an argument, enforced by the deference due to the personal character of those who were commissioned to employ it, was the more likely to succeed. It must be confessed, at least, that the personal character of the messengers, and the kind of persuasion which they were instructed to employ, upon this supposition were the more in unison with each other, and both together a stronger proof of the kindness and condescension of the king.

But by a strange disappointment of probabilities, which could never have been expected, except on the supposition that gentleness and forbearance on one side would be opposed by obstinacy and perverseness on the other; the more was done to bring the parties in fault to a sense of their duty, the more they were confirmed in their obduracy; and the more likely it seemed to succeed, the more complete was its ill-success. The second mission failed of its purpose as well as the former; and the second failure was accompanied with circumstances of ag

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they eat and drink before him, and say, God save king Adon“ijah.” In Proverbs also, ix. 1—5, the preparations of Wisdom are similarly described, and set forth as an inducement to her guests to come to her feast.

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"Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars:

"She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; "she hath also furnished her table;

"She hath sent forth her maidens; she crieth upon the high"est places of the city,

Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: as for him that "wanteth understanding, she saith to him,

"Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have " mingled."

gravation which had not attended the former. The refusal of the guests at that time, proceeded no further than a simple inattention to the message of the king; it proceeds to insult and outrage, much beyond a simple refusal, on this occasion; not only repeating the former offence, and shewing the same indifference, or the same aversion to the message, as before, but what is worse, evincing a spirit of personal enmity to its author, by the wanton abuse, and even the murder of his messengers.

While, then, the candour of the parabolic narrative is justly to be admired, in not supposing the obstinacy of the guests, at first invited, to arrive all at once at such an extremity as this; yet its regard to consistency, in ascribing to them a species of conduct at last, which was naturally to be expected from what they had been seen to do already, is equally observable; for they who had begun by one unjustifiable action, might well be supposed capable of following it up by others, to the like effect; and having once already violated their own good faith, would not easily be brought to the sense of their duty by any argument afterwards addressed to them. Therefore perhaps it is, that the account of the motives which must have operated with them from the first, is reserved for this period of their history, when it became necessary to assign the causes which led to the failure of the second mission. The effect of these motives was summarily mentioned before; the motives themselves are explained and specified now: and it appears from this explanation, that while the common effect of them all was the same indifference to the kindness of the king, and the same mean opinion of the honour

which he designed his guests-yet it was an effect which shewed itself in a distinction of personal con

duct, according to the the parties addressed. chandise, or rather to farm, or rather to his each of whom, it is to be presumed, some other more personally urgent care, or more attractive engagement, was considered to be paramount to his duty to the king, and a sufficient excuse for his individual neglect of attendance at the wedding of his son; with the former, the cares of business, properly so called, with the latter, the desire of pleasure, the love of his personal ease and enjoyment. And in these two producing causes of a common indifference to the overture received from the king, enforced as it was we are not to suppose we see the motives which operated in two isolated cases; but the causes which led to the failure of the overture with two comprehensive classes among those who had all been invited, and who all neglected the invitation in common. The rest-by whom we must understand the remainder of the same number, distinct from these, and consequently a third comprehensive class among the body of guests-laid hands on the servants of the king, and after abusing them previously, or treating them with personal insult and indignity of some kind or other, made an end of the whole by putting them to death. For so incredible an outrage, as the only answer returned by this class of guests to the kindness and condescension of the message just received, it would be impossible to assign any reason, but an utter dislike of the invitation as repeated on the part of the king, or a

tempers or circumstances of One went away to his merhis traffick-another to his estate in the country; with

thorough hatred of the quarter from which it proceeded; and no mere feeling of indifference to the one, or simple contempt of the other. We observe,

then, in these various kinds of refusal the evidence of a triple gradation in the moral complexion of the motives which led to the failure of the overture of the king, in this second instance; as well as three classes of persons, addressed by the overture, with each of whom one of the motives in question is the producing cause of its failure. The motive which operated with the men of business was more specious than that which prevailed with the lovers of pleasure; and the reason which operated with either, than the spirit of personal malice and wanton aggression, which instigated the third class of all.

The result of this second mission, under the circumstances of the case, must evidently be regarded as final. To have repeated the overture a third time, to persons who had twice already rejected it, and in the second instance, with so much additional "provocation, to testify their dislike of the offer, and their hatred or contempt of its author, would have been worse than useless; besides being repugnant to reason and consistency. If there was any difference in the causes which produced the refusal of the overture, and any thing less offensive in the mode in which a common dislike to the offer had expressed itself, in some instances compared with others; and consequently, if the particular share of some in a common offence, might not be so aggravated as that of others, nor therefore the kind or degree of the common resentment to which it was entitled on the part of the king, proportionably so severe in their

instance, as in that of the rest—yet the injuries inflicted on the king's servants by a part of their body, for no other reason than the simple discharge of their duty as the bearers of an overture from himself, full of condescension and honour to his guests, evidently demanded instant punishment, and could not be passed over without adequate and condign redress.

It was natural, then, that upon hearing of the result of his second message, and especially of the violence done to his messengers-the good-will of the king towards his intended guests, should be converted into resentment. His anger, however, was discriminating, as well as natural; and though all had concurred in refusing his invitation, and so far had put an affront upon him in common, which was calculated to excite his indignation against them, the effects of his displeasure, in their worst and most serious form, fell only on those who had shed the blood of his servants.

Two things, therefore, were now to be done; to transfer the invitation, rejected by those for whom it had first been intended-to others, who might accept it; and to execute vengeance on that part of their number who had murdered the servants of the king: the first of which would so far be a retribution in kind even upon those who had done nothing to provoke a worse punishment; the second was an additional retributive dispensation in a particular instance, for an additional specific offence. It is possible that both these acts might be going on in conjunction; but if in the reason of things, the account of both could not be given at once, and one