Part 14 (1/2)

x.x.xVII

A CORONATION

Say, fellows: This is David's big day. Let's enjoy it with him. Let's get in the crowd gathering at Hebron and see a coronation.

And what a crowd! About three hundred and forty-four thousand mighty men of war--all the tribes of Israel were represented there that day--and they came over the hills of Judah from north and east and south to put a crown on David which would make him king of all Israel.

For many years David had waited for this day. At the death of Saul, two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, had proclaimed him king, but ten of the tribes had crowned Saul's son, Ishbosheth, as his father's successor. So David waited seven and a half years longer, and then the whole kingdom came under his rule.

Many times during those long years when a fugitive from Saul, hiding in caves or seeking the protection of heathen kings, it must have seemed as if G.o.d had forgotten him, and once David did almost break down, but he rallied, took a fresh hold, and ”carried on.”

Now, fellows, it must be a fine sight to see a man receive a royal crown, but it is a finer sight when there are fine qualities in a man deserving honour and reward. No head deserves a crown unless there are crowning virtues in the life. What were some of the qualities in David which merited a crowning on that great day?

One was his faith. Faith in G.o.d; faith in his fellow-man; faith in himself. It takes faith even to start anywhere, and it takes more faith to arrive. David's faith was of the coronation variety.

Another was his patience. David waited. He did not try to force matters. Whenever G.o.d was ready--that was David's time. In one of his great psalms, he wrote: ”I waited patiently for the Lord, and he heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.” David's patience was crowned.

Another was David's continual kindness to a foe. He was even kind to Saul's memory and rewarded the men who reverently took Saul's body from the wall of Bethshan and gave it decent burial. David's chivalry was crowned.

But, fellows, the fine thing to know is that the same princely qualities can exist to-day in each one of us; not for crowns on our heads, but for a great satisfaction in our hearts. Faith, patience, and a knightly spirit are just as possible possessions now as they were in David's day. They are spoken of in slightly different terms by Paul in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians,--Faith, hope, and love. You can have them all. They are priceless, but you can have them if you ask for them.

Be a prince of the Royal House!

_Read 2 Samuel 2:1-7._

x.x.xVIII

DO IT RIGHT

Say, fellows, down-town the other day a man tried to save a boy who was caught near some wires, and got killed himself for his trouble.

Hard luck, wasn't it? Yet he had n.o.body to blame for it but himself.

He took hold of a wire which carried the electric current for the street cars. He broke a law of nature and got punished. There was a way he could have gotten the wire away from the boy. A Boy Scout did it later _with a pole_.

Just the difference between touching with the hand or touching with a stick--very little, perhaps, but the law of electricity made the difference important, so that the one meant death--the other, life!

Now here comes along King David trying twice to move the ark of the Lord up to Jerusalem, where it ought to be, the first attempt proving fatal because he was foolish enough to try to handle it as the Philistines did, instead of doing it strictly by the rules G.o.d had made--rules which David should have known very well, because they were in his Bible (Num. 4:4-6, 15; also 1 Chron. 15:11-15). The rules required that the ark should be carried on poles resting on the shoulders of certain men set apart for that service, but David permitted them to put it on an ox cart, attended by Ahio and Uzzah, two well-meaning fellows, no doubt, but not according to the rules.

One of the oxen stumbled, the ark jostled, and Uzzah put his hand on it to steady it. Presto! Uzzah a dead man on the side of the road!

They called David from where he was marching at the front of the procession, and when he got back there and saw what had happened, it gave him an awful shock, for he knew he was just as guilty as Uzzah--and perhaps more so. He ordered the men to take the ark into Obed-edom's house beside the road and be careful to pick it up by the poles. Then he went on back to Jerusalem without it. He got out the Book of Numbers and went over the rules about the ark very carefully.

For three months he studied the matter. Then he went after the ark again--this time in G.o.d's way. He called for the priests and the men appointed to carry the ark; he organized a band and a great choir of singers, and went to Obed-edom's house. There they picked up the ark by the poles and started. Still David was scared, and when they had moved forward only ten yards (”six paces”) he made them stop, while a sacrifice of oxen and rams was made to the Lord.