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having among themselves no one qualified to kill in the proper

manner.

When Jonathan's transgression in regard to the honey became known to Saul, he was for putting his son to death, according to the tenor of his vow. But this the more enlightened conscience of the people forbade. With generous enthusiasm they cried: 'God forbid! As the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground; for he hath wrought with God this day.' These remarkable words should be meditated upon in connection with those addressed by Jonathan himself that morning to his armour-bearer: 'It may be the Lord will work for us.' The Lord did work for him; and truly he wrought with God. It was a great day for Israel; and from the beginning to the end, Jonathan was the hero of that day.

Jonathan is the leading character in this romantic episode of Jewish history. Only a few disconnected sketches of his life have been preserved; but these invest him with a singular, though somewhat melancholy interest. As Dean Stanley has said, he is one of the finest specimens of early Scripture characters. Unequalled for skill in the use of arms; daring even to recklessness on the battlefield; 'swifter than the eagle, stronger than the lion;' Jonathan yet possessed a heart of the most exquisite tenderness. His devoted attachment to his father, amid all that waywardness of temper and wildness of passion, is without a parallel even in sacred biography. Then, too, his romantic friendship for David, and regard for his interests, under circumstances so strange and perplexing, evidence a mind at once of the deepest sensibility and highest honour. He appears to have possessed the rare faculty of inspiring all who came within the sphere of his influence, with confidence in his powers and love to his person. When setting out alone on that daring enterprise against the Philistines at Michmash, his armour-bearer never dreamt of questioning its prudence, or shrinking from his side. 'Do all that is in thine heart,' was his noble answer, when consulted; 'Behold, I am with thee according to thy heart.' And when, by his father's rash vow, he was sentenced to death, the whole army, to a man, braved the tyrant's anger, and cried, ‘Shall Jonathan die? God forbid: as the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground.' But the most striking proof of his noble filial devotion was given in linking himself indissolubly

with his father's fortunes, even after his own feelings had been outraged, and his life all but sacrificed, and after he had become fully aware that the mind of the nation and the favour of God had been estranged by the monarch's folly and crimes. With touching pathos David sang

'Saul and Jonathan, beloved and kind, in life

And in death they are not divided.

I am distressed for thee, Jonathan, my brother;
Thou wast very kind to me.

Stronger than the love of woman was thy love to me.'

Thirty-second Week-Fourth Day.

THE PUBLIC ENEMY.-I SAMUEL XV.

THERE is hardly any nation which has not had some especial public enemy-generally a near neighbour-which it was held to be a peculiar duty of patriotism to hate and to destroy. We need not name instances. It were difficult to find exceptions; and the reading and observation of every one will supply examples. Such sentiments between nations have generally their origin in bitter wars and ancient wrongs. Israel had many ordinary enemies, but the one marked out in this distinctive manner as the public enemy were the Amalekites. This people had some kinds of settlements in the Sinai Peninsula, and in the country south of Palestine and west of Edom ; and being a people of semi-nomad habits, they appear to have been in the habit of wandering with their flocks over the intervening countries. With this location, they came much into collision with the Israelites during the forty years' wandering. They opposed the Israelites after they had crossed the Red Sea, on their march to Sinai. They opposed and repulsed them also when they advanced to enter the Promised Land on the south; and, besides these recorded instances, there was probably a succession of aggravating petty contests between them during the long intervening period of wandering, respecting which we have no account. It is not wonderful, therefore, that,

according to ancient usage, the people of Israel solemnly doomed the Amalekites to utter destruction, whenever they should be able to wreak upon them all the fierce wrath which fired their hearts. This was, in fact, the same doom upon a nation which we have formerly seen inflicted upon a town, in the case of Jericho.

