to forget and forgive.

Thirty chosen warriors, children of the Kays, and the same number of Chattans, came down. In the fight, the clan Chattan triumphed ; all the children of the Kay were slain but one, who leaped into the river Tay, and fled to the hills. Although we have all read this narrative in The Fair Maid of Perth, yet we cannot abstain from thinking once more of the circumstances when upon the very spot,—especially if the Tschergisses of the Caucasus, and the ancient Bible histories of the Philistines, Carmelites (?), and the other inhabitants of the mountains, occur to the memory, who agree altogether so remarkably in their manners,—and when we again discover in these clans, clan feuds and clan fightings, and that in a similitude so exact, that they coincide in almost the slightest particular.'

The parley at the end of the day, between Abner and Joab, may remind one of that between Hector and Ajax in the seventh book of the Iliad. Hector had been the challenger at the commencement, and it is he who, like Abner, makes the motion for the cessation of the combat:

'Now let the combat cease. We shall not want

More fair occasion; on some future day

We will not part till all-disposing heaven

Shall give thee victory, or shall make her mine.
But night hath fallen, and night must be obeyed.'

Mahanaim was situated on the east of the Jordan, and not far distant from the city of Jabesh-Gilead. Abner had wisely selected this place as the seat of Ish-bosheth's kingdom. The people of Jabesh were closely allied by blood to the Benjamites; and the first and greatest of Saul's victories had saved that city and the land from the savage cruelty of a merciless foe. That noble act was held in grateful remembrance; and now Ish-bosheth found an asylum and a throne among the people whom his father had saved from disgrace and ruin.

The sudden advance of Abner to Gibeon is accounted for by the fact that Gibeon was one of the strongholds of Benjamin, and that tribe was still devoted to the fortunes of its own royal house. It was also near the frontier of Judah, and the skilful general could from it watch the operations of his dangerous enemy. The pool,'

VOL. III.

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or tank, where the battle was fought, exists to this day. It is at the eastern base of the hill on which the city stood, and beside it stretches out a broad upland plain, the same on which Joshua first attacked the banded hosts of the five Canaanite kings. Sitting on the brink of that pool a few years ago, I read the tragic story with a deeper interest, and a fuller appreciation of the minute accuracy of the Bible narrative, than I had ever felt before.

Thirty-sixth Week-Third Day.

ABNER.-2 SAMUEL III. 1-16.

ABNER was the sole stay of the house of Saul; and although all Israel knew this, there was no man in Israel half so conscious of the fact as Abner himself. He behaved accordingly. Ishbosheth, whom he had made king, and whose throne he, for his own purposes, sustained, was a good, easy, imbecile man; and Abner cared not though he should feel that he was nothing without him—that it was not because of his rights, but because he was sustained by Abner, that he reigned. This character of feebleness in a king is favourable to the pretensions of a great subject, in enabling him to fix upon himself the consideration and real influence which should belong to the crown. We have seen this in our own history; and we see it to-day in the great rajahs and nawaubs of the East. But the final result is damaging to the real strength of the crown; and it was so in the case of Ishbosheth.

The people could not behold the feeble character of Ishbosheth without contrasting it with the brilliant qualities of David, his firm and beneficent government, the success which crowned all his enterprises, and the attachment of his people to him. All this was detrimental to the cause of the house of Saul; nor less so the fact, that in the small conflicts which arose in the course of years between the two parties-for both avoided bringing the matter to the decision of any great engagement-the issue was usually favourable to David. Under these various influences, concurring with the doubt which must

have haunted the minds of many, whether, in upholding the condemned house and refusing the son of Jesse, they did not incur the awful responsibility of setting themselves in opposition to the known purposes of God, it came to pass that the cause of Ishbosheth became weaker every day, while that of David daily gathered strength. Abner himself was too sagacious a man not to perceive this; indeed, the observations of every day must have made him feel it most acutely; and he could not but know that it would not much longer be in even his power to uphold the tottering throne which he alone supported. When things were in this state, it would want but little to bring about a revolution. We are continually committing mistakes in assigning great effects to small and inadequate causes. There is never any effect without an adequate cause, although the circumstance which brings the already existing causes into operation, and which is so often mistaken for the cause itself, may be of small or trifling importance, and only one of a hundred other circumstances which might equally have brought them into operation. The fuel is laid, and anything that has fire in it will equally serve to kindle it up; whether it be a lighted candle, a match, a rag, a bit of paper, or a straw-it matters little.

