THERE is a passage in the life of David, in regard to which most persons have sympathized with him. It is the loss of his child. Bereavement

in a world of universal death is so necessarily common, that an event so natural, so simply told, and containing such sweet and simple expressions of faithful submission to the will of God, can hardly fail to touch the heart. It speaks strongly of the existence of affectionate ties, of sad and final partings, and of an earnest looking towards another and future state. And such topics must be to thinking men of the very highest interest. Such men feel that they are on every side too manifestly involved in these contingencies, to escape altogether from the weighty thoughts which they suggest.

David's child was the result of a criminal intercourse; and, as he loved the woman of whom he had become unlawfully possessed, he loved her child also. And although God by the voice of his prophet declared the forgiveness of his sin, yet he visited that sin so far with temporal punishment by the death of his child. During the child's illness, David fasted, retired into privacy, and lay prostrate on the earth: but when he discovered, by the manner of his attendants, that the child was dead, he arose, and washed, and anointed himself, and came into the house of the Lord, and joined in the public worship, and then came to his own house, required that they should set bread before him, and did eat. Such conduct, though evidently justifiable on right principle, was mysterious and strange to his attendants, who, according to custom, seemed to think that the time of sorrow was only now come. But David readily explained the motives by which he was actuated. He wept, and mourned, and humbled himself under the descending rod: but when it fell and smote him, he bowed submissively under the blow; he received the chastening without a murmur: and he thus vindicates to his servants SEPTEMBER-1845.

his return to the active duties of life: "Now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."

This statement, explaining his feelings, and exculpating his course, suggests several points worthy of thought connected with those afflictive bereavements to which all are in some measure liable.

I. It is of divine appointment, that in this life there are many endearing relations and ties. David loved his child-most men do-fondly; and this affection spreads through all the various ramifications of relationship. It is a natural principle bound up in the heart; and though it may be charged, philosophically, with imperfection, as savouring of partiality to a few, instead of a general benevolence, it is a principle highly necessary to hold up each individual strenuously to the fulfilment of those arduous and continuous duties in a world of sorrow, without which the sick, and weakly, and defective, the aged, and the infirm, would often, notwithstanding all the efforts of a general philanthropy, be left to perish. The mother's fondest affections are often seen to entwine most closely around the puny, sickly, and least engaging child. And this natural affection is increased and strengthened on both sides in all the relations of life, by offices of kindness, by the daily recurring fulfilment of duty, by the near association for years in all the chances and changes of this troublesome world; so that many married persons who first drew together from very imperfect and defective motives, have, by mere juxtaposition and close jostling together amidst cares, turmoil, and perplexity, become deeply and permanently attached, so attached as to be ill prepared for the inevi table separation at the close of life. By far the larger portion of human happiness flows from these near domestic relations. All but a few miserable selfists are alive and open to

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their influence. Man feels himself not merely a gregarious being, herding with his fellow, but dependent, in an endless variety of ways, on mutual offices of kindness, and mutual acts of forbearance and self-restraint; and as the cheerfulness of the social conversation arises out of the joint contributions of thought, so domestic happiness, the measure of home enjoyment, which generally exists, and which gives its loveliest smile to the dwellings of the wilderness, arises out of the countless and continual contributions which relative affection, in all its various grades, cheerfully bestows. Take these all away, rob the dependant creature of these appliances altogether, leave him to no other alleviation or comfort but that by which a selfish internal energy sustains the man's infirmity, and what an unhappy, desolate being he becomes. There is something so awfully oppressive in the sense of a seeming approach towards this abandonment, that the rich and aged who have prospered, as it is called, in life, and lifted up their heads in haughty state for many years after bereavement has made them desolate, are often seen feeling their way back to some poor and neglected relation, that they may have near them at least some being, in whose attentions they might imagine the natural and genial warmth of blood-relationship, something more than the cold and decent attentions of menial-purchased or interested civility. How thankful, then, should we be, as the days of our pilgrimage increase, for the continuance of life to those we are bound to love. What an astounding message it was to Job respecting his children: " "The young men are all dead, and I only am left to tell thee." How it burst all the bonds of affection at once, and left him to little more than the "miserable comfort" of his speculative and argumentative friends. If, as we go forward, our shifting tent still holds within its range a little band stimulated to offices of duty and kindness, by the spring and flow of natural affection, it is one of the brightest gleams of our evening sky, and one of the strongest calls for gratitude. It

were not easy to forget the liberated tenant of the Bastile, who, after half a century's imprisonment, ran through the streets of Paris in vain to find a name, a companion that he could remember, and then fled, from the agonizing conviction that he was alone, to solicit, as a superior mercy than liberty, a restoration to his solitary dungeon. Had he only realized in the lineaments of a grandchild the reminiscenses of former days, life would have smiled again, and liberty would have been a blessing.

