thousand horsemen, beside an immense multitude of peo ple on foot. Saul prepared to meet the invaders, but his whole army amounted to but six, hundred, the rest having fled in terror; and these were without other arms than their slings and bows. During the time of their subjection to their Philistines they had been deprived of their arms, and had since that time no manufactory of them in the country.

Samuel, now the distinguished prophet of Israel, promised to meet Saul at Gilgal, and desired him there to wait his coming, that they might together sacrifice to their God. But Saul became impatient, and offered the sacrifice without him, contrary to the command of God, thus forfeiting the kingdom which on his obedience was to have been continued in his family, and of which the reversion was now made over to another. The Omniscient God could not have been mistaken in the choice he made of Israel's king. He knew undoubtedly that Saul would prove unworthy, and perhaps in wrath elected him to punish this ungrateful race for having desired other monarchs than himself: thus chastising them for the wrong, ere he established their monarchy under David and Solomon, in whose house it was hereditary till the days of our Saviour. Saul, however, was not deposed, but continued to reign forty years, waging successful war against the enemies of his state, aided by his amiable and valiant son Jonathan. On occasion of a second act of disobedience in sparing what God had commanded him to destroy, the forfeiture was renewed, and Samuel was commanded to anoint another king. We need scarcely to relate the manner of this choice, and who the lowly shepherd was whose name was thus exalted to honour unequalled upon earth, the forefather of the Messiah, peculiarly distinguished as the Son of David.

Saul, abandoned now by the protecting Power that raised him to the kingdom, sunk rapidly in judgment, spirit, and reputation. The Philistines, so often defeated, were still their dreaded foes, and commanded by

Goliath, a man of extraordinary stature, invaded the

How they were vanJealousy of his rival's

kingdom with very large forces. quished we need not to repeat. growing fame rankled in the bosom of Saul and embittered all his latter days. But there was a power superior to his, and he was prevented in all his purposes of ill against David. Still the cruelty and injustice of the king obliged David to fly and conceal himself with the assistance of the pious Jonathan, to whom he was strongly attached. The enraged monarch in vain pursued him. On two occasions he fell so entirely into David's power, that he might have slain him sleeping; he spared his life, and humbly essayed to appease his malice. But jealousy can never be appeased, because the virtues of its object but serve to kindle it the more.

Sinking deeper and deeper in iniquity, Saul found himself weak and defenceless before his old enemies the Philistines. Samuel was dead, and God no longer answered to the enquiries of Saul by any of the means in which he was wont to direct him. In this extremity the wretched monarch had recourse to those unlawful arts which had been forbidden in his dominions, and which, though now fictitious, certainly in those day's existed, by the permission of God, and probably by the intervention of evil spirits. The witch whom this prince consulted raised up before him the spirit of Samuel. The spirit was allowed to appear indeed, and to answer to the demands of Saul, but it was only to announce to him disgrace and death. The prediction was soon accomplished. The Israelites engaged the Philistines in Mount GilboaJonathan and two other sons of Saul were slain, his army was totally routed, and his cities were taken: when finding no other means of escaping the hands of the enemy, he demanded of his armour-bearer to pierce him with his sword-but being refused, he drew his own weapon and threw himself on its point; thus, by a disgraceful and inglorious death, closing a life of disobedience and wickedness. B. C. 1056.

and anointed king, for the pouring of perfumed oils the head was at that period the method of selecting kings and priests, David was but a boy and employe shepherd: an office of no degradation then as it be now. We have before observed that the He had no gradations of rank in their earlier history. who had the most flocks were the greatest mer usually tended them themselves, or employed thei dren to do so. The honour we attach to one s employment, and the sense of degradation to an is merely arbitrary, the effect of custom and c stance, not of nature, and has been always differ different times and among different people.

It is evident David had great natural endow The first that showed itself was his skill in musick, early introduced him to the court, and gained h notice of the king, whose melancholy he was often upon to dissipate by the sweet notes of his harp. poetick powers we shall have occasion to notice in ing of the sacred compositions attributed to hi have ample proof they were of no common kin war he may well compete with history's proudest It is true that a hand more unerring than his wing sharp stone that struck the Philistine's temple. it ever is. The fate of nations hangs not, as we to say, on one man's courage, or on one great dee hangs on the will of God, and the hand that perf is but the instrument. Still, as a brave man expos self to the risk without a previous knowledge Creator's determination, we give him the credit rage or skill; and with justice; for he possesses and God makes use of them. If, besides the endo of natural courage, David went forth to his engag

in confidence of the goodness of his cause and the protection of Heaven, we are but the more disposed to admire the pious magnanimity of his youthful character. Such was the case in the glorious victory of this shepherd boy in unequal contest with the Philistine general, which freed the Israelites for a time from their most powerful and implacable enemy. Three of Jesse's sons were in Saul's army, but David's presence in the camp was what we ordinarily call an accident. In the extraordinary history we are at present tracing, the curtain is, as it were, withdrawn, and we are allowed to see the machinery that puts all in motion; whereas in other histories we see only the movements produced, and their results: but we may be assured that "it happened" and "it chanced," mean exactly the same in every other history as they mean here; that God so directed it to accomplish his ultimate designs.

Arrived in the camp where forty days the proud defiance to single combat had been given by the Philistine, David proposed himself his country's champion; and with a simplicity beautifully characteristic of his rustic habits, urged his sylvan victories over the wild beasts that assailed his father's flocks. We need not describe the contest-the gigantic enemy fell, and his head was borne in triumph to the camp on the tall spear that could not reach the heaven-defended shepherd. Michal, the daughter of the king, had been promised as the victor's prize. We find this a very common thing in the history of periods, when personal courage was considered as the greatest of endowments, and equivalent to the distinctions of rank and fortune. Saul was unwilling to aggrandize his rival by fulfilling his promise--but Michal did eventually, and after much unjust prevarication, become the wife of David: as her brother, the brave and pious Jonathan, became his bosom friend.

We cannot stay to recount the various perils and near escapes he had to encounter from the monarch, who probably knew, though we are not told he did so, that

the kingdom his own misconduct had forfeited, was held in reversion by his hated rival. At one time saved from starving by the hallowed bread that was kept in the temple, at another time feigning madness in an enemy's court, sometimes hidden in dens and caverns, sometimes wandering in the desert, he passed many years in adventurous exile, joined at last by four or five hundred men, whom their connexion with him or other circumstances exposed to Saul's resentment. Twice the king led an army out against him, and himself fell into his power. David spared him and received acknowledgments of his wrong but insincere and not lasting.

On the death of Saul, the crown and bracelets he wore were brought to David. However himself advantaged by his death, he mourned the manner of it, and that of his beloved Jonathan, and it was on this occasion he wrote one of the finest elegies that language ever formed. David was acknowledged king by the tribe of Judah; Abner, Saul's general, proclaimed his son Ishbosheth; he was received by the other tribes, and for some years continued to dispute the succession. But the decree of Heaven was positive: and on the murder of Ishbosheth by his own officers, David became sole monarch of Israel, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, having reigned already seven years and a half in Judah. B. C. 1047.

The year following, David besieged Jerusalem, a city that had hitherto resisted the Hebrew forces. The Jebusites who defended it were defeated, and the fortress of Sion taken by assault. It was thence called the City of David, and became the metropolis of Judea. On Mount Sion the temple was erected and the ark deposited; and David also built there a palace for himself, the workmen and the timber being procured from Tyre, a place much more advanced probably in these arts, than the wandering Israelites could be.

David was attacked at different periods by his old enemies the Philistines, the Moabites, and the Ammo