From the time that Abner perceived that it was impossible for him to carry on much longer the high game he was playing, he must often have turned over in his mind the possibility of going over to David, and of acquiring power with him by some signal service in his cause. Pride, some sense of honour, and a lingering wish to retain possession of a more independent power than he could hope for under such a king as David, and with such rivals as the sons of Zeruiah, restrained him for the present; but he was prepared, if occasion should offer, to take the lead in the national movement towards David, in preference to becoming the victim of it. Occasion enough for him soon did offer.

King Ishbosheth, feeble as he was, had something of manly and royal spirit in him; and when he heard that Abner had appropriated to himself a woman named Rizpah, who had been

Saul's secondary wife or concubine,' and had borne him children, he was shocked and indignant at what the usages of the East rendered an act of gross disrespect to himself and to the memory of his father, if it did not indicate the same disposition to establish a claim to royal power in his own person, which, in the next generation, Solomon detected in the application of Adonijah for leave to espouse the virgin concubine of his deceased father. Whether the charge were well founded or not, is not very clear; but the presumption of the king in daring to call him to account in such a matter, or even to hint disapprobation, threw Abner into a towering passion, and he swore a fierce oath to cast down the throne he had reared up. 'So do God to Abner, and more also, except, as the Lord hath sworn to David, even so do I to him; to translate the kingdom from the house of Saul, and to set up the throne of David over Israel, and over Judah, from Dan to Beersheba.' Abner is self-convicted by these words. He knew that the Lord had sworn to give the throne to David, and yet he had resistedconsciously resisted-to the best of his power, the fulfilment of that high decree. He now reaps his reward in this-that his return to what was really his duty, bears the aspect of treachery, meanness, and dishonour. It is well, however, to remember that what he did now was his duty, had always been his duty, and was not the less his duty because he had intermediately rebelled against it. But that rebellion placed him in this invidious position-that it now devolved upon him to undo his own work, whereas at the first it was in his power to subside into graceful and honourable acquiescence in a decree which, although distasteful to him, he could not and ought not to resist. Had he done this, his acknowledged abilities must have secured for him no second place among the worthies of David, and his end might have been very different.

It may occur to many readers that the rage of Abner was as much affected as real, and that he was not sorry that the poor king had given him a pretext for turning away from him. As it was, Ishbosheth answered not a word to this outburst of his haughty kinsman-he was so greatly terrified.

Afterwards he

probably reflected that Abner's interests were too visibly bound up with his own to allow him to execute his threats; and that he abstained from any immediately demonstrative action, must have confirmed him in this impression.

But Abner's were not idle words. He sent faithful messengers to David, to make terms for his assistance in bringing over the other tribes to his cause. The king of Judah was alive to the importance of this intimation, yet he manifested no unbecoming eagerness to seize the opportunity. He knew that the Lord's purposes regarding him were in visible process of accomplishment; and he who had waited so long in patient faith, could, if need were, afford to wait a little longer. He therefore made it an essential preliminary to all negotiation, that his wife Michal should be restored to him. There is no law in any state, and there was certainly none among the Hebrews, which allows a father to divorce his daughter from her husband, and give her in marriage to another. But this Saul had done, having given Michal in marriage to Phaltiel the son of Laish. David's claim to her therefore remained intact. She was his first love; and although he had now other wives, his heart yearned towards this one in the keen and fresh remembrance of early affection. He had also purchased her dearly at the risk of his life; and he might not be unwilling thus to bring to the remembrance of the people his old exploits against the Philistines, and to evince at this time the value he set upon his connection with the house of Saul. It might be very important that it should now appear that the members and partisans of that house were not beyond the scope of his clemency and favour.

Abner used this demand as the means by which to accomplish his ulterior object. It was in itself so reasonable, that he made it known to Ishbosheth, who readily consented that Michal should be taken from Phaltiel, and that Abner himself, as her natural protector, should conduct her to David. There has been much idle talk about the cruelty of taking her away from a man with whom she had lived some years, and who, for all that appears, was a good husband, seeing that he followed