II. But dear as natural relations are on many grounds, God in his providence often takes them away unexpectedly, suddenly. We are apt

to forget that there is a decree of universal death come out against us; and that the execution of that decree is marked with peculiar uncertainty. The strongest is often taken, and the weakest left. There is no departing in regular succession to another world, as we reach the appointed limit of life; but old and young, healthy or weak, are taken according to God's mysterious providence. "The Lord strikes" where he will. Such

are the liabilities to death by bodily derangement, infection, accident; and such the actual working of manifest and occult causes, that it may be well said, "In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour but of thee, O Lord!" How often is the blow threatened! How often mercifully spared! How often it comes severely and unexpectedly on the dearest object of regard! Experience in our own circle and in the neighbourhood around us, should teach us an entire implicit dependence for our own life, and that of our relatives, on the wisdom and mercy of our gracious preserver. Our comforts are wholly in his hands, and in a matter in which he most peculiarly displays his sovereignty.

But be the event of death in any case ever so mysterious and distressing, it is not, it cannot be, a capricious act. It flows in every instance from infinite wisdom, holiness, and love. It is the wise behest of an infallible moral governor, who "doeth all things well." Sometimes death enters into

our circle as a punishment. So died the children of Eli; so died the child of David; so perished the thousands of the Assyrian host; and such was the awful visitation on a stubborn and rebellious people, when the midnight cry arose in Egypt, "when there was not a house where there was not one dead." For God had smitten all the firstborn in the land from the palace to the prison. Alas! as every family wept over the heir and the pride of the house, how they must have been conscious of the power of Him who killeth, and maketh alive; who lifteth up, and bringeth low!

"He

Sometimes death comes for correction and instruction in righteousness. Such, probably, was the unexpected death of Rachel in childbed, to wean the patriarch more entirely from this life, and to give to it still more of the pilgrim character. Such was the removal of Job's children; that while God vindicated his own ways, even before the accuser of the brethren, he might teach his faithful servant more deeply in the ways of his providence, and lead him to exercise a fuller and more implicit faith. knoweth the way that I take; and when I am tried I shall come forth as gold." Such was the fatal illness of Lazarus. This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby. Such was the trying and extraordinary bereavement of Ezekiel. "Son of man, behold, I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke, yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. So I spake unto the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died." It was a special and awful lesson, both to the prophet and to his people, on the sovereignty of God in the punishment of sin: and desperately trying as a dispensation so sudden and so peculiar must have been to Ezekiel, He who appointed it was able to pour into his servant's lacerated heart the consolations of sustaining and healing grace. And, generally speaking, the visitation of death is, in one way or other, tempered with mercy. There is some aspect of the trial, which, if rightly consid

ered, will show, that, though the decree of death is gone out against us, and must, in many instances, be felt very severely; yet that the mode of executing that decree is wonderfully overruled for good: and even where no alleviating circumstances are directly traceable to short-sighted mortals, there is mercy-intended mercy in the severest lesson which death reads to us of the sovereign and awful authority of the eternal God. Few severer lessons were ever learned on the right of God, as a judge, to the forfeit life of a sinner, than the call on Abraham to offer up in sacrifice his only and beloved son. He was not to wail in prostration upon the earth, like David, the contingent ravage of disease, but he was to be the active agent who must strike the blow. He must not wait till the exhaustion of fierce disease would make the fondest relative desire the coming event, but he must himself stop at once the full tide of life, and plunge the beloved child into an unseen eternity.

Yet

after all that dark cloud broke in showers of blessing over the believing and submissive parent, and on all the family of the faithful.

What a wide-spread scene of sorrow death makes. There are a few resolute followers of business or pleasure who know little of its oppressive power till it smites themselves. They push on through life's busy scenes without looking into the chambers of sorrow and disease. They have no familiarity with the sad preliminaries of death. Pleasure or profit has made them callous and indifferent to the sorrows of their kind, and the only palliation of that hardness is, that they are very ignorant what those sorrows are. But these are few indeed the few who have wrapped themselves up in an impenetrable selfishness. But all the rest of mankind are intimately mixed up with the universal sorrow. Death enters both the palace and the cottage. It is felt in every grade of life. Natural affection knows nothing of caste. The refinement of real sorrow, the silent endurance of bitter grief, the fond attentions of the bedside, and the burst of agony at parting, are

realized with equal force, independently of wealth, rank, or education. It may be said with equal truth of the shepherd or the sovereign, "His life is bound up in the lad's life." What need then is there throughout the family of man of enlightened and implicit trust in God's mercy. If one sharp blast may shake off all the blossoms of our comfort, and lay them in the dust, it is immensely important that we should commit them prayerfully to divine keeping, and hold them in child-like dependence on divine compassion.

III. And how keen is the feeling of that irretrievable separation which death accomplishes. "Can I bring him back again?" all experience asserts the impossibility of that return.

