men : and consequently, that, whichever of the two we serve, we must of necessity lose the favour of the other. This is what our blessed Lord has told us : " Ye cannot serve God and mammon ; " ye cannot ad- here to either without despising and renouncing the otherb. And the truth of this has been exemplified in all the saints, from the time of Abel to the present moment. What David speaks respecting his own experience of it, will lead me to consider,
I. The trials he endured —
He was held greatly in derision by his ungodly subjects —
[If any one could have escaped contempt, we should have supposed that David would be the happy man. His rank in society, as the king of Israel ; his extraordinary prowess in arms ; the services he had rendered to his country ; and the marvellous sublimity of his piety, must, we should have thought, have rendered him an object of universal love and admiration. But, amongst his proud and envious subjects, this last cpiality neutralized, as it were, all his merits, and reduced him to an object of hatred and contempt. The highest people in his kingdom delighted to speak against him0; whilst the lowest readily joined in their opprobrious treatment of him d. The fat bulls of Bashan on the one hand, and the dogs on the other, compassed him about e, and treated him with every species of indignity. Even his own wife, who should have been ready to stem the torrent of abuse that was cast upon him, herself joined in it with peculiar malignity f; and the very best actions of his life were made the chief subjects of their profane raillery 8. And let not this be thought a light affliction. Truly it is pain- ful to flesh and blood to bear such contemptuous treatment : so, at least, the Apostle represents it in the Epistle to the Hebrewsh; and so David himself found it to be : " Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us ! " says he : " for we are exceedingly filled with contempt : our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the con- tempt of the proud1."]
And can we hope to escape a similar trial ?
[Look at the saints from the beginning, and find one that ever escaped it ? How contemptuously did the scoffers of the antediluvian world ridicule the conduct of Noah, all the time
t> Matt. vi. 24. c ver. 23. d Ps. lxix. 12.
e Ps. xxii. 12, 16. f 2 Sam. vi. 20.
g 2 Sam. vi. 16. and Ps. lxix. 10—12. h Heb. x. 32, 33.
1 Ps. cxxiii. 3, 4.