obs of the penitent.

XIV.--CHASTISEMENTS.

The chastisements, which were the natural fruits of David's sin, soon
began to show themselves, though apparently ten years at least passed
before Absalom's revolt, at which time he was probably a man of sixty.
But these ten years were very weary and sad. There is no more joyous
activity, no more conquering energy, no more consciousness of his
people's love. Disasters thicken round him, and may all be traced to his
great sin. His children learned the lesson it had taught them, and lust
and fratricide desolated his family. A parent can have no sharper pang
than the sight of his own sins reappearing in his child. David saw the
ghastly reflection of his unbridled passion in his eldest son's foul
crime (and even a gleam of it in his unhappy daughter), and of his
murderous craft in his second son's bloody revenge. Whilst all this hell
of crime is boiling round him, a strange passiveness seems to have
crept over the king, and to have continued till his flight before
Absalom. The narrative is singularly silent about him. He seems
paralysed by the consciousness of his past sin; he originates nothing.
He dares not punish Ammon; he can only weep when he hears of Absalom's
crime. He weakly longs for the return of the latter from his exile, but
cannot nerve himself to send for him till Joab urges it. A flash of his
old kingliness blazes out for a moment in his refusal to see his son;
but even that slight satisfaction to justice vanishes as soon as Joab
chooses to insist that Absalom shall return to court. He seems to have
no will of his own. He has become a mere tool in the hands of his fierce
general--and Joab's hold upon him was his complicity in Uriah's murder.
Thus at every step he was dogged by the consequences of his crime, even
though it was pardoned sin. And if, as is probable, Ahithophel was
Bathsheba's grandfather, the most formidable person in Absalom's
conspiracy, whose defection wounded him so deeply, was no doubt driven
to the usurper's side out of revenge for the insult to his house in her
person. Thus "of our pleasant vices doth heaven make whips to scourge
us." "Be not deceived; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap."

It is not probable that many psalms were made in those dreary days. But
the forty-first and fifty-fifth are, with reasonable probability,
referred to this period by many commentators. They give a very touching
picture of the old king d