ism and generosity and devotion,
it is well to admire and praise it, whether it will bear the test of
cold reason or not. I hope your hearts will never get to be so dry and
hard that they will not beat responsive to brave and noble deeds, even
if they are not exactly prudent.

But David took even a higher view of this brave and tender act of his
lion-faced, deer-footed followers. It awoke his religious feelings; for
our sense of what is noble and generous and brave lies very close to
our religious sensibilities. The whole event passes, in David's mind,
into the field of religion; and so what does he do? Drink the water, and
praise his three mighty warriors, and bid them never again run such
risks to gratify his chance wishes? No. David looks a great deal further
into the matter than this. The act seemed to him to have a religious
character; its devotion was so complete and unselfish that it became
sacred. He felt what I have just said--that a brave and devoted act that
incurs danger is almost if not quite a religious act. And so he treats
it in a religious way. He is anxious to separate it from himself,
although done for him, and get it into a service done for God; and he
may have thought that he had himself been a little selfish. To his mind
it would have been a mean and low repayment to these men to drink their
water with loud praises of their valor. They had done a Godlike deed,
and so he will transfer it to God, and make it an act as between them
and God. I do not know that those lion-faced, deer-footed warriors
understood or appreciated his treatment of their act; but David himself
very well knew what he was about, and you can see that he acted in a
very high and true way. He will not drink the water, but pours it out
unto the Lord, and lets it sink into the ground unused, and, because
unused, a sort of sacrifice and offering to God. Water got with such
valor and risk was not for man, but for God. Much less was it right to
use it to gratify a dreamy whim that had in it perhaps just a touch of
selfishness. The bravery and danger had made the water sacred, and so
he will make a sacred use of it.

If any one thinks that David was carried away by sentimentality, or that
he was overscrupulous, one has only to recall how, when _actually_ in
want, he took the consecrated bread from the Tabernacle at Nob, and ate
it and gave it to his followers. His strong common-sense told him that
even consecrated bread was not too good