fellows, silently beseech kindness and fidelity and propitiate favour, we have a touching example in the history of the text. Notice the explaining, justifyin", 0 and redeemincr0 features of this suspicion. I. THE BCJBPICION TO WHIOH DAVID GIVES EXPRESSION AROSE IN THE MIDST OF CIR~UMSTAN0EB WHI0H INV?LVED THE QUESTION OF LI_~ OR DEATH. This question of hfe or death was that which actually ea.used the susp1c1on. He who felt it and spoke it was in supreme danger. The disposition of frankness, generosity, forgivingness, must be brought to think, calculate, be cautious under certain circumstances. If otherwise, that disposition is no longer entitled to its old honourable titles, but to titles of far less repute, not lovely, not of good report--such as recklessness, or a.t least heedlessness. 'l'he very perfection of the former will be tarnished if they a.re not answerable to certain kinds of consideration. Forgivingness in itself is ever one of the noblest dispositions, but it is not under all conceivable circumstances to be exercised a.nd to become fc,rgive- ness. The highest teaching, thst of the New Testament e.nd of Jesus, runs counter to this, and the sternest and deepest facts of human condition in the presence of God, and placed under the light of Christ's atonement, disown it. For then forgiveness would both come of indifferent and insufficient estimate of the just and the right, and would be adapted to give fearful encouragement and incentive to the same. So in the same way, confidence is: not to be reposed with an equal unhesitatingness in all cases, just because confidingness is an engaging quality and graces the character, while sus- picion does the reverse. In the higher moral aspects and relations of our merely human life we constantly recognize this as a principle. And in the highest spiritual aspects a.nd relations of our life its illustrations are inevitable a.nd are arresting even to the point of admiration. There is a sense in which the supreme issues of life or death have been felt by the holiest men who have lived to warrant the expression, for the moment, of some doubt, until the tremblingness of the human heart and the feebleness of the human hand have really felt the force of the Divine presence and the comfort of the Shepherd's "crook and staff." Many of the supreme facts of our present life, if not all of them, bring us very near indeed to those of our spiritual "unseen" life, But even far 'within these limits hume.n hearts ask large things of one another, and invoke e.n immensity of trust and repose an immensity of trust not unfrequently where it is little recognized, little honoured. One walks out with his life in his hand and a weight on his heart almost intolerable, to meet another whose mirth it may be to make mischief, and to hear his sentence and receive his destiny to all human intents from light lip and unthinking heart. 'l'his sobers human trust and checks the luxuriant growth of mutual confidence, and justifies David when he prefers to express, rather than seem to <lisdain, hi8 already hnrd-bought experience of human cam passions and" tender mercies," nnd finally, sometimes turns the action of suspicion toward men into the virtue of dcepe1· trust toward God. II. THE SUSPIOION TO WUICJI DAVID GIVES EXPRESSION WAS NOT ONE THAT GREW OUT OF A HEART THAT KNEW IT BECAUSE ITSELF DlD THE DEEDS OF IT AND SCEN'l'ED ITS OWN REWARD, BUT FROM ONE CONSCIOUS OF INTEGRITY. David directly appeals to Heaven in attestation of his not having earned any faithless treatment at the hands of Saul, and of any such as might possibly be emissaries of Saul. It is a great thing to be able to make such an appeal honestly and with the firmness that comes of the inner answer of a good conscience. It would have been very different, it was very different, with Jacob. When, after an absenca of twenty-one years from his father's house, ho must now return and meet Esau, he met him with ill-suppressed suspicion and very natural distrust, and the worst misery of which was that they were self-inflicted and richly merited. A similar proneness to suspicion, a similar distrust of every unwanted whisper of the winds of providence, or unwonted sign of a fellow-creature's counten- ance or tone of his voice, evidently dogged the steps and days and very hours of thoso of Joseph's brethren who had been "verily guilty concerning" him. For all such suspicion there is no redeeming word to be spoken, except that it is of that retribution which, partinl though its manifestations be at present, helps to establish thoughtful men's faith in the great throne of righteousness, justice, and judgment. Ilut far other- wise is it now with David's suspicion. "If," says he," ye be come to betray me to mine enemies "-there was the fear and the mistrust and the suspicion-" seeing there is no wron~ in mine hands "-there is the fearless assertion of innocence-" the Goll of our l, 0HRONICLEB, 178 THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. [cH. xn. 1-40.
fathers look thereon, and rebuke it." So does this sort of suspicion issue in appealin" ~ the Ofl!,n)scien?6 of God, in leaving the matter of avenging and rebuking to God, awd 1n comm1ttmg his own cause and himself to the care and love of him that jud"eth ~~~ 0