xt.

Saul and his army had been horribly cut to pieces. Mount Gilboa was
ghastly with the dead. On the morrow the stragglers came on to the
field, and they lifted the latchet of the helmet from under the chin
of the dead, and they picked up the swords and bent them on their
knee to test the temper of the metal, and they opened the wallets and
counted the coin. Saul lay dead along the ground, eight or nine feet
in length, and I suppose the cowardly Philistines, to show their
bravery, leaped upon the trunk of his carcass, and jeered at the
fallen slain, and whistled through the mouth of the helmet. Before
night those cormorants had taken everything valuable from the field:
"And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip
the slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in Mount
Gilboa."

Before I get through to-day I will show you that the same process is
going on all the world over, and every day, and that when men have
fallen, Satan and the world, so far from pitying them or helping them,
go to work remorselessly to take what little is left, thus stripping
the slain.

There are tens of thousands of young men every year coming from the
country to our great cities. They come with brave hearts and grand
expectations. They think they will be Rufus Choates in the law, or
Drapers in chemistry, or A.T. Stewarts in merchandise. The country
lads sit down in the village grocery, with their feet on the iron rod
around the red-hot stove, in the evening, talking over the prospects
of the young man who has gone off to the city. Two or three of them
think that perhaps he may get along very well and succeed, but the
most of them prophesy failure; for it is very hard to think that those
whom we knew in boyhood will ever make any stir in the world.

But our young man has a fine position in a dry-goods store. The month
is over. He gets his wages. He is not accustomed to have so much money
belonging to himself. He is a little excited, and does not know
exactly what to do with it, and he spends it in some places where he
ought not. Soon there come up new companions and acquaintances from
the bar-rooms and the saloons of the city. Soon that young man begins
to waver in the battle of temptation, and soon his soul goes down. In
a few months, or few years, he has fallen. He is morally dead. He is a
mere corpse of what he once was. The harpies of sin snuff up the taint
and come on the field. His garments gradu