To raise the soul to the eternal kingdom to contemplate its laws, its glories, and its felicities; to see, as it were, heaven opened and its celestial splendours realized to the soul, until earth fades, and becomes in comparison dim and of little worth; this is the music which comes from David's harp :

But Saul is heavy with the evil spirit, which his own evil state has attracted to him, and which Divine Providence has permitted, that he may be cured by the strokes of his own rod: and so the divine music does not elevate him. He detests it, and strikes at David with his javelin; or, in other words, repels the spiritual state with distaste and dislike.

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Lastly, the external man is in the religion of fear. fears death. He fears loss. He has no certainty in anything. Only "perfect love casteth out fear" (1 John iv. 18). Saul was afraid of David: afraid for his family: afraid of the Philistines: afraid of death. The spiritual man knows he will never die : that what is called death is only an elevation to higher life.

One of the many merciful objects for which our Lord came was to free us from the bondage of the fear of death (Heb. ii. 15). But the natural man still fears it with a great and casts his fear; javelin at the spiritual man, when he perceives his influence becoming powerful over him. Oh how we should pray to have this fear of death removed! but it can only be in proportion as the spiritual man in us is fully opened by truths of heavenly wisdom rendered familiar by being thought upon and followed out from day to day; and that perfect love perseveringly sought, which casteth out fear.

It seems very astonishing to observe the perseverance of Seven times are reSaul in his attempts to destroy David. corded in which, under various circumstances, he sought to The first time on the accomplish this unhappy purpose. occasion mentioned in the text; the second in his palace, after David had slain the Philistines (xix. 10): the third time in Michal's house by night (xix. 11, 12): the fourth time at the

feast of the new moon, when he was saved by Jonathan (xx. 33): the fifth among the Ziphites (xxiii. 19-26): the sixth in the cave of Engedi, when he confessed his sin (xxiv. 17): and the seventh near the hill of Hachilah, when he confessed his sin again, and finally gave up the pursuit (xxvi. 25.) We will notice these varied efforts, or some of them; for they are the reflex of our own states. We let the natural man prevail over the spiritual man again and again.

When satisfied with the success of our earthly affairs, we are enjoying ourselves like a king in his palace. We don't wish to be intruded upon; we are pleased with things as they are, and we don't want to be reminded that we are mortal. We wish our mentor to be gone.

Again, after David has slain the Philistines, and we find there is no foundation at all for thinking that a religion of the head only will do, we confess that the truth is so, but we do not want to be troubled with it now. We think there is time enough. We will do it all by and by; and in the meantime we wish to be let alone. We can't bear the sight of David sitting there always. Eternal things will do very well when we are sick and old, and have finished the very important matters that concern us now. As if the matters for our bodies for a few years could for a moment be compared with those of life for ever: or as if any harm could come to any just temporal interests by seeking first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness who has promised that if we do this, all other things shall be added unto us (Matt. vi. 33).

The most peculiar of these attempts of Saul was that when he sought to seize David in his own house: on which occasion he was saved by a curious stratagem, devised by Michal his wife, the king's daughter. The attempt to slay David by night represents the repugnance to the spiritual man which is cherished by the natural man when in a very dark state; when the soul is benighted, and we repel everything but the trouble with which we are then engaged. Michal, the king's daughter, who had become David's wife, is the representative of that glorious principle, the affection for truth. She was given to David after his victory, to teach us that when we have overcome the tendency to a religion of faith only, we are gifted by the Lord with a holy earnestness for those truths which will teach us how to live. This affection is the king's daughter who is "all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold" (Ps. xlv. 13). The name Michal signifies "who has all," or "who is perfect;"