'Like a mist on the mountain,

Like a wave on the river, Like a bubble on the fountain, He is gone-and for ever." Even in the case of an infant this is felt. The sovereign felt it amidst the cares of empire. How much more keenly, then, will that fatal irremediable separation tell upon the heart after years of affectionate association, when a kind parent goes to his long home, when a faithful partner of our joys and sorrows looks the last look of fondness, when a father or a widowed mother lays an only son in the grave. It is a harrowing thought, "He shall not return to me." Duty often separates in this world the dearest friends. At the royal mandate, or in search of wealth, a son hastens alone to the other side of the world, to spend the best portion of life an alien from family and friends. But there is the alleviation ever recurring. By and by he will return. The genius of science has shortened the distance of our antipodes, has diminished the earth's diameter. A letter will speedily reach the loved object, and hasten his return. But here it is not So. That short sentence rings an awful knell over the heart- "Can I bring him back again?" Memory may retrace beloved features, and recount proofs of disposition and features of character; interesting scenes may arise with peculiar vividness before the mind, and affection may linger over the grave, and lavish over it

a fond and solacing attention-still the thought abides in all its power, and it would be unnatural not to admit it in all its power for it speaks with a force intended to be impressive, "He shall not return." Nor is it well to look away altogether from this distressing fact. An event so universal-felt, as it must be, at some time or other, by every onemust be of the nature of a profitable dispensation towards man, must be intended, by the way in which it forces attention to another scene, to which the dead are removed, to draw the soul away from too keen and ardent attention to visible things. "An object on which my affections were fixed, is gone-is seen no more-wherever he is, here he is not-and here he will not be again. If I can see him again, then I must seek him elsewhere. He shall not return. I cannot bring him back again-no, I must go to him!

IV. And mark in this case, the moral certainty upon David's mind as to the place to which his child was gone. With all his errors-and they were many-he was a sincere servant of God, with a well-founded hope of future happiness. It is impossible to read his meditational and devotional compositions, and not be assured of this. He knew where he was going. "Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence there is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." David evi

dently believed that the infant spirit of his child was gone to that glorious inheritance. Blessed assurance-it takes away half the agony of parting. The eternal safety of infants removed by death cannot be doubted. David had no doubt as to his child; and why should any one? Called to a

rational existence, and gifted with an immortal soul, but removed out of a world of sin and temptation, before they can be guilty of disobedience, it is impossible to doubt fairly that their eternal safety is secure. The removal itself is the proof of their election. It is a special mercy that spares them the trials of the wilderness, the humiliation and griefs, that would be otherwise inevitable, and places them

early and at once in that unchanging state, where the angels do always behold the face of their heavenly Father." It is, perhaps, one of the most cheering thoughts, amidst the many sorrowful and gloomy hours of our pilgrimage-that, though the curse of death is on the world for sin, and though the awful results of that curse are seen in an endless variety of ways, both in present punishment, and in the moral certainty, that multitudes of men are bankrupt for the great eternal accounts; yet that God is pleased to take away onehalf of mankind before they reach years of personal responsibility. The millions of adults who are sanctified and saved, through the belief of the the truth, are an absolute majority on the side of holiness and happiness. We must believe that many "go into everlasting fire," that many "wake to everlasting shame and contempt;" of many whom we know, and have known, we cannot but stand in doubt. On many cases, that it would be criminal in us to decide, and that it is well for us that we are not to decide, there cannot but hang a shade of mystery-we cannot say where they are gone. Then there is a peculiar glow around the infant's dying pillow, and, trying as it is to see the little sufferer in the strong grasp of death, it is cheering to know, that no doubt overhangs the dispensation, that the angel of death frowns not, that the contingencies of a life of temptation are not in that case seen necessary, but that the child has been just called forward to an immortal existence, received the incalculable blessing of a rational and moral nature, and then been speedily set apart for a world where sin cannot come. The sickness and death of the child are corrective visitations to the parents-they are everlasting security to his offspring.

V. But one of the most interesting features in the whole case is David's peaceful consciousness of future happiness himself the possession of a good hope. He had been the believing servant of the true God from his youth. His trust in God was a marked feature of his character. In the midst of much imperfection, that trust in a

revealed God was gradually working in him a mighty change-a loyalty of heart, that kept him right on almost all great points, and through Divine mercy brought him at last to a peaceful death-bed, on which he felt the promised salvation to be all his desire. But, in this instance, David has sinned grievously, and had remained, most probably some months, in a state of heart-alienation from the sincere devotional service of his God. It was not till after Bathsheba's child was born, that the prophet was sent to David. Most probably he was all that time in a state of backsliding; observant, perhaps, of the outward duties of religion, but either in a state of spiritual torpor, or miserably uncomfortable under the consciousness of unrepented and persevering transgression. His want of readiness to perceive the force of the prophet's parable, would imply that gross sin had very much deadened his spiritual perceptions. There is no deterioration more rapid than the deadening influence of an indulged sin on a fallen believer. David says, elsewhere," