meet the people.

After this those who were left of the followers of Absalom begged the
king to come back to Jerusalem, and so he came, and thousands came to
meet him. He had only forgiving words for those who had injured him,
and for Barzillai and the men of Gilead who had fed them and shown them
great kindness in the darkest hour of the king's life, and who came a
little way on the journey with them, he had grateful words and
blessings.

And so the king came to his own again. He was now getting to be an old
man, and the love of his people made his last days blessed.

His warriors said, "Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that
thou quench not the light of Israel."

Once he sinned against the Lord by numbering his people. He wanted to
know how many men in his kingdom could bear arms in battle, and he
forgot that victory over the enemy was not with the many or the few,
but with the Lord, who is the strength of his people. When he saw that
he had done wrong he confessed it and begged for forgiveness, but a
pestilence spread over all the land, and came near to Jerusalem, and
the angel was stayed by the Lord's hand just over the threshing floor
of Araunah. This was the broad flat top of Mount Moriah where long
before Abraham had built an altar on which to offer Isaac.

When David saw the angel he said,

"I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Let Thine
hand, I pray thee, be against me, and against my father's house."

Then the prophet Gad said, "Go up, rear an altar to the Lord in the
threshing-floor of Araunah," and David went as the Lord commanded.

When they reached the mount Araunah offered David the piece of ground
with the oxen for a sacrifice, but he would not take them as a gift.

"But I will surely buy it of thee at a price," said David, "neither
will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God of that which doth cost
me nothing."

So he bought the piece of ground and paid for it six hundred shekels of
gold. Twice had the Lord blessed this spot with a miracle of
salvation, and twice an altar had been built there, and looking upon
it, David said,

"This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt
offering for Israel," and he prepared to build there the temple of
Solomon,--the altar of the world.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE BUILDING OF THE GOLDEN HOUSE.

The time was near when David must leave his people and go to his God,
and his chief thought wa