king's messengers having all become prophets, in the end Saul went himself, and this time the spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he stripped off his clothes and prophesied as hard as the rest. What he phrophesied about we do not know. In fact, the priests have made so great deduction from the profits during the plenitude of their power, that there has been little which is profitable in connection with religion left for the people.
David lived in exile for some time, having collected around him every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented. Saul made several fruitless attempts to effect his capture, with no better result than that he twice placed himself in the power of David, who twice showed the mercy to a cruel king which he never conceded to an unoffending people. David having obtruded himself upon Achish, King of Gath, and doubtful of his safety, feigned madness to cover his retreat. He then lived a precarious life, sometimes levying a species of blackmail upon defenseless farmers. Having applied to one farmer to make him some compensation for permitting the farm to go unrobbed, and his demand not having been complied with, David, who is a man after the heart of the God of mercy, immediately determined to murder the farmer and all his household for their wicked reluctance in submitting to his extortions. The wife of farmer Nabal compromised the matter. David "accepted her person" and ten days afterward Nabal was found dead in his bed. David afterward went with six hundred men and lived under the protection of Achish, king of Gath; and while thus residing (being the anointed one of a God who says "Thou shalt not steal,") he robbed the inhabitants of the surrounding places; being also obedient to the statute "Thou 1 shalt do no murder," he slaughtered, and left neither man nor woman alive to report his robberies to King Achish; and as he "always walked in the ways" of a God to whom "lying lips are an abomination," he made false reports to Achish in relation to his actions. Of course this was all for the glory of God, whose ways are not as our ways. Soon the Philistines were engaged in another of the constantly recurring conflicts with the Israelites. Who offered them the help of himself and band? Who offered to make war on his own countrymen? David, the man after God's own heart, who obeyed his statutes and who walked in his ways to do only that which was right in the sight of God. The Philistines rejected the traitor's aid, and saved David from the consummation of this baseness. While David was making this unpatriotic proffer of his services to the Philistines, his own city of Ziglag was captured by the Amalekites, who were doubtless endeavoring to avenge some of the most unjustifiable robberies and murders perpetrated by David and his followers in their country. David's own friends evidently thought that this misfortune was a retribution for David's crimes, for they spoke of stoning him. The Amalekites had captured and carried off every thing, but they do not seem to have maltreated or killed any of their enemies. David was less merciful. He pursued them, recaptured the spoil, and spared not a man of them, save 400 who escaped on camels. In consequence of the death of Saul, David soon after was elevated to the throne of Judah, while Ishbosheth, son of Saul, was made King of Israel. But Ishbosheth, having been assassinated, David slew the assassins, when they, hoping for reward, brought him the news, and he reigned ultimately over Israel also.
As my religious readers are doubtless aware, the Lord God of Israel, after the time of Moses, usually dwelt on the top of an ark or box, between two figures of gold, and on one occasion David made a journey with his followers to Baal, to bring thence the ark of God. They placed it on a new cart drawn by oxen. On their journey the oxen stumbled and consequently shook the cart, and one of the drivers, whose name was Uzzah, fearing that God might be tumbled to the ground, took hold of the ark, apparently in order to steady it, and prevent it from overturning. God, who is a God of love, was much displeased that any one should presume to do any such act of kindness, and killed Uzzah on the spot as a punishment for his error. This shows that if a man sees the Church of God tumbling down, he should never try to prop it up; if it be not strong enough to save itself the sooner it falls the better for human kind – that is, if they keep away from it while it is falling. David was much displeased that the Lord had killed Uzzah; in fact, David seems to have wished for a monopoly of slaughter, and always manifested displeasure when killing was done unauthorized by himself. Being displeased, David would not take the ark to Jerusalem; he left it in the house of Obed Edom, but as the Lord proved more kind to Obed Edom than he