s this
blood-guiltiness which was the burden of his confession and his agonized
grief, as an offence not merely against society and all moral laws, but
also against his Maker, in whose pure eyes he had committed his crimes
of lust, deceit, and murder. "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,
and have done this evil in Thy sight!" What a volume of theological
truth blazes from this single expression, so difficult for reason to
fathom, that it was against God that the royal penitent felt that he had
sinned, even more than against Uriah himself, whose life and property,
in a certain sense, belonged to an Oriental king.

"Nor do we charge ourselves," says Edward Irving, "with the defence of
those backslidings which David more keenly scrutinized and more bitterly
lamented than any of his censors, because they were necessary, in a
measure, that he might be the full-orbed man to utter every form of
spiritual feeling. And if the penitential psalms discover the deepest
hell of agony, and if they bow the head which utters them, then let us
keep those records of the psalmist's grief and despondency as the most
precious of his utterances, and sure to be needed by every man who
essayeth to lead a spiritual life; for it is not until a man, however
pure, honest, and honorable he may have thought himself, and have been
thought by others, discovereth himself to be utterly fallen, defiled,
and sinful before God,--not until he can, for expression of utter
worthlessness, seek those psalms in which David describes his
self-abasement, that he will realize the first beginning of spiritual
life in his own soul."

Should we seek for the cause of David's fall, for that easy descent in
the path of rectitude,--may we not find it in that fatal custom of
Eastern kings to have more wives than was divinely instituted in the
Garden of Eden,--an indulgence which weakened the moral sense and
unchained the passions? Polygamy, under any circumstances, is the folly
and weakness of kings, as well as the misfortune and curse of nations.
It divided and distracted the household of David, and gave rise to
incessant intrigues and conspiracies in his palace, which embittered his
latter days and even undermined his throne.

We read of no further backslidings which seemed to call forth the divine
displeasure, unless it were the census, or numbering of the people, even
against the expostulations of Joab. Why this census, in which we can see
no harm, should have be