man out of the mire of the Slough of Despond, to set him on the firm ground of hopeful and cheerful labour.

Do not therefore delay the deed of kindness, the opportunity of which is ripe and ready to your hand. It is as easy to you now, as it will be twelve months hence and perhaps to your neighbour it will be a hundred times more valuable now than then. There is so much to do, and so little time to do it in, that to-day is the best for the intended good, and tomorrow shall bring alike its good and its evil for itself. It is a striking fact in the life of our blessed Lord, that amid all the weaknesses which necessarily encompassed His human nature, He crowded into the short space of a ministry of three, or at most of less than four years, deeds of love, which in mere extent and number-to say nothing of their variety of character and fulness of loving detail—would have sufficed, one should have thought, for many a long life, and which if they were to be written every one, the world itself could not contain the books which should be written.' So it was: His time was short, and He knew the value of it; He found time for all that catalogue of kindnesses only by never putting off till to-morrow the good which ought to be done to-day.-The night, my friend, is fast thickening around you, and have still far to go. Quicken your pace a little-and a little more yet— and you will be closer to the footsteps of Him

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you

Who walked the road from earth to Heaven, and Who marked His way by the good that He didJesus Christ, your Friend and your Brother, your Saviour and your Redeemer, your Lord and your God!

219

SERMON XVIII.

SAUL.

1 SAMUEL, Xiii. 13.

'And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which He commanded thee; for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever.'

THE character of Saul, one part of whose history

is brought before us in this chapter, is that of a man who possessed many natural advantages and points of superiority over other men: but who nevertheless sank, before his history closed, to the lowest pitch of moral degradation.

I propose to show

I. In what these personal advantages consisted. II. How they were all marred by the fatal deficiencies of his character in other respects.

III. To point out two or three particulars in which Saul's history may be a useful lesson to ourselves.

I. The advantages to which I referred were, first, those of physical form and strength. Saul was 'a

choice young man, and a goodly; there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.' He had that noble presence and commanding form which in so simple an age would naturally give him an especial claim to eminence among his fellows; and he possessed, as is shewn by many instances, personal courage corresponding to his strength and stature. But it was not only in this sense that Saul stood out among his companions. He possessed that combination of determination of purpose with a reserved and self-contained manner, which is a characteristic of those who at any time or in any nation have been leaders of men. I am speaking of course of Saul's earlier history. You will find there that while not seeking the throne, rather shrinking from it, he held it when obtained with a quiet, silent, stern determination of purpose, which nothing could move. When the children of Belial,' that is the worst and lowest of the community, despised him, and brought him no presents, he simply held his peace. He did not readily open his troubles to others, as David did when, for example, he said, 'I am this day weak, though anointed king:' he simply held on his way through all dangers from within and from without, till he had established his kingdom on a firm basis.

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Further, Saul was originally a man of a large

heart and of generous impulses. Witness his free amnesty to those who in the day of his triumph had plotted against his power and person: There shall not a man be put to death this day; for to-day the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel.' And again, even in his later life, his frank confession of error to David in the Cave of Engedi-a confession so hard for one in his position to make―Thou art more righteous than I: for thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have rewarded thee evil.'

Add to this, that Saul was one who had a sense of the value of religion and religious institutions. He was no scoffer or blasphemer; he expressed no doubt of the power of Jehovah, no contempt for the sacred office of Samuel; he kept up the outward forms of religion among the people; he put down the magicians, whose unholy rites and secret practices the Law of Moses had forbidden.

II. What then was the fatal weakness which marred so much that seemed promising in Saul? It was simply this, that while of qualities naturally good and brilliant he had much, of the Divine work of grace upon the heart, correcting and refining and improving those qualities, turning what were merely impulses into principles, and ruling all actions by the law of an unseen and Supreme Judge-of all this Saul had nothing whatever. He never experienced what the Apostle calls the powers of the world to come -that is to say, the sense of God, and of another