-And yet, this earth has drunk so many such tears, that it makes one ache to think of these. 'There shall be no more sorrow, nor crying,'-how good the words sound!

-And then :

'How sweet, when waning fast away
The stars of this dim world decay,
To hail, prophetic of the day,

The golden dawn above, my soul!
To feel that we shall sleep to rise
In sunnier lands and fairer skies;
And bind again our broken ties
In ever-living love, my soul!'

The days of thy mourning shall be ended.--ISA. lx. 20.

XXV.

Engedi.

And it came to pass, when David had made an end of speaking these words unto Saul, that Saul said, Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice, and wept.-1 SAM. xxiv. 16.

'How forcible are right words!' said Job. And how strange it is that they should have power to bring tears even from such eyes as those of Saul the son of Kish. Eyes full of envy, malice, and all uncharitableness; which had watched David to do him harm, from the day-two years ago-when the people began to praise the young soldier, saying:

Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.-1 SAM. xviii. 7.

And Saul eyed David from that day and forward.—1 SAM. xviii. 9.

-He struck at him to kill him; he was afraid of him;' he 'thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines ;' he 'spake to Jonathan his son, and to all his servants, that they should kill David.' For a minute he listened to Jonathan's wise pleadings, but soon again,

Saul sought to smite David to the wall with the javelin.

-He 'sent messengers to watch him;' he 'sent messengers to take him,' saying:

and David

One is not

Send and fetch him unto me, for he shall surely die. Then he went down 'to besiege David;' having escaped, Saul 'sought him every day.' prepared for a burst of tears at the end of all this raging and rampaging,-tears from Saul, of whom nobody ever guessed that he had any tears. Yet here they are: hot, salt, and plenty,-ay, and-like Esau's-'exceeding bitter.' One thinks of Lady Macbeth's.

'Oh! Oh! Oh!-All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand!'

Over against Saul, on the opposite ridge, stood his young enemy, enemy by Saul's own choice,-brown and weatherbeaten in face, maybe, with long playing 'partridge upon the mountains,' and yet wearing the fresh, frank, honest look which must have been habitual to David. No rancour there, no disrespect; not a harsh tone, not an angry word. The voice was as gentle, the hand as kind, as in the days. when many a time David had expelled Saul's evil spirit with his sweet music. I fancy Saul had found his new master a hard one. In the old time, when Saul 'loved David greatly,' the evil spirit indeed troubled him now and then, but if David-'cunning in playing'

Took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.-1 SAM. xvi. 23. -But since Saul had driven David away, the evil spirit and he had had it out together. And I think here it was more than anything else a rush of old sweet associations. that flooded Saul's heart; the fact that David had but now spared his life, just substantiated and touched up the tender recollections. There was the same fine figure defined

against the sunlight; the young athlete, 'a mighty man of war,' 'comely to look upon.' There was the same winning respect and deference; there was the very voice of the young armour-bearer who had stood before Saul' when Saul was only beginning to wander, and might yet have repented and turned back.

Is this thy voice, my son David? And Saul lifted up his voice and wept.-1 SAM. xxv. 16.

-O miserable recollections, O bitter smitings of heart!O useless tears again! A flood bearing no rich deposit; a freshet that but left the bed of the stream yet drier and stonier and harder than it was before.

Your sin will find you out.-NUM. xxxii. 23.

-And Saul said unto David, self-convicted: 'Thou art more righteous than I.'

But alas it is true:

The wicked shall be holden with the cords of his sins.- PROV. v. 22.

-And Saul made no effort to get free. He wept over himself-over the lost purity,' as Dr. Bushnell has it; he saw vividly how fast and how far he had fallen. He saw the innocence of the man he pursued, and the certainty of his advancement and glory. But if the flames of envy fell for a moment, the embers were not out. And though he did give David a sort of a blessing, and beg from him an act of oblivion for all his own descendants; yet he gave no promise of any sort in return, nor spoke one word in which David could trust.

And Saul went home; but David and his men got them up into the hold.-1 SAM. xxiv. 22.

XXVI.

Ziklag.

Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep.-1 Sam. xxx. 4.

TIRED of being hunted upon the mountains, weary even of trying to overcome evil with good, David at last went into voluntary exile with his six hundred men. Twice he had spared Saul's life; and Saul so far came to his senses as to confess that he himself had 'played the fool, and erred exceedingly;' but that was all the good it did. And David, with one final appeal to the Lord's overruling justice,

Let him deliver me out of all tribulation.-1 SAM. xxvi. 24.

-at last quitted Saul's dominions altogether, and betook himself to the land of the Philistines. There given a special little town for his own, the time that 'David dwelt in the country of the Philistines was a full year and four months.'

And then there came to him one of those wonderful 'blessings in disguise' which we are so shy of,-one of those merciful interpositions by which sometimes a mistake is cancelled. In fact it was twofold. David had made the mistake-mistake for any reason-of joining himself to the