e one quality
imperative on the vicegerent of a supreme but invisible Power, that of
unquestioning obedience to the divine directions as interpreted by the
voice of prophets. Had Saul been loyal in his heart, as David was, to
the God of Israel, the sceptre might not have departed from his
house,--for he showed some of the highest qualities of a general and a
ruler, until his jealousy was excited by the brilliant exploits of the
son of Jesse. On these exploits and subsequent adventures, which invest
David's early career with the fascinations of a knight of chivalry, I
need not dwell. All are familiar with his encounter with Goliath, and
with his slaughter of the Philistines after he had slain the giant,
which called out the admiration of the haughty daughter of the king, the
love of the heir-apparent to the throne, and the applause of the whole
nation. I need not speak of his musical melodies, which drove the fatal
demon of melancholy from the royal palace; of his jealous expulsion by
the King, his hairbreadth escapes, his trials and difficulties as a
wanderer and exile, as a fugitive retreating to solitudes and caves of
the earth, parched with heat and thirst, exhausted with hunger and
fatigue, surrounded with increasing dangers,--yet all the while
forgiving and magnanimous, sparing the life of his deadly enemy,
unstained by a single vice or weakness, and soothing his stricken soul
with bursts of pious song unequalled for pathos and loftiness in the
whole realm of lyric poetry. He is never so interesting as amid caverns
and blasted desolations and serrated rocks and dried-up rivulets, when
his life is in constant danger. But he knows that he is the anointed of
the Lord, and has faith that in due time he will be called to
the throne.

It was not until the bloody battle with the Philistines, which
terminated the lives of both Saul and Jonathan, that David's reign began
in about his thirtieth year,[3]--first at Hebron, where he reigned seven
and one half years over his own tribe of Judah,--but not without the
deepest lamentations for the disaster which had caused his own
elevation. To the grief of David for the death of Saul and Jonathan we
owe one of the finest odes in Hebrew poetry. At this crisis in national
affairs, David had sought shelter with Achish, King of Gath, in whose
territory he, with the famous band of six hundred warriors whom he had
collected in his wanderings, dwelt in safety and peace. This apparent
all