DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING

[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VI.  "IN THE NAME OF THE LORD OF HOSTS"
F. B. MEYER

We must be wary here. It is so easy to confuse issues which are wide asunder as the poles, and to suppose that we are contending for the glory of God, when we are really combating for our church, our cause, our prejudices or opinions. It has always been a temptation to earnest men to veil from their own eyes the selfishness of their motives and aims by insisting, with vehement asseveration, that they are actuated by pure zeal for the cause of God.

To fall into this sin, though unconsciously, is to forfeit the right to use his sacred Name. We may still conjure with it and invoke it, but in vain. The very demons we seek to bind as with a spell will deride us, and leap out on us, and chase us before them. How constantly we need to expose our hearts to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that He may wholly cleanse them, and fill them with an all-consuming devotion to the glory of God; so that the words may be true of us, as of our Lord, "The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up."

(2) When we are willing to allow God to occupy his right place. David said repeatedly that the whole matter was God's. He might gather up the spoils of the battle; but the overthrow of Goliath and the Philistine host was not in his province at all. "The battle is the Lord's This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand The Lord saveth, and He will give you into our hand."

And David's attitude has been that of every man who has wrought great exploits in the behalf of righteousness. Moses said, "The Lord hath appeared unto me, and He will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt." Samuel said, "Prepare your hearts unto the Lord, and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistine." Paul said, "I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me." We must recognise Jesus Christ as the essential warrior, worker, organizer, and administrator of his Church, through the Holy Spirit. Whatever is rightly done, He must do. We are not called to work for Him, but to let Him work through us. Of Him and through Him and to Him are all things. The battle is not ours, but his. His skill must direct us; his might empower us; his uplifted hands bring us victory.

(3) When we take no counsel with the flesh. It must have been a hard thing for a youth to oppose his opinion to Saul's, especially when the king was so solicitous for his welfare. "Spare thyself, my son," he seemed to say; "be wise, take ordinary precautions, do not throw thy young life away." It was a dangerous moment. To meet scorn, hatred, wrong-doing, with uncompromising defiance and resistance is so much easier than to refuse assistance or advice which are kindly meant. It was well for him, indeed, that David withstood the syren song, and remained unaffected by the blandishments of royal favour. He could not have served two masters so utterly antagonistic. To have yielded to Saul would have put him beyond the fire-ring of the Divine environment.
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VI.  "IN THE NAME OF THE LORD OF HOSTS"
F. B. MEYER

How perpetually does Satan breathe into our ears the soft words that Peter whispered to his Master, when He began to speak about the cross. "Spare Thyself: that shall not come unto Thee." There is so much talk about the legitimacy of means, that no room is left on which the Almighty can act. Means are right enough in their right place; but that place is far from first. Both their nature and time have to be fixed by Him who refuses helmets of brass and coats of mail, that no flesh should glory in His presence, but who uses the rustic sling, the smooth stone from the brook, and the sword of Goliath.


3. THE BEARING OF THOSE WHO USE THE NAME.

(1) They are willing to stand alone. The lad asked no comradeship in the fight. There was no running to and fro to secure a second. He was perfectly prepared to bear the whole brunt of the fray without sympathy or succour; so sure was he that the Lord of Hosts was with him, and that the God of Jacob was his refuge.

(2) They are deliberate. He was free from the nervous trepidation which so often unfits us to play our part in some great scene. Our heart will throb so quickly, our movements become so fitful and unsteady. Calmly and quietly he went down the slope, and selected the pebbles which best suited his purpose. In this quietness and confidence he found his strength. His mind was kept in perfect peace, because it was stayed on God. He did not go by haste or flight, because the Lord went before him, and the Holy One of Israel was his reward.

(3) They are fearless. When the moment came for the conflict, David did not hesitate, but ran toward the Philistine army to meet their champion. There was no fear of the result in that young heart; no tremor in the voice that answered the rough taunt; no falter in the arm that wielded the sling; no lack of precision in the aim that drove the stone to the one part of the Philistine's body that was unprotected and vulnerable.