and this sacred principle, the love of truth, is that which leads to everything sacred and good; it leads constantly from state to state, until it conjoins us to the All-Good, the Only Perfect, after whom it constantly yearns. By truths sought in the love of truth, we obtain justice, order, goodness, piety, innocence, heaven, all. It is interesting to notice, by the way, that Merab was the daughter that Saul promised (xviii. 17), but that Michal was the one who loved David, and whom he took. The name Merab signifies, "She who disputes," and would indicate a more external affection; one that loves arguing and controversy for victory, rather than inquiry after truth for truth's sake and goodness' sake, which is expressively represented by Michal. The latter preserved David, and presented an image of him to her father, supported by a pillow of goat's hair (xix. 13). It seems an innocent wife's stratagem to preserve her husband from the jealous and vindictive father; but it yields a spiritual lesson also. The goat's hair represents the truths of faith. Men who delight in expatiating on the great truths of religion are represented by the goat, which leaps from rock to rock on the mountain side. The Lord condemns the goats when he is exercising judgment; because they represent such as had gone through life without uniting to their attainments in faith the love and the duties of charity (Matt. xxv. 32, 33). The goatspirit, however, is good if it be combined with the spirit of love. A young one of the goats might be offered in the paschal supper as well as a lamb (Exod. xii. 5). The spirit of faith has glorious things to do, to cheer, to brighten and to sustain us. To preserve what is spiritual with us, and to assert its preeminence, is the special work of faith. "Faith," says the apostle, "is the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. xi. 1). That the spiritual man must not be destroyed, and that if he were, all truth would die, and nothing but calamity would follow, is signified by the image of David being supported by the pillow of goat's hair, and by Michal's speech to her father (xix. 17).

At the feast of the new moon, David ought to have been in his place, and would have been if Saul had been rightly minded; for the new moon represents faith in clearness, a new light on the understanding diffusing brightness over the mind. But what avails this, if the heart is rankling with envy? No real interior life can be developed there. All is empty, dark and miserable, when malice has usurped the place of loving-kindness in the will. So again Saul was disappointed, and David was not there.

The remaining attempts of Saul, and the manner in which David baffled him, and repaid jealousy and malice by kindness and forgiveness, represent the spiritual man gradually overcoming the natural man by returning good for evil. At last the spiritual becomes entirely the stronger; and the natural man confesses that the government will pass to David, and that every blessing will come from its doing so. All that is intimated

in the tender words of Saul, when he saw and confessed his wickedness and folly (xxiv. 16-22).

How beautiful and happy would all things be, if true order were only properly maintained! The natural man fears that his delights will be lost, if he submit himself to the spiritual. But in reality true delight only then begins. Let the natural mind be purified from evil, and the spiritual rule in all things; and then, like Egypt under Joseph's rule, peace would flow like a river, and righteousness like the waves of the sea (Isa. xlviii. 18). Confidence and goodwill would then soon be restored among men, and the roses of life would be divested of their thorns. The world would soon re-echo the order of heaven, and the reality would be what has long been promised: "The tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God" (Rev. xxi. 3). All this, and much more, is included in Saul's ceasing from his attempts to injure David; and submitting to the divine will that David should take the throne to which he has been appointed.

So, if we take the whole world as the kingdom of Saul, and notice its injurious efforts to resist the rising government of the kingdom of the greater David, the Lord Jesus Christ, how sad, how self-tormenting, how self-destructive does it seem! But oh may it speedily pass away! It cannot always last. The days are coming, and will surely come, and let us pray that they may speedily come in us, that the Lord Jesus shall take the throne of His father David, and "He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke i. 33).

SERMON XIII.

SAUL ATTEMPTING TO KILL JONATHAN.

"And Jonathan answered Saul his father, and said unto him, Wherefore shall he be slain? what hath he done?

"And Saul cast a javelin at him, to smite him: whereby Jonathan knew that it was determined of his father to slay David."-1 SAM. XX. 32, 33.

THERE is no character in the Jewish history that leaves a pleasanter impression on the mind than that of Jonathan. His heroism appears from the first scene in which he is presented to us in the sacred narrative, until he dies on the fatal field of Gilboa by the side of his father. "In their death they were not divided" (2 Sam. i. 23).

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Jonathan's nobility of mind was particularly displayed in his faithful and disinterested attachment to the young hero who had slain Goliath. The recollection of his love is presented in the affecting words of David's lamentation on the occasion of his death (2 Sam. i. 26, 27). Their mutual attachment was founded on the virtues which they possessed in common. Their souls were knit together when young men. "The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (1 Sam. xviii. 1). And whatever might be the lot of his friend, Jonathan remained true to him, and comforted and succoured him, even when his exasperated father threatened to destroy Jonathan himself as well as his hated friend.

Jonathan felt how unworthy was the jealous aversion of the king his father to the brave and modest young man who had wrought so great a deliverance for Israel; and through the eight years of their companionship he never swerved, but in the palace spoke for him, in the field sent him information, and in the wilderness secretly consoled him. When he knew that it was the will of the Divine Being that David should be king in the room of his father, his piety made not the least com

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