had done to Uzzah, David determined to bring it away, and he did so, and David danced before the ark in a state of semi-nudity, for which he was reproached by Michal. The story is one which, by itself, would be as entertaining to a depraved mind as any Holywell-Street pamphlet, if Lord Campbell's act did not prevent the publication of indecencies. The pages of God's most holy word, we believe, do not come within the scope of the act, and lovers of obscene language may therefore have legal gratification so long as the bible shall exist. The God of Israel, who had been leading a wandering life for many years, and who had "walked in a tent and in a tabernacle," and "from tent to tent," and "from one tabernacle to another," and who "had not dwelt in any house" since the time that he brought the Isrealites out of Egypt, was offered "an house for him to dwell in," but he declined to accept it during the lifetime of David, although he promised to permit the son of David to erect him such an abode. David being now a powerful monarch, and having many wives and concubines, saw one day the beautiful wife of one of his soldiers. To see, with this licentious monarch, was to crave for the gratification of his lust. The husband, Uriah, was fighting for the king, yet David was base enough to steal his wife's virtue during Uriah's absence in the field of battle. "Thou shalt not commit adultery," was one of the commandments, yet we are told by God of this David, "who kept my commandments, and who followed me with all his heart to do only that which was right in mine eyes" (1 Kings, c. xiv, v. 8). David having seduced the wife, sent for her husband, wishing to make him condone his wife's dishonor, as many a man has done in other lands, when a king or prince has been the seducer. Some hold that virtue in rags is less worth than vice when coroneted. Uriah would not be thus tricked, and David, the pious David, coolly planned, and without mercy caused to be executed, the treacherous murder of Uriah. God is all just; and David having committed adultery and murder, God punished and killed an innocent child, which had no part or share in David's crime, and never chose that it should be born from the womb of Bathsheba. After this the king David was even more cruel and merciless than before. Previously he had systematically slaughtered the inhabitants of Moab, now he sawed people with saws, cut them with harrows and axes, and made them pass through brick-kilns. Yet of this man God said he "did that which was right in mine eyes." So bad a king, so treacherous a man, a lover so inconstant, a husband so adulterous, of course was a bad father, having bad children. We are little surprised, therefore, to read that his son Ammon robbed his sister, David's daughter Tamar, of her virtue; and that Ammon was afterward slain by his own brother, David's son Absalom, and are scarcely astonished that Absalom himself, on the house-top, in the sight of all Israel, should complete his father's shame by an act worthy a child of God's selected people. Yet these are God's chosen race, and this is the family of the man "who walked in God's ways all the days of his life."
God, who is all-wise and all-just, and who is not a man that he should repent, had repented that he, had made Saul king because Saul spared one man. In the reign of David the same good God sent a famine for three years on the decendants of Abraham, and upon being asked his reason for thus starving his chosen ones, the reply of the Deity was that he sent the famine on the subjects of David because Saul slew the Gibeonites. Satisfactory reason! – because Oliver Cromwell slew the Royalists, God will punish the subjects of Charles the Second. One reason is to profane eyes equivalent to the other, but a bishop or even a rural dean would show how remarkably God's justice was manifested. David was not behindhand in justice. He had sworn to Saul that he would not cut off his seed – i.e. that he would not destroy Saul's family. He therefore took two of Saul's sons, and five of Saul's grandsons, and gave them up to the Gibeonites, who hung them. Strangely wonderful are the ways of the Lord! Saul slew the Gibeonites, therefore years afterward God starves Judah. The Gibeonites hang men who had nothing to do with the crime of Saul, except that they are his decendants, and then we are told "the Lord was intreated for the land." Perhaps David wanted to get rid of the royal family of Saul. The anger of the Lord being kindled against Israel, and he wanting some excuse for punishing the decendants of Jacob, moved David to number his people. The Chronicles say that it was Satan, and pious people may thus learn that there is little difference between God and the Devil when rightly understood. Both are personifications founded in the ignorance of the masses, and their continuance will cease with