(4) They are more than conquerors. The stone sank into the giant's forehead; in another moment he fell stunned to the earth. There was no time to lose; before he could recover himself, or his startled comrades overcome their stupefied amazement, his head had been hewn from his body by one thrust of his own sword. And when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled. The spoils of victory lay with the victor. David took the head of the Philistine as a trophy, and put His armour in his tent.

Let us live alone with God. The weakest man who knows God is strong to do exploits. All the might of God awaits the disposal of our faith. As a child by touching a button may set in motion a mighty steamship, making it glide like a swan into her native element, so a stripling who has learnt to reckon on God may bring the whole forces of Deity to bear on men and things on the world's battlefield. This is the victory that overcomes the world, the flesh, and the devil -- even our faith.
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VII.  JONATHAN
F. B. MEYER

(1 Samuel 18:1)

"Souls that carry on a blest exchange
Of joys they meet with in their heavenly range,
And, with a fearless confidence, make known
The sorrows sympathy esteems its own --
Daily derive increasing light and force.
From such communion in their pleasant course;
Feel less the journey's roughness and its length,
Meet their opposers with united strength;
And one in heart, in interest, and design,
Gird up each other to the race divine."
COWPER

IN heaven's vault there are what are known as binary stars, each probably a sun, with its attendant train of worlds, revolving around a common centre, but blending their rays so that they reach the watcher's eye as one clear beam of light. So do twin-souls find the centre of their orbit in each other; and there is nothing in the annals of human affection nobler than the bond of such a love between two pure, high-minded and noble men, whose love passes that of women. Such love was celebrated in ancient classic story, and has made the names of Damon and Pythias proverbial. It has also enriched the literature of modern days in the love of a Hallam and a Tennyson. But nowhere is it more fragrant than on the pages that contain the memorials of the love of Jonathan and David.
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VII.  JONATHAN
F. B. MEYER

David was in all probability profoundly influenced by the character of Jonathan, who must have been considerably older than himself. It seems to have been love at first sight. "When David had made an end of speaking unto Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." He did not, however, avow it on the spot; but that night, as the young shepherd was sitting amid a group of soldiers, recounting with them the events of the memorable day, a royal messenger may have summoned him to Jonathan's pavilion, on entering which he was amazed to be greeted with the warm embrace of a brotherly affection, which was never to wane. He had lost Eliab in the morning; but at nightfall he had won a friend that would stick closer than a brother. The boy-soldier must have shrunk back as unworthy; he must have ruefully looked down at his poor apparel as unbefitting a royal alliance. But all such considerations were swept away before the impetuous rush of Jonathan's affection, as he stripped himself of robe and apparel, of sword and bow and girdle, and gave them all to David. "Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul."


1. CONSIDER THE QUALITIES OF THIS FRIEND

Whom Jehovah chose for the moulding of the character of his beloved; and then be prepared to surrender to his care the choice of your most intimate associates. He knows what your temperament needs, and where to find the companion who shall strengthen you when weak, and develop latent unknown qualities.

He was every inch a man. In true friendship there must be a similarity of tastes and interests. The prime condition of two men walking together is that they should be agreed. And the bond of a common manliness knit these twin souls from the first. Jonathan was every inch a man; as dexterous with the bow as his friend with his sling. Able to flash with indignation, strong to bear without quailing the brunt of his father's wrath, fearless to espouse the cause of his friends at whatever cost -- he was capable of inspiring a single armour-bearer with his own ardent spirit of attacking an army; of turning the tide of invasion; and of securing the admiration and effection of the entire people who, standing between him and his father, refused to let him die. When Jonathan fell on Gilboa, it was no fulsome flattery that led his friend, in his pathetic elegy, to exclaim:

"Thy glory,
O Israel, is slain upon thy high places!
How are the mighty fallen!"

