Esther 8:15 - Homiletics

A city's joy.

It is observable that the inhabitants of Susa are represented, in more than one place in this book, as entering into the circumstances and sharing the emotions of their Hebrew neighbours. It is believed by eminent scholars that the educated Persians had strong sympathies with the religious beliefs and practices of the Jews. Thus they wept with them in their fears and griefs; they rejoiced with them in their deliverance and happiness.

I. THERE IS SUCH A THING AS CIVIC LIFE . Not only an individual, but a city, a nation, has a character, a unity, a life of its own. As in our own country Manchester and Birmingham have a distinctive life, as in France Paris has a remarkable individuality, as in the middle ages the Italian cities had each its own corporate, intellectual, and social individuality; so it is reasonable to look for the evidences of such civic life wherever a community has existed for several generations, and traditions, memories, sympathies have grown up and prevailed.

II. COMMUNITIES ARE CAPABLE OF IMPULSES AND MOVEMENTS DISTINCTIVE OF THEMSELVES . When London turned out to welcome Garibaldi, it was a remarkable instance of the way in which a population is moved as with the stirring of one mighty impulse. There is something terribly grand in the spectacle of a vast city moved with one mighty wave of emotion. Such a wave passed over London upon the occasion of the death and burial of the great Duke of Wellington.

III. THE SPONTANEOUS MANIFESTATION OF A POPULAR SENTIMENT IN A CITY HAS SOMETIMES GREAT MORAL SIGNIFICANCE . Indignation, grief, sympathy, relief, gladness, may all find a voice in the cry that rises from the bosom of a vast population. Often the popular instinct is unmistakably right. Vox populi, vox Dei. So in the case before us, when "the city of Shushan rejoiced, and was glad."