el. It evolved the qualities of a
leader of men; teaching him command and forbearance, promptitude and
patience, valour and gentleness. It won for him a name as the defender
of the nation, as Nabal's servant said of him and his men, "They were a
wall unto us, both by night and by day" (1 Sam. xxv. 16). And it
gathered round him a force of men devoted to him by the enthusiastic
attachment bred from long years of common dangers, and the hearty
friendships of many a march by day, and nightly encampment round the
glimmering watchfires, beneath the lucid stars.

VI.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.

We have one psalm which the title connects with the beginning of David's
stay at Adullam,--the thirty-fourth. The supposition that it dates from
that period throws great force into many parts of it, and gives a unity
to what is else apparently fragmentary and disconnected. Unlike those
already considered, which were pure soliloquies, this is full of
exhortation and counsel, as would naturally be the case if it were
written when friends and followers began to gather to his standard. It
reads like a long sigh of relief at escape from a danger just past; its
burden is to tell of God's deliverance, and to urge to trust in Him. How
perfectly this tone corresponds to the circumstances immediately after
his escape from Gath to Adullam need not be more than pointed out. The
dangers which he had dreaded and the cry to God which he had sent forth
are still present to his mind, and echo through his song, like a
subtly-touched chord of sadness, which appears for a moment, and is
drowned in the waves of some triumphant music.

"I sought the Lord, and He heard me,
And from all my alarms He delivered me.

* * * * *

This afflicted (man) cried, and Jehovah heard,
And from all his troubles He saved him."

And the "local colouring" of the psalm corresponds too with the
circumstances of Adullam. How appropriate, for instance, does the form
in which the Divine protection is proclaimed become, when we think of
the little band bivouacking among the cliffs, "The angel of the Lord
encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them." Like his
great ancestor, he is met in his desert flight by heavenly guards, "and
he calls the name of that place Mahanaim" (that is, "two camps"), as
discerning gathered round his own feeble company the ethereal weapons of
an encircling host of the warriors of God, th