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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VII.  JONATHAN
F. B. MEYER

He was withal very sensitive and tender. It is the fashion in some quarters to emphasize the qualities supposed to be specially characteristic of men -- those of strength, courage, endurance -- to the undervaluing of the tenderer graces more often associated with women. But in every true man there must be a touch of woman, as there was in the ideal Man, the Lord Jesus. In Him there is neither male nor female, because there is the symmetrical blending of both: and in us, too, there should be strength and sweetness, courage and sympathy; the oak and the vine, the rock and the moss that covers it with its soft green mantle.

Jonathan had a marvellous power o! affection. He loved David as himself; he was prepared to surrender without a pang his succession to his father's throne, if only he might be next to his friend; his was the love that expresses itself in tender embraces and tears, that must have response from the object of its choice.

"I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan!
Very pleasant hast thou been unto me;
Thy love to me was wonderful,
Passing the love of women."

We judge a man by his friends, and the admiration he excites in them. Any man whom David loved must have been possessed of many of ,those traits so conspicuous in David himself. Much is said of the union of opposites, and it is well when one is rich where the other is poor; but the deepest love must be between those whose natures are close akin. As we, therefore, review the love that united these two, now for ever joined in the indissoluble bonds of eternity, we must attribute to Jonathan the poetic sensitiveness, the tender emotion, the heroism of that courage, the capacity for those uprisings of the soul to all that was pure, and lovely, and noble, which were so conspicuous in David.
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VII.  JONATHAN
F. B. MEYER

He was distinctly religious. When first introduced to us, as, accompanied by his armour-bearer, he climbs single-handed to attack the Philistine garrison, strongly entrenched behind rocky crags, he speaks as one familiar with the ways of God, to whom there is no restraint "to save by many or by few"; and when the appointed sign is given, it is accepted as a presage of the victory which the Lord is about to give (1 Samuel 14).

As he stands beside his father on the hillside, and sees the stripling descend to slay Goliath, and win a great victory for Israel, he discerns the hand of the Lord working a great victory for Israel, and his soul lifts itself in holy thought and thanksgiving (1 Samuel 19:5).

When the two friends are about to be torn from each other, with little hope of renewing their blessed intercourse, Jonathan finds solace in the fact of the Divine appointment, and the Lord being between them. Between them, not in the sense of division, but of connection; as the ocean unites us with distant lands, whose shores she laves, whose freights she bears to our wharves. However far we are parted from those we love, we are intimately near in God, whose presence infills and enwraps us thus streams mingle in the ocean to which they pour tributary tides.

And when, in the last interview the friends ever had, they met by some secret arrangement in a wood, "Jonathan came to David there, and strengthened his hand in God." All that those words imply it is not easy to write: our hearts interpret the words, and imagine the stream of holy encouragement that poured from that noble spirit into the heart of his friend. He must be strong who would strengthen another; he must have God, and be in God, who would give the consolations of God to his brother; and we can easily understand how the anguish of Jonathan's soul, torn between filial devotion to his father and his love to his friend, must have driven him back on those resources of the Divine nature, which are the only solace of men whose lives have been cast in the same fiery crucible.
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VII.  JONATHAN
F. B. MEYER

2. CONSIDER THE CONFLICT OF JONATHAN'S LIFE.

He was devoted to his father. He was always found associated with that strange dark character, melancholy to madness, the prey of evil spirits, and yet so keenly susceptible to music, and so quick to respond to the appeal of chivalry, patriotism, and generous feeling; resembling some mountain lake, alternately mirroring mountains and skies, and swept by dark storms. Father and son were together in life, as they were "undivided in death."

When his father first ascended the throne of Israel, the Lord was with him, and Jonathan knew it (1 Samuel 20:13). It must have been an exceeding delight to him to feel that the claims of the father were identical with the claims of God, and the heart of the young man must have leapt up in a blended loyalty to both. But the fair prospect was soon overcast. The Lord departed from Saul; and immediately his power to hold the kingdom waned, the Philistines invaded his land, his weapons of defence failed him, his people followed trembling, and Samuel told him that his kingdom could not continue. Then followed that dark day when Saul intruded on the priestly office in offering sacrifice. The ominous sentence was spoken, "The Lord hath sought Him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath appointed him prince unto his own people."

