--unknown, unheeded, without
rank or wealth--by the gate of the palace. "Yet Mordecai bowed not,
neither did reverence to Haman." The two men seemed to represent to each
other their respective nations; as if all the hate and malice of the
race, and of long ages of national bitterness, were concentrated in an
individual. They met as the Israelite and the Amalekite; and the
memories of centuries of aggression and injuries, of shame and defeat,
were crowded into the present moment. Mordecai saw in Haman, not only
the foe to his race, but the crafty, unprincipled, unholy counsellor,
who had already alienated the heart of the monarch from his youthful
bride, and whose pernicious influence was spreading blight and
corruption, misery and destruction--through an empire.

Every feeling of the Jew, every principle of an upright, sincere heart
forbade Mordecai to pay the homage demanded of him by Haman. Every
sentiment of national pride, of family honour, of personal dignity, of
self-respect, arose to deter the descendant of Israel from showing
honour to the hereditary foe of his people and the persecutor of his
faith.

Haman, at the same time, saw in Mordecai the descendant of those who had
triumphed over his nation and destroyed his ancestors. The descendant of
Agag, the captive of Saul, he might naturally vent his indignation upon
the tribe that humbled his house and subjected his nation and destroyed