power around which they are coiled, will spread the wings of his incorruptible power in proportion as he is disenthralled from its external appendages; and rising from these lower scenes, will ascend, renewing his strength like the eagle's, to the other world. He will assume that glorified position for which this was but a probation; while he who has nothing but the appendage will crumble beneath the shocks of life, and find nothingness within his shell. Saul with his boasted stature, his proud reserve, his haughty dependence upon the human heart of greatness, quailed before the giant, and saw the armour in which he trusted cast useless on the field. He sunk at last on the heap of the slain, and left behind him neither lineage nor dynasty. But he who trusted only to the arm of GoD slew the giant before whom the monarch trembled, and founded a line of kings whose imperishable name is recorded in heaven in the hymn of those who sing the praise of the Son of David "who reigneth for ever and ever." VOL. III. LVII. JONATHAN. FRIENDSHIP, A CIRCUMSTANCE OF HOLY YOUTH. 1 SAM. XVIII. 1. "AND IT CAME TO PASS, WHEN HE HAD MADE AN END OF SPEAKING UNTO SAUL, THAT THE SOUL OF JONATHAN WAS KNIT WITH THE SOUL OF DAVID, AND JONATHAN LOVED HIM AS HIS OWN SOUL." 1. THERE have been certain proverbial friendships stereotyped on the social history of the world; those of Pylades and Orestes, Nisus and Euryalus, Jonathan and David. Certain similar features marked them all: they were in all cases the friendships of youth, of selfsacrifice, of heroic generosity and of perseverance to death. Another feature distinguished them. The friendship was in each case vowed upon the altar of boyish devotion. The boy did. not mistake the character of his own disposition or the friend whom he selected; and the experience of after life confirmed and verified the choice of youth. There are many occasions in life in which the boy is not the best decider upon truth, and in which the decisions of early days and first choices are not confirmed by the experience of riper years. It is happily not the case with friendship. There, often, he whom we have chosen as the depository of our first conscious feelings, the sympathizer with our sufferings, which reserve forbids our even betraying to a mother; the chosen companion of the long walk on the school-holiday; the friend to whom we have applied in the difficulty of the lesson; is the companion of the sore struggles of after days, the accepted friend of the wife of our choice, the sponsor of our children, and sometimes our kind and tender comforter when we are mourners over the grave of the wife or of the child. In the advance of onward years, the friend of boyhood sits by us when we are dying, follows us to the grave, places the tablet in the church or the inscription on the tombstone, and is steadfast at the last hour, as he was in the schoolroom, by the river's bank, on the play-ground and on the holiday. ""Tis little, but it looks in truth, As if the quiet bones were blest Would, breathing through his lips, impart, Those to whom I speak may be in that happy time of life; they have the opportunities of friendship, opportunities, alas! too sadly wasted and misused by tens of thousands, but capable of being amongst the brightest and the most glorious recollections of our life! 2. I will take the case of David's love for Jonathan to enforce those admirable lessons which may be borrowed for the conduct of friendship amongst boys at school, remembering all the time that that friendship has been consecrated by being recorded in GoD's holy Word; and that in the love of David is seen in allegory the Love of the Son of David, Who died for us, yielding up His life for a world that lay in wickedness, yet out of which He redeemed His Church, as the Son of Jesse selected from the stem of Saul the object of his most devoted affection. |