From that moment Saul's course was always downward; but Jonathan clung to him as if he hoped that by his own allegiance to God he might reverse the effects of his father's failure, and still hold the kingdom for their race.

At first this was not so difficult. There was no one to divide his heart with his father; it was not, therefore, a hardship for him to imperil his life in unequal conflict with the Philistines; and his heart must have been fired with the gladdest anticipations as, through the woods where honey dropped, he pursued the Philistines, with all Israel at his heel, smiting them from Michmash to Aijalon. His hopes, however, were destined to disappointment; for instead of the revival which he had pictured to himself, he saw his father drifting further down the strong tide that bore him out from God. Saul's failure in the matter of the destruction of the Amalekites, the dark spirit which possessed and terrified him, the alienation of Samuel -- these things acted as a moral paralysis on that brave and eager heart. What could he do to reverse the decisions of that fated soul; how stem the torrent; how turn the enemy from the gate? Surely it was this hopelessness of being able to alter any of these things that made him unable to meet Goliath. Many a time as he heard the terrible roar of the giant's challenge, he must have felt the uprisings of a noble impulse to meet him, slay him, or die. But there came over his soul the blight of despair. What could he do, when the destiny of the land he loved seemed already settled?
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VII.  JONATHAN
F. B. MEYER

When he woke up to find how truly he loved David, a new difficulty entered his life. Not outwardly, because, though Saul eyed David with jealousy, there was no open rupture. David went in and out of the palace, was in a position of trust, and was constantly at hand for the intercourse for which each yearned. But when the flames of hostility, long smouldering in Saul's heart, broke forth, the tree anguish of his life began. On the one hand, his duty as son and subject held him to his father, though he knew his father was doomed, and that union with him meant disaster to himself; on the other hand, all his heart cried out for David.

His love for David made him eager to promote reconciliation between his father and his friend. It was only when repeated failure had proved the fruitlessness of his dream that he abandoned it; and then the thought must have suggested itself to him: Why not extricate yourself from this sinking ship whilst there is time? Why not join your fortunes with his whom God hath chosen? The new fair kingdom of the future is growing up around him -- identify yourself with it, though it be against your father.

The temptation was specious and masterful, but it fell blunt and ineffectual at his feet. Stronger than the ties of human love were those of duty, sonship, loyalty to God's anointed king; and in some supreme moment he turned his back on the appeal of his heart, and elected to stand beside his father. From that choice he never flinched. When David departed whither he would, Jonathan went back to the city. His father might sneer at his league with the son of Jesse, but he held his peace; and when finally Saul started for his last baffle with the Philistines, Jonathan fought beside him, though he knew that David was somehow involved in alliance with them.

It was one of the grandest exhibitions of the triumph of principle over passion, of duty over inclination, that the annals of history record. Jonathan died as a hero; not only because of his prowess in battle with his country's foes, but because of his victory over the strangest passion of the human heart, the love of a strong man, in which were blended the strands of a common religion, a common enthusiasm for all that was good and right.

Conflicts like these await us all -- when the appointment of God says one thing, and the choice of the heart says another; when the wind sets in from one quarter, and the tide from the opposite one. Whenever this befalls thee, may God's grace enable thee to follow as straight a course, as true to the loftiest dictates of conscience, as Jonathan, the son of Saul!

But meanwhile David is in his house, waiting upon God, and singing aloud of his mercy in the morning.
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VIII.  OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, AND IN
F. B. MEYER

(Psalms 59:9-17)

"Unholy phantoms from the deep arise,
And gather through the gloom before mine eyes;
But all shall vanish at the dawning ray --
When the day breaks the shadows flee away.

He maketh all things good unto his own,
For them in every darkness light is strewn;
He will make good the gloom of this my day --
Till that day break and shadows flee away."
S. J. STONE.

