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unworthiness has been evinced by conduct concerning which even human judgment cannot well be mistaken. Knowing what evil there is in the world, it is not, indeed, any part of our duty to commit the lives or welfare of ourselves or others into the hands of strangers, in the supposition that they will prove faithful, but in our dealings with others it is our duty to put the best possible construction upon all their actions; and our manifest incapacity of viewing the hearts of men, should restrain us from all curious speculation upon the characters of those with whom we have no concern. Could we even see their hearts as clearly as we observe their outward conduct, we should still be inexcusable in passing judgment upon our brethren our judgments may be as false as they are cruel and criminal. Like Jesse, nay, like Samuel, we may despise those whom God has not despised; we may condemn as reprobate and unconverted those to whom God will give the kingdom of heaven; and we may draw comparisons favourable to ourselves where the Lord, who looketh upon the heart,' may judge far otherwise.1

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Thirty-third Week-Second Day.

GOLIATH'S ARMOUR.-I SAMUEL XVII. I-7.

It would seem that Saul, while under the process of cure for his grievous malady, contracted great regard for David. 'He loved him, and made him his armour-bearer,'-the latter being a mere honorary mark of consideration and attachment, at a time when there was no actual war.

By degrees the intervals of the king's phrenzy became more distant, and eventually he seemed to be altogether cured. The services of David being no longer required, he went home to his father, and resumed the care of the sheep. By this it would seem that Saul's affection towards his healer cooled as soon as the cure had been effected. The probability of this, most 1 See the Rev. HENRY THOMSON'S Davidica. London 1827.

physicians can vouch from their own experience.

Besides, it

is likely that, from the peculiar nature of his complaint, Saul cared not to be continually reminded by the presence of his healer, of the sufferings he had gone through, and of paroxysms which it humbled his proud mind to think had made him an object of compassion in the eyes of his subjects. He therefore made no opposition to the application for his son's return home, which Jesse probably made when he found that David's services were no longer necessary.

An interval passed-how long we know not, but probably about two or three years-when we again behold David traversing the road from Bethlehem, nearly in the same condition

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as before. But his appearance is considerably altered. You would scarcely know him for the same person that you saw some three years ago. He was then a growing youth; but he has now attained to greater fulness of stature, and to more firmly knit limbs. Above all, his beard has grown; and to those who, like us, remove the beard as soon as it appears, the great difference produced by the presence of this appendage on the face of one who, a year or two ago, was a beardless youth, is scarcely conceivable. The ass, also, is more heavily laden than it was formerly with Jesse's present for Saul. now bears an ephah of parched corn, ten loaves, and ten cheeses. There is war with the Philistines; the three eldest sons of Jesse are with the camp; and the anxious father sends

It

the youngest to inquire after their welfare. The corn and bread are for their use, and the cheeses are a present for the colonel of their regiment.

When David came to the borders of the camp, he left the provisions in charge of the servant who accompanied him, and went to seek out his brothers. He made his way through the host to the standard of Judah, and soon found them. He was conversing with them, when a general stir and shudder through the camp drew his attention to what was going on around him. The two armies were drawn up fronting each other, on opposite sides of the valley of Elah. From the Philistine camp stalked forth a giant, Goliath by name, whose stature, little short of ten feet, inspired scarcely more terror than the formidable weapons he bore, and the magnificent accoutrements, and seemingly impenetrable armour, with which he was invested. The particulars may be worthy our attention: There went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, whose height was six cubits and a span. And he had a helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass. And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron; and one bearing a shield went before him.' Taking into account the enormous stature of this man, and his dreadful clanking tramp under two hundredweight of metal, it is scarcely wonderful that the very sight of him filled the Israelites with terror, and that no one was found ready to engage in the single combat with him, which, with terrible shouts and thundering voice, he invited, as a mode of settling the contest between two nations.

Let us look more closely at his equipment, this being the earliest particular description of warlike panoply which we meet with in the Bible. But, first, a word of the Philistines, who have now become a people of much interest in the history of the Bible. Mr Osburn seems, in his Ancient Egypt, to have identified this people among the foreign nations represented, in all the peculiarities of person, arms, and costumes, in the

Egyptian sculptures. He says, 'The personal appearance of the Philistines differed very little from that of the Egyptians, to whom they were allied by blood. Like them, they are represented to have been a tall, well-proportioned race, with regular features, and complexion somewhat lighter than in Egypt. Like the southern Canaanites, they shaved the beard and whiskers. Their arms and accoutrements very conspicuously distinguished them from all other nations to the east of Egypt. They wore a head-dress or helmet of a peculiar, and far from inelegant, form. It has the appearance of a row of feathers set

in a jewelled tiara or metal band, to which were attached scales of the same material, for the defence of the back of the neck and the sides of the face." The helmet of Goliath may have been probably of this sort, seeing that the race of giants to which he belonged had been for some generations settled among the Philistines. In that case, we learn from the text that this curious helmet was of brass. The gigantic race was that of the Anakim, whose presence in and about Hebron terrified the spies who explored the land in the time of Moses, 1 OSBURN'S Egypt, pp. 137, 138.

and the remnant of which, on their defeat and expulsion, found refuge among the Philistines. It is not unlikely that they preserved the kind of armour and weapons in use in the quarter from which they came, and the more so as that would distinguish them from the ordinary Philistine warriors; and we find

that people of gigantic stature are fond of adding a distinction of dress to that which their stature creates ; their peculiar equipments concurring with their stature in drawing attention to them, and indeed, making their stature the more conspicuous. The marked manner in which this giant's equipments are mentioned, may strengthen the supposition that they were not such as the Philistines themselves wore. If this supposition be correct, the war costume of the Hittites probably was the same as that worn by the Anakim, at least before they went among the Philistines.

This people, if Mr Osburn has correctly identified them, used in war a helmet or skull-cap extending far down the neck behind, and cut out high and square above the ear, so as to expose the bald place and long lock, which they deemed a

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