prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."

We are discovering those qualities which entitled this young man to be crowned as king.

Finally, he was a man of genuine piety. We read in one place that he was "a man after God's own heart." The statement has been a puzzle to many an honest mind. This man who in his later years dipped his hands in the blood of his foes and fell on one occasion into the grossest sin with an attractive woman, this fellow a man after God's own heart!

He was not an angel. As we go up and down through history we find men and not angels. We find men with mud on their boots, with blisters on their hands, and with scars on their souls. George Washington owned slaves. John Calvin burned Servetus at the stake. Peter the Apostle denied his Lord three times in a single night—he denied with an oath. If you are looking for moral perfection you will have to look somewhere else than on this earth.

David was a man after God's own heart, not because he never did wrong, but because when he fell down he got up again. He got up again faced towards God and not away from Him, faced away from the evil which had thrown him down and not towards a further advance in wrong-doing. "The wise make of their moral failures ladders by which they climb towards Heaven. The foolish make of their moral failures graves wherein they bury all their highest hopes."

When Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading gaol for his own wretched wrongdoing he wrote that strangely human document, "De Profundis." It was a message "out of the depths." In that book he used this striking sentence which I have never forgotten since the first time I read it, "The highest moment in a man's career may be the hour when he kneels in the dust and beats upon his breast and tells all the sins of his life."

"God be merciful to me, a sinner." "Have mercy upon me, O God. Against Thee have I sinned. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." This is all that any honest man can say in the presence of his Maker, and when he does say it honestly he is on his way to the divine favour.

David was a man of faith and of prayer; he was a man of deep, sweet feeling and of spiritual longing. In all his better moments when he was truly himself his heart hungered after righteousness and his soul was athirst for the living God. A man of that moral mood and build is much more after God's own heart, even though he may upon occasion be betrayed by the fervour of his nature into wrong-doing, than is the coldly correct man who has never felt enough of warm-hearted devotion to anything to raise the spiritual temperature a single degree.

I do not know how many of these Psalms came from the lips or the pen of David. No one knows—not many in all probability. But I know that these words represent experiences which were David's beyond a peradventure. "The Lord is my rock and my fortress, my deliverer and my saviour. In my distress I called upon Him and He heard me. He drew me out of many waters and He brought me forth into a large place. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

He came to the throne at the age of thirty, and he reigned over Israel for forty years. His name was handed down in human history as that of the greatest king that Israel ever had. He never could have done it but for the fact that he had in his heart faith and hope and love towards God and towards his fellow men. He was a man of deep and genuine piety.

When William IV of England passed away there was a young girl of sixteen named Victoria who was spending the night in Kensington Palace. Word was suddenly brought to her that the King was dead and that she was Queen of England. She immediately fell upon her knees imploring divine help and guidance in the discharge of the high duties which had been thrust upon her. May it not be that this was one secret of her beneficent reign which lasted for more than sixty years? The rulers who begin the ascent of their thrones upon their knees rise high because their eyes are upon that Great White Throne which is the final seat of all authority and of all blessing.

Here then were the leading traits in that young man who became king! In his early life when he was nothing but a shepherd boy he showed fidelity in the ordinary duties of every-day life. He showed courage and high resolve in the presence of danger. He had a fine capacity for joyous and enduring friendship with his brother men. He was great-hearted and magnanimous to his foes, even when he had them utterly in his power. He was a man of simple, genuine faith in the living God.

Whether you are living in Palestine or in Connecticut, in the tenth century before Christ or in the twentieth century after, are not these the qualities which are sure to be crowned? Are not these the traits which make any man kingly in his bearing and in the whole content of his inner life?

Set your hearts upon those traits and make them your own! Fight the good fight! Keep your faith! Finish your course with honour and you will find at the end of it laid up for you a crown of righteousness, which God gives to every man who serves Him aright.

IV