IN THE Hebrew the difference between the words "wait" and "sing," as appearing in this passage, is very slight. They are spelt, indeed, alike, with the exception of a single letter. The parallelism, therefore, between these two verses is very marked.

9. Upon Thee, O my strength, I will wait, For God is my high tower.

17. Unto Thee, O my strength, I will sing, For God is my high tower.

The inscription indicates the occasion on which this Psalm, one of the oldest, was written. "A Psalm of David: when Saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him." The allusions of the Psalm substantiate this title, especially that of the sixth and fourteenth verses, in which the Psalmist compares the troop of soldiers, bitten with their master's spleen, who encamped around his house, belching out their curses and threats, to the vicious curs of an Eastern city, that prowl the streets by day and night, clearing them of their offal and refuse, and filling the night with their uproar.

"They return at evening; they make a noise like a dog,
And go round about the city:
Behold, they belch out with their mouth."

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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VIII.  OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, AND IN
F. B. MEYER

1. THE EVENTS WHICH LED UP TO THIS ASSAULT ON DAVID'S HOUSE.

As the victorious army returned home from the valley of Elah, the whole land went forth in greeting. The reapers stayed their labours in the field; and the vineyards were depleted of the women that plucked the grapes, and the men that trod them in the presses. From village to town the contagious enthusiasm spread; and the women came forth out of all the cities of Israel, with song and dance, with timbrels and tabrets, to meet King Saul. To the song of victory there came this refrain, which was strikingly discordant to the soul of the king:

"Saul hath slain his thousands,
And David his ten thousands."

In that hour the first jealous thought awoke in Saul's heart; the pitted speck became visible in the goodly fruit of his character, which was destined to rot and ruin all. Happy had he been if he had trodden the hell-spark beneath his feet, or extinguished it in seas of prayer. But he nursed it till, to change the simile, the trickling stream undermined the sea-wall, and became a raging turbid flood. "Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him; and he eyed David from that day and forward."

But Saul was more than jealous. He deliberately set himself to thwart God's purpose. Samuel had distinctly told him that the Lord had rent the kingdom of Israel from him, and had given it to a neighbour of his that was better than himself. And, without doubt, as he saw the stripling return with Goliath's head in his hand, and as he heard the song of the Israelite women, the dread certainty suggested itself to him that this was the Divinely designated king. "What though he be," said Saul to himself, as Herod in after days, "I am king, and will see to it that this prediction at least shall not come true. A dead man cannot reign; and there are many ways short of direct murder by which a man's life can be taken. But this is what it must come to." He supposed that if only he could take David's life, God's purpose would miscarry, and Samuel's predictions be falsified. He is not the last man that has descended into the arena to match himself with God, and been crushed in the attempt. No student of history is likely to forget the cry of Julian the Apostate, which mirrors the experience of thousands more, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!"
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VIII.  OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, AND IN
F. B. MEYER

Saul's murderous passion sought to fulfil itself in many ways. On the following day, as David essayed to soothe him with his harp, he twice hurled his javelin at the minstrel, in the hope that if it pined him to the wall the act might be imputed to insanity; but on each occasion the weapon sped harmlessly past, to quiver in the wall behind, instead of in that young heart.

Next, Saul gave him an important military commission, and made him his captain over a thousand, in the vain hope that this sudden elevation into the slippery place of worldly prominence and power might turn his head dizzy, and lead him to some traitorous deed, for which death would be the obvious penalty. But David behaved himself wisely in all his ways, avoiding every pitfall, eluding every snare; so that the king, who watched closely for his falling, became more than ever convinced that he was God's ward, and stood in awe of him.

Then he offered the young soldier the hand of his eldest daughter in marriage, and treacherously withdrew the offer as the time of the nuptials approached -- the intention being to arouse his ardent spirit to retaliate, and so become liable to the charge of treason; but all his efforts failed to arouse even a transient impulse for revenge.

