rest. "Oh th&t I had wings like a dove I for then would I fly away, and be at rest~ (Ps. Iv. 6); '' Rest in the Lord" (Ps. xxxvii. 7); "Return to thy rest, O my soul" (Ps. cxvi. 7). The crisis is not one when passion must have its way, when stern measures must be taken, when all things must be left to drift or else all be touched with an unwontedly firm hand. It is a crisis of much happier kind. Volume after volume of the history of Israel has been filled, and volumes not a few of the personal biography of David have been unerringly written. The last opens. Before his nation is spread out a wide, fair, enduring prospect of rest. Jerusalem "is at rest, and is quiet" (Isa. xiv. 7). David's whole heart enters into the satisfaction of the thought. Let us note the admirable use he makes of this state of things. I. HE USES THE CRISIS FOR THE PURPOSES OF REVIEW. 1. Special audible acknowledg- ment is made of surpassing mercy. "David said" it. He did not merely observe it ponder it, and then keep it locked in his own heart. While he himself enters into th; satisfaction of the thought, he utters it aloud. 2. David owns the Giver of the good in question. It has not come of itself. It has not come of circumstances, of reaction traceable enough, of secondary causes whether more or less remote. "The Lord God of Israel" is the Giver, to whom all the nation's indebtedness shall be confessed. 3. David suggests the harmony of the gift with the Giver. God is the Giver. His people those who take all the benefit of bis giving. And this the gift-rest. Rest under the Divine protection, in the Divine shade, the shadow of his wings and his throne, who bears a special favour to "his people," and who alone can make them "dwell secure." Full every way of suggestion is the utterance of David, were it but an articulate soliloquy. JI. DAVID, AS A KING, LEADER, TEACHER, ILLUSTRATES THE DUTY OF BUCH IN A CRISIS. While his language necessitates the comparison of the present with the past by very force of the contra.st they present, and while it invites men to enter gratefully on the present enjoyments divinely offered, yet it associates new work, new opportunity, with these. Still the quest is to be loyalty and love to duty. He practically reminds a whole nation that: 1. Rest is favourable for order. Now, order may be honoured, recovered where it had been disturbed, studied to greater perfection even where it had not been very palpably infringed. Order is the beauty and glory of the whole universe. What room for improvement in it, in each individual heart and life, and in the life of every community l 2. Rest is favourable to growth. The winds that rock the trees help far down in the earth to provoke their roots to feel room for further growth, but the growing itself is not done while the storm lasts. How true this is of human character! It is our passionate, importunate cry to be hidden, to be sheltered, till the tempest is overpast, and the fury of the storm is spent. But afterward we grow. 3. Rest is the time for the cultivation of the devotion of the heart. It is true with no superficial, no mere sentimental truth, that- " The calm retreat, the silent shade, With prayer and praise agree, And seem by thy sweet bounty made For those that follow thee." That J esUB recommended the sanctum of the closet of prayer with the door closed ; that he also himself sought retirement, privacy, solitude, with either the cover of deep shade or the suggestion of commanding prospects unfolding to the gaze, on mountain side or summit, are strong testimonies to the genius of rest and to the habitat of genuine devotion. 4. Rest gives grand opportunity for religious enterprise. Does the language sound a contradiction or paradoxical? It is not so in reality. The higher forms and conceptions of rest do not consist in inactivity, in the indulgence of lassitude, but in the cessation of waste energy, toil as unprofitable as laborious, or, if necessary (as the wars of Israel), as painful to the heart as strenuous to the hand. Most significant in this direction the words, "For he that bath entered into his rest, he also bath ceased from his own works" (Heb. iv. 10). Heaven itself cannot possibly be view~d with satisfac- tion as a place or a state of inactivity. All the tasks of highest devotion may be sup- posed to be there the material of most strenuous achievement. But it will surely be both a place and a state delivered from the restless worry of care, the restless strife with sin, the restles~ struggle to elude or to bear sorrow, so familiar to the present. So when all outer care and war and work were removed awhile from the lot of Israel OH, xxm. 1-32.] THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRO~ICLES. 381
David flies to the thought of the great opportunity open for the works of religion. To these he directs his own enthusiastic study and labour. To these he calls his princes. priests, and a whole people. •