own days a man highly placed and of authority says of himself, and involves a large number of others in the assertion, while he looks them steadfastly in the face, " We were never on our knees;"" We forgot to pray;"" "\Ve lived long, perilous, anxious years without prayer." 'l'o tell myself honestly my own greatest sin, and make con- fession thereof to one's own soul argues two things-(1) some of the truest coura"e; 0 (2) the likeliest, surest evidence of genuine conversion. However that sin was to be shared, and whoever might be justly charged with being chiefly answerable for it, the nation Israel could not be brought in guilty of a greater or more suicidal sin than that of neglecting "to inquire at the ark.'' Well may we imagine that unmeasured pathos, sincerest self-condemnation, underlie this confession, "For we inquired not at it in the days of Saul." III. THE ENTIRE ABSENCE OF A.NY Al'PARENT DISPOSITION TO EXPLAIN AWAY THE srn. No excuse is suggested, no palliation is hinted. The bare fact announced seemed as though to make each one who heard, as well as him who had spoken, hold his breath. There is no offer on the part of David to point to what, so far as fact was concerned, he might justly have pointed-the clear, bad example of Saul, and the distracted, divided, worried nation, chief thanks to Saul. Adam, as the most natural thing in the world, early in the world as he was, attempted to push his sin a step further, though to fix it on Eve; and Eve acted after an exactly similar type. But David ~eems now to teach how convinced, utterly, he is that no such subterfuge can be anything but the subter- fuge of an hour. He seems to know well what Ezekiel declared with such unsparing directness, none should elude it, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die.'' "\Vere there a hundred manifest explanations, a hundred plausible excuses of the fact that Israel for a generation or for one year does "not inquire at the ark," not all these will for one moment deliver Israel from its own inevitable loss, all the worse because self-inflicted, all the more cruel because ushered in by high precedents. And let there be a sin attaching to any one of us, a favourite, a besetting sin; and let us be able to give a hundred explanations and a hundred palliations of it. These binder our confession, but do not help onr soul; they hinder our estimate of our own sin, but lessen not its malignant nature; they hinder our likely breaking free, for ever free, but do not com- pensate for our not being free. IV, THE ILLUSTRATION PRESENTED OF THE DUTY OF BREAKING AWAY THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE FROM COMPLICITY WITH OTHER MEN'S SINS. Whatever was David's share in the sin and the loss of the nation that had not for so long a time" inquired at the ark," now there comes for him the time when he has to consider the position he holds with regard to the matter, no longer as a private citizen and as an individual man, but as successor to Saul, and first man in the realm. It is found by some one of the hardest things, not simply to break down their own habits, but to break through others' prece- dents. Any number of anomalies are condoned and are still permitted to exist because they have existed, and perhaps existed long. But the anomalies of sin against God and sin against man can never be justly condoned on this principle, come they recommended by any number, any length, any kind of precedents. In nothing, perhaps, is the force of precedents more willingly felt, more tamely succumbed to, than in matters of religion and religious significance. And it is here that they should least of all be honoured thus. "To the Law and to the testimony" must they be brought. The ark has been neglected; the Bible has been unstudied, unmeditated; the closet of prayer has been unfrequented. It has got fashionable" to forsake the assembling of ourselves together;" and it is considered wit to level gibe and sarcasm against God's great ordinance of preaching, To break through all this and subvert it, and begin afresh before the eye of man requires strong conviction, real religion, great courage. David frees himself with few enough words at the expense of his predeceRsor from any complicity with his career. He sees the steps that may be retraced, the evil courses that may be reformed, and the mischief that may be repaired, and he gives himself no rest till the great task is begun and concluded. With him in this matter to see is to conquer,
Ver.12.-Amortifying 8tu.mble sanctified. On the threshold of his reign David desired to do an act especially right, and on the threshold it seems that he is destined to encounter in that very attempt failure and keenest disappointment. With enthusiastic faitil iu ihe ark, it ill bia heart's first and deepest desire to bring it again home-at least to ~omu 202 THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES. [cH. xm.1-14-.