round. But his sympathies are all the
other way; and the lineaments are altered; and the heroes are
displaced; and forms which are not heroes stand where they had stood.
And so the readers of history are mystified. They _do_ get at events.
But the actors in them wear no fixed shape. Their form varies.

It is not so with the figures in the Old Testament. It is true they
are seen upon that page only. No second historian of the least
authority has any place in those scenes. But yet the narrative shows
its faithfulness apart from any such test. There are no signs anywhere
of favour or of disfavour interfering with fidelity. It is not certain
who the author was of the Books of Samuel. But whoever he may have
been he was certainly an admirer of David. That illustrious king stood
on a pedestal of his own before all the nation. And this writer tells
the principal events with which David's life and reign were mixed up.
But we can discover without a critical eye that he tells them with
rigid and inexorable adherence to nature and to fact. One of the very
darkest transactions belonging to that life, or indeed to any other
life in those past ages, is related point by point with no attempt at
alleviation: only with this comment at the end: "But the thing which
David had done displeased the Lord." If the pen of the writer who
tells the story of Absalom's rebellion had been guided by favour or
flattery, the fact would have been suppressed or at least toned down,
that the King's first word to the breathless messenger who brings
tidings of the victory which has saved his crown is this, "Is the
young man Absalom safe?" It is natural, it is human, it is fatherly,
it is pathetic and beautiful, but it is not heroic.

This young man Absalom comes upon the page a few chapters back, and
gathers upon his name quickly the dark stain of murder. It is true he
has received most awful provocation, and the victim of that crime has
little of our sympathy. But there is no sign of penitence or of sorrow
in the mind of Absalom for this deep offence, by which he has violated
God's most holy law. His course runs on; it is a selfish, wilful,
violent, and graceless course, unredeemed, as far as we can see, by
any trace of better things. And it ends in base rebellion against the
throne and life of the father who had shown to this son more favour
and affection than to any of the rest. And the king fled before
Absalom and went over Jordan, and the rebel host f