This doom was incurred by the Amalekites in presence of the miracles, and the manifest tokens of the divine presence which attended Israel's march of mystery through the wilderness. Such had been the unprovoked assaults of this people upon Israel in the time of their weakness, and such their acts of defiance of the Power by which they were seen to be protected, that the honour of his own great name, no less than his official guardianship of the chosen people, procured the Lord's sanction of this devotement. It had not yet been executed. The Amalekites still kept up their ancient hostility to the Israelites. They had not by repentance sought to avert the execution of the sentence which hung over their heads; on the contrary, they rather derided the impotent hatred which had so long left unexecuted the threatened doom. They had thus kept their sentence alive-had not suffered it to sleep by lapse of time. The silence of the Scripture-which is, from great conciseness, confined in all that relates to foreigners to great demonstrative results-conveys an aspect of harshness to the seeming revival of an old and forgotten quarrel, and the punishment of ancient crimes upon new generations. It is more than probable, and more natural, that the Amalekites themselves had never suffered this hostility to sleep, or their doom to be forgotten. That they were forward on every occasion that offered to join in any aggressive warfare against Israel, we know. It is also easily understood that they allowed little peace to the southern Israelites settled on their borders, or to those who travelled, or were out with the flocks. Observation upon the occasional meetings and intercourse of adverse races in the East, will also suggest, with all but the absolute certainty of written fact, that an Amalekite and Israelite seldom met without aggravating altercations. It seems to us as if we heard the

VOL. III.

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Amalekite launching forth into such language as this: 'Five hundred years ago ye doomed us to utter destruction; yet here we are. We are still alive; still we flourish under this terrible doom. Where is the great God of whom ye boast? His arm, it seems, is too short to reach unto us. We have not done aught to turn his fierce wrath aside. We have not bent the knee to you or to Him. We have done nothing to mollify you; rather, we hate you as much now as of old, and are as ready now as then to root you up. Think ye to appal by your curses the strong men your arms cannot subdue? We do defy you and your idle doom. Do it! do it!'

The time of long-suffering-in this case very protracted long-suffering-had at length passed, and the time of accomplished doom was come. It might have been executed by famine or pestilence; but although the Israelites might have ascribed this form of judgment to the proper source, the neighbouring nations would not; and therefore judgment of extermination was committed to the sword of Saul, who, as king, would at once be recognised as the authorized fulfiller of the ancient devotement.

Some years had passed, during which Saul had distinguished himself in the field by a series of successful operations against the hostile nations around, whom he taught to respect the power of Israel, though he did not bring them under subjection. It would appear, that in all these proceedings he acted much as an independent sovereign, without the required indications of his dependence upon the Divine King of Israel.

One trial more was to be afforded him—one more test of his obedience, before the sentence of exclusion against his dynasty was finally pronounced. He was commanded, through Samuel, to march against the Amalekites, and execute to the letter the ancient doom of devotement-of utter extermination—against them and theirs. If he had power to execute it—and power was given to him—whatever was spared became, according to thể tenor of the old vow, as much an accursed thing' as in the days of Jericho. Saul undertook the task; but he executed it entirely according to his own judgment of what was expedient

and proper. He felt no objection as to any cruelty in the command, for he executed it fiercely upon all the people of the Amalekites who came within the scope of his expedition. He destroyed them utterly with the edge of the sword. But the king Agag, who fell into his hands, he spared, he being the very person most obnoxious to destruction, as being, officially at least, the chief offender; and this assuredly not from any sentiment of pity, but for the vainglory of possessing and displaying so illustrious a captive. So of the spoil: whatever was worthless or immoveable was destroyed; but the best and choicest of everything, especially of the flocks and herds, was spared. In this line of conduct, however otherwise interpreted, Saul assumed to himself such large discretion in the execution of a positive commandment, and so closely resembled some of his former acts,—he manifested so unequivocally the fixed bias of his mind towards autocratic power, that his unfitness to become the founder of a line of theocratic kings could no longer be disputed, and his own doom was sealed.

The vainglorious character of Saul was further evinced in his homeward march, by his setting up a monument of his exploit at Carmel, thus appropriating to himself all the honour of the success,—a thing most offensive under the peculiar principles of the Hebrew government, and such as no future king ever ventured to do. Compare the spirit which this evinces with the constant and heartfelt dependence upon God, and the formal ascription of all honour and glory to Him, evinced in the Psalms and the history of David—a far greater conqueror than Saul.

Yet when Samuel came to join him at Gilgal, on his return, Saul had the confidence to meet him with the assurance that the task committed to him had been perfectly accomplished. 'What meaneth then,' asked Samuel, this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?' Without awaiting the answer, the prophet, who saw through the whole transaction, and had received his commission before he set out, proceeded to denounce his conduct, reminding him that, 'when he was little in his own sight,' he had by the Lord's

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