upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man."-1 Samuel x. 2-6.

There are moments, you may all have noticed them, in the mind of the dullest, most prosaic man, when unknown springs seem to be opened in him, when either some new and powerful affection, or quite as often the sense of a vocation, fills him with thoughts and causes him to utter words which are quite alien from his ordinary habits, and yet which you are sure he cannot have been taught by any other person, - they have in them. such a pledge and savor of originality. You say involuntarily, "He seemed for the moment quite inspired, he became another man." Are you not also half inclined to say, "Now, for the first time, the man has come forth. Hitherto a cold barren nature, or a formal education, has choked up the life that was in him; now it is bursting through artificial dams, through mud barriers. Now we can see what is in him." Soon perhaps he sinks back into what he was before. There are no more traces of that splendor than of a sunset after the shades of night have closed in; but it has been; it has brought something to light which you could never have dreamed of but for that momentary appearance; you feel as if you had a right to think of the man, to measure his capacity, by that which spoke forth in him. at that instant more than by all the rest of his existence.

Now it is a fact of this kind which this record discloses to us. Only it is a fact not separated from the law and principle of it, but explaining that law and principle to us. "God gave him another heart, the Spirit of God came upon him,"-these are the words. which tell us what that prophetic impulse denoted. Then Saul became conscious of thoughts and desires altogether new and wonderful. The same earth and skies were about him, but he himself was different. He

looked out upon all things with different eyes. And this was because the Spirit of God had apprehended him. He could not doubt that God was speaking to him, down in that region which the vulture's eye had not seen a transmuting, life-giving power had penetrated there; it had claimed his obedience, and he had yielded to it. He could not but connect this power with the office to which he had been so suddenly called. How could he be a king, if he were still the same feeble, paltry creature that he had been? Did he not need some mighty influence to fit him for this work? And was it strange that He who chose him for that work should enable him to fulfil it? However unwonted then might be the thoughts which stirred in him and the words which he poured forth, they could not have come from some irregular tumultuous excitement; they must have proceeded from the very spirit of calmness and order. Saul was among the prophets precisely because he confessed the presence of such a spirit of calmness and order. For this was the faith of the prophets, this was the design of their appointment, to be witnesses by what they said, and what they did, and what they were, that men, whether they be kings or subjects, are not to be the sport of outward accidents and chance impulses, but to act habitually as the servants and scholars of a divine master, who can show them the path in which they are to go, can give them continual inward illumination, can raise them to a point from which they may overlook the world around, and interpret the course of it.

This was the preparation and discipline of a king, in all essentials the discipline and preparation which every king requires and must undergo who is to rule a people righteously and wisely, not following the bent of his own inclinations, not swayed by some bias from without,

but being under the dominion of an invisible and righteous Will, obeying that he may exercise dominion over his fellow-men. What the Scripture teaches us in the next part of the story is, that Saul did not continue the subject of this government, and therefore that he became by degrees feeble, reckless, and tyrannical. The steps of the facilis descensus are carefully noted.

Saul is no monster who has won power by false means and then plunges at once into a reckless abuse of it, no apostate who casts off the belief in God, and sets up some Ammonite or Phoenician idol. He merely forgets the Lord and teacher who had imparted to him that new life and inspiration; he merely fails to remember that he is under a law and that he has a vocation. Samuel, according to modern expositors of the story, was angry, because he felt that he was losing his own influence over the mind of the king. No, he was angry because the king was so much the slave of his influence, or of any influence that was exerted over him for the moment; because he was losing the sense of responsibility to One higher than a prophet, to One who had appointed him to rule, not in his own right, but as the minister and executor of the divine righteousness. It was a light transgression, you will say, that Saul made haste to perform a sacrifice without waiting for the person who was appointed by the law to perform it. Perhaps you may think it was a sign of the king's devotion; how could he neglect a religious duty for the sake of a formality? But in that indifference to law lay the seeds of arbitrary government, the pretensions of an autocrat. In that eagerness to do a religious service lay the seeds of the superstition which God by His covenant and statutes was undermining; since all superstition lies in the neglect of the truth which Samuel proclaimed, that obedience

is better than the fat of rams, that sacrifices are not to buy God's good-will, but are acts of submission to it. It may seem to some as if Samuel was enjoining a very rigorous course, when he complained of Saul for sparing Agag the king of the Amalekites, and the best of the flocks and the herds. But a king who let his people rush upon the prey when they were sent to punish an unrighteous nation, the crimes of which had reached a full measure, was forgetting the very functions of a Jewish sovereign, and was turning conquest into that which it was not to be, a gratification of covetousness, a means of aggrandizement. The king who heeded the voice of his army in such a matter, showed that he was not their leader, but their tool and slave. The king who pretended to keep the booty for the purpose of offering sacrifice to the Lord his God, was evidently beginning to play the hypocrite, to make the service of. God an excuse for acts of selfishness, and so to introduce all that is vilest in king-craft as well as priest-craft. Samuel the prophet was not trying to keep alive the habits which these names express, that he might maintain the dignity of his own office. That office enjoined him to bear the most emphatical protest against them. He was bound to tell Saul, that if he forgot that he was a servant and fancied himself absolute, his true condition would be shown him, for that the kingdom would be rent from him and given to another.

The next passages of the story belong properly to the history of David; I reserve them, therefore, for next Sunday. But the progress of Saul's fear and jealousy of the young man concerning whom the virgins of Israel sang, "Saul has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands," is a part of the present subject. There are many ways, no doubt, of describing how such a passion as this enters the soul and

It tells us

takes a direction towards a person who had once been loved, is baffled for a while, sometimes gives way to fits of returning affection, then absorbs the man completely, till it becomes an ungoverned frenzy prompting the most extravagant and ferocious acts. But I think that one who is considering the subject in earnest, trying to turn it to account for himself and his fellowmen, will do well to pause before he abandons the language in which the Bible speaks of this awful and mental process, and takes up with any other. that "the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him." This was before David had awakened his fears, while he was still a shepherd boy, sent for to soothe him with his harp. The words therefore describe an earlier state of mind, one which the story we have considered already will make sufficiently clear to us. That calm spirit of trust and hope which had once come upon Saul, had been resisted and grieved; he had forgotten that such a spirit had been given him to be his guide and counsellor, his wisdom to understand God's commands, his strength to obey them. And now there had come an evil spirit from the Lord, an accusing conscience warning him of what he had been, throwing its dark shadow upon the present, making the future look dim and gloomy. All ghastly apparitions haunt a mind in this condition. It sees nothing as it is. It sees innumerable things which are not. Much physical disease probably attends the moral derangement. The palpable and monstrous distortions which arise out of it, are such as friends naturally seek to cure by outward applications and diversions. The servants of Saul, who could not probe the seat of their master's disorder, suggested the wisest of all methods. for removing its external symptoms. The music was more than a mere palliative. It brought back for the