David, in all things, took the place of Saul : if the triumphant Pæans of the multitude delighted the ear of the son of Kish, ten times more attended the entrance of the young conqueror into the Holy City. If Saul was a man of war, and all the people followed him trembling, the feats of David's arms were so brilliant, that he was termed the "light of Israel," and was checked in his desire to be in the front of battle by the universal intreaty of the army. If Saul ambitiously desired to reign over a nation, David ruled that nation from Dan to Beersheba, and founded the dynasty which Saul had lost. If Saul desired to leave the name of a hero written on his tomb, or the fame of military glory to after ages, David's fame has outlived that of his predecessor, as the deathless laurel outlives the flower of the fields. In each respect David succeeded Saul, and stepped into the place left vacant by the dethroned monarch.

b. But, secondly, I may remark, that the youth whom GOD chose to be king, was endowed with personal beauty and personal courage. Do not imagine that religion will excuse us from the exercise of the latter, or that we may denounce the service of GoD as ener

If we devote our

vating and effeminate! selves to His service at Confirmation, at Holy Communion, at the earnest prayer, at the deep resolution,-remember, it will be as much incumbent on us to serve Him by the devotion of personal courage to His service, as by any other of those acts which are more popularly and immediately termed religious. It is our duty to protect from personal injury those who are wishing to do right; to shield from tyranny and violence those who, coming from home, strive to continue the habits of their early childhood. It is our duty not to discredit the cause of GOD by cowardice, whether physical or moral, to be ashamed or evasive; boldly to defend the cause of our Heavenly Master, and to shrink from nothing so much as being ashamed of CHRIST. In fact the schoolboy has as great a claim upon him to manifest his religion through the exercise of those acts of personal courage, as he has through the more direct performance of religious ministration, which, too often like the seeds striking down through their upper soil, reaches at last the substratum of rock, and withers away.

The subject matter of religion with youths

consists of these very acts, around which personal courage coils. Φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας, was the celebrated saying put into the lips of the great Athenian nation when they would indignantly reject the idea that philosophy enervated, or that the devotion of the soul to its high vocation rendered unpractical the energies of the mind.

c. But at the same time the sacred story gives us a great check with respect to the use of our nobler natural qualities. They are gifts in themselves, great and to be consecrated in the cause of religion, but, in themselves, they belong to a fallen nature and need great limitations. Their earthly part must be taken away. Those points in which men are most inclined to pride themselves must be held in continual abeyance. David was the youngest of the sons of Jesse; his profession honourable but lowly ; his antecedent acts of heroism were against the beasts of the forest instead of against the warrior and the hero; he was sent as a messenger to the camp-the bearer of the cheeses and the loaves, unadorned with the shield or the sword. The weapons of his first victory over man were the sling of the shepherd, and the five pebbles of the brook. None of the ordinary accompani

ments and trappings of worldly precedence were his; he neither possessed nor boasted of them. As if GOD had declared by the example of David, that while courage and fearlessness in the cause of truth were still remaining unbroken columns in the temple that had been ruined by the fall; nevertheless they were to be wreathed with no ornament of the world, and decorated by no trophy of human vanity. In this respect the example of David reads us a high lesson.

It is too often the case that youths are more likely to be dazzled by the trappings of the moral quality; with the trophy rather than with the armour of the living warrior. The courage which could defend a flock in the wilderness, or fight with five pebbles and a sling, is often an unlovely attribute among boys. The splendour of primogeniture, height, and bearing, the prestige of an ancestral past, the furbish of the iron and the steel; the gratulations of the world; the conformity to the conventional codes of honour-these are the trappings hung up around the form of courage, with which many a youth dazzled turns away his glance from the solid structure beneath, and underrates the moral quality, because it is decked

with no wreath of worldly glory. Take care of this, it is the crying sin of schools! It is the pure moral power consecrated to GOD, which GOD loves and which ennobles man; all the rest are but the gewgaws of a moment, the brief and transitory tinsel of a vain world. Warriors and soldiers have loved the accident too well, often at the expense of the essence. David went out in Saul's armour, but he fainted beneath the load ; he went out with the sling and the stone, but he slew the Philistine and won imperishable fame. In proportion as he decked himself in the human part of the soldier, and trusted to it, he failed; when he placed that aside and trusted to the Divine aid alone he succeeded. I do not say, that we must discard those accidents, but we must not too much trust to or overrate them.

David's case is, of course, an exceptional one; but it is an allegory. How often are schoolboys tempted to fall into the error that I have been warning against! How often a boy thinks himself courageous because he plumes himself with the feathery accidents of courage! But mark me; they will all dissolve to dust like the atoms of the shell of a chrysalis, while he who possesses the immortal