Again, by the lure of his second daughter, Michal, as prize to be won by the evidence of one hundred Philistines having been slain, he sought to involve his rival in frays out of which only a miracle could bring him unhurt. But David returned unscathed with double the number required; and the love of the people grew.

Thwarted thus far, the God-forsaken monarch, driven by the awful fury of his jealousy, spake to Jonathan and to all his servants that they should rid him of David's tormenting presence: but of course that plot failed; for Jonathan delighted much in David, whilst all Israel and Judah loved him, for he went out and came in before them. Jonathan indeed stood in the breach to turn away his father's anger, and elicited from him the promise that his friend should not be put to death. But his pleadings and reasonings had only a temporary effect; for shortly after, as the young minstrel endeavoured to charm away the spirit of melancholy, the javelin again quivered past him from the royal hand, and would have transfixed him to the wall, but for his lithe agility. It was the evening, and David fled to his young wife and home. And Saul, intent on murder, "sent messengers unto David's house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning." These were the men whom he characterised so vividly, as we have seen.
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VIII.  OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, AND IN
F. B. MEYER

Michal's quick wit saved her husband's life. She let him down through the window, and he went and escaped; whilst an image, covered with a quilt and placed in the bed, led Saul's emissaries to suppose that he was sick. There was no real occasion, however, for her to resort to either teraphim or deceit, to secure his safety from her father's murderous rage; for when, shortly after, the king proposed to snatch his prey from the midst of the sacred college, and from the very presence of Samuel, three sets of messengers were rendered powerless by the Divine afflatus, and an arrest was put on Saul himself, who was prostrated before the mighty impression of God's Spirit, and lay helpless on the earth (1 Samuel 19:24).

That must have been a marvellous experience for David. To the eye of sense there was absolutely nothing to prevent the king's messengers, or the king himself, from taking him. But by faith he knew that he was being kept within the curtains of an impalpable pavilion, and that he was hidden beneath an invisible wing. As the air, itself invisible, fills the diving bell and saves the inmates from the inrushing water; as a stream of electricity poured over a heap of jewels protects them from the hand of the plunderer; as the raying forth of Christ's majesty flung his captors to the ground -- so did the Presence of God environ and protect both Samuel and David. And thus our God will still do for each of his persecuted ones.

"In the secret of his tabernacle shall He hide them,
He shall set them up upon a rock."

2. DAVID'S COMPOSURE AMID THE ASSAULTS OF HIS FOES.

This hunted man is a lesson for men and angels. Saul is his inveterate foe; traps and snares are laid for him on all sides. Sometimes the sun shines on his golden locks, but more often the skies are thick with cloud and storm. Now the women of Israel welcome him; and again he is torn from his wife, and driven forth from his home to go whither he may. Yet all the while his heart is tranquil and reposeful, yea, it actually breaks forth into praise, as the closing verses of this psalm prove. What was the secret of his serenity?
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VIII.  OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, AND IN
F. B. MEYER

It lay, first, in the conviction of what God was. God was his strength -- that was God within him; God was his high tower -- that was God without and around him. He was God-possessed and God-encompassed. God dwelt in him, and he in God; there was no demand for which He was not sufficient, no peril which He could not keep at bay. What a blessed conception is here! You are too weak for some great task which has been entrusted to your care, In your judgment it would task the energies of the best and wisest you know; but lo! it has been placed in your hands. "O Lord," you cry, "wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is the poorest in Manasseh; and I am the least in my father's house." Then the Spirit of God reveals God as strength, that He may be so received into the heart as to become the principle of a new and heaven-born energy, which shall rise superior to every difficulty, and breast the mightiest waves that would beat the swimmer back. Listen to the laughter of the apostle's soul, as he surveys herculean tasks on the one hand, and enormous opposing obstacles on the other, and says with unhesitating assurance, "I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me." O weakest of the weak, remember Jesus Christ, and take Him to be the strength of thy life; be strong, yea be strong, in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Or turn to the other conception. See those fugitive soldiers, hotly pursued by their enemies as clouds before the Biscay gale; on yonder cliff is perched a fortress, whose mighty walls and towers, if only they can be reached, will ensure protection. Breathlessly they scale the ascent, rush across the drawbridge, let down the portcullis, and fling themselves on the sward, and know that they are safe. God is all that to the soul which has learnt to put Him between itself and everything. We have not even to flee to God, for that implies that we have been allured out of Him; but we are to abide in Him, to stand fast in the liberty wherewith He has made us free; to reckon that, whatever Satan may say and however he may rage, we are absolutely secure so long as we abide in God.

When we realize these things, and add the further conception with which the Psalm closes, that God is the fount of mercy: when we dare to believe that there is mercy in Saul's hate, mercy in the difficulties of our lot, mercy in the clouds that veil our sky and the flints that line our path, mercy in the sharpest, bitterest experiences  -- then we can sing, we can say with David:

"I will sing o! Thy strength;
Yea, I will sing aloud o!
Thy mercy in the morning,
For Thou has been my high tower,
And a refuge in the day of my distress."

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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
VIII.  OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, AND IN
F. B. MEYER

It lay, next, in his attitude towards God. "O my strength, I will wait on Thee." The word so translated is used in the Hebrew of the shepherd watching his flock, of the watchman on the tower, of the sentry passing to and fro upon his beat. Is this our habitual attitude? Too many direct their prayer, but do not look up the ladder for the descending angels, laden with the heavenly answer. Many a ship passes in the night, touching at our wharf with the precious freight which we have been praying for; but we are not there to receive it. Many a relieving force comes up the pass with glittering spears and flashing helmets; but our gates are closed. Many a dove comes to our window from the weltering waste of waters; but we are too immersed in other things to notice its light tap. We pray, but we do not wait; we ask, but we do not expect to receive; we knock, but we are gone before the door is opened.

This lesson is for us to learn -- to reckon on God; to tarry for the vision; to wait till Samuel comes; to believe that He who taught us to trust cannot deceive our trust; to be sure that none of them that wait on Him can be ashamed; to appropriate by faith; and to know that we have the petitions we desired, nay, to do more, to take them and count them ours, though we have no responsive emotion, no sense of possession -- this is waiting upon God: this will keep us calm and still, though dreaded evils frown around our homestead; this will change our waiting into song.
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[nChrist]

DAVID SHEPHERD, PSALMIST, KING
IX.  THE MESSAGE OF THE ARROWS
F. B. MEYER

(1 Samuel 20:21-37).

"Toils and foes assailing, friends quailing, hearts failing
Shall threat in vain:
If He be providing, presiding, and guiding
To Him again."
J. M. NEALE.

JONATHAN had considerable influence with his father. Saul did nothing, either great or small, which he did not "uncover to his ear." For his love's sake, as well as for his father's, he was extremely eager to effect a reconciliation between him to whom he owed the allegiance of son and subject, and this fair shepherd-minstrel-warrior, who had so recently cast a sunny gleam upon his life. In all probability Jonathan was much David's senior; but in his pure and noble breast the fountain of love rose unquenched by years. On more than one occasion he had communed with his father concerning his friend, so far impressing Saul as to make him swear that David should not be put to death; thus when David returned in hot haste from Naioth, leaving Saul under the spell of prophecy, and asked him what he had done to arouse such inveterate hate, asserting that there was but a step between him and death, Jonathan did not hesitate to assure him of his willingness to do whatever his soul desired.

It was the eve of the feast of the new moon, when Saul invited the chief men of his kingdom to a banquet; and the friends agreed that this was an opportune moment for testing the real sentiments of Saul. David suggested that he should absent himself from the royal banquet; visiting his father's home at Bethlehem instead. It would be quite easy for him to do this, and yet be back by the third day. In the meantime, Jonathan was to watch narrowly his father's behaviour, and mark his tone, noting whether it was rough or kind.
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