Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1905-10-02

and Brafnard and John Elliott and
Father Marquette and Father Damien
were ready to do for the despised PEG
pies to whom they ministered. She was
ready to do as the hosts of Christian
martyrs did in the times of the Roman
prosecutions. She was ready to do as
the Salvation Army girls are doing
down in the Sums of a great civ She
was ready to give up her life for those
VINO are despised and downtrodden
ana helpless, as you and l should he
willing to try to lift the fallen ones nm
out of sin, up out of ignorance. I'M ont
OF superstition, up out of moral mental
and physical filth. God help us TO he
like Queen Esther and to be ready in
the name of Christ, to surrender our
lives for a despised, downtrodden and
sinful race.
The Honor of a Wife.
But as [ follow the noble resolution
OF this brave woman l am struck with
another overwhelming fact. Queen Es-
Their was willing to defy all the social
conVentionalities that govern oriental
ideas Of woman. She was ready if nee
essary to lay down her life for some
eX-slaves. But she was ready to do
more than this. She was ready to
wrench this concession if possible from
a very bad man. King Ahasuerus
lived in the depraved east in a de-
PRAYED age, but he must have been q
most notorious example even in that
vile generation. No man but the most
morally corrupt, even in the depraved
east, is willing to allow a wife to incur
dlshOnor before other men. The more
depraVed man is, as a rule. the more
be tries to guard and shield the honor
of his wife from the depravities Of
other men.
Could any one but a criminal mon
strosity, man lost to all semblance of
decency and honor, wish his wife to an
ter a banquet hall filed with drunk
ards and social lepers, as King Alias
uerus demanded Of Queen Vashti?
Why, even in India, where love is nev-
er reckOned as an essential of the mar
rlage altar and where virtue in a man
Is looked upon as an unknown uuanti-
ty, the women are protected. The
wives and the sisters and the daugh-
tiers are shut up in harems. They are
not even allowed to look upon the faces
OF their fathers and brothers after
marriage. A woman is guarded from
the eyes of1aSe world until her death.
1t the wife @ a Hindoo travels she is
carried to the station inclosed in a con-
Veyance which suggests a big coffin.
linen a big sheet or curtain is thrown
from the car door over this box. and
the wife, heavily yelled, crawls into
her apartment, where every curtain is
drawn and every door tightly shut. It
is considered disgrace for her to be
seen by man. No sooner does a man
enter a street where the women are
tnan the cry is raised, The men, the
men,! And every woman rushes in
doors, fearing the eyes of man as she
would the fangs of a deadly cobra. If
man not husband or son dare en-
Ter the women's apartments he is shot
uoWn or cut into pieces, as though he
were a mad dog. And yet here in licen-
uous Shushan we find King Ahasuerus
demanding that his wife unveil herself
oeIofe drunken and debauched men.
Yet it was to this VIGOROUSLY deprayed
monarch that Queen Esther was IN
plead for the salvation of a doomed
race
Is there no practical application of
this incident! Yes. If you and I arc
ever to accomplish much good in tbis
world we must work through MANY
different kinds of instrumentalities If
a man is notorious Ebertine or sconn-
drel. that is no reason why you and
should regard him as wholly ont Of
the reach of effort ana beyond rac,o-
nation. Mr.. Moody started his great
Sunday school in Chicago.by bravely
going and asking dissMrte saloon
keeper for his children thai he might
teach them of Jesus. Young Moody
got them. Because a miser hangs on
to his gold with a death grip is no rea-
son why you and 1 should not go and
move his heart to use some of that
gold for a mission OF mercy.
Esther's Common Sense.
Dark and forbidding as were her sur
there were two or three
bright lines in this oriental, historical
picture which show that though Queen
Esther's dangers might seem to be in
yet in truth they were
not. Queen Esther won her mighty
victory for the salvation of the He
brew race by the use of plain, prac-
teal common sense. which in this age
would be called brilliaa&. Christian
The queen was not a fool
She was not one of those miserable
shrews, always going around with.
mussed hair and shoes run down at
the heels. with her dresses Ill fitting
and caught together with pins. She
was nof nr.a IF tba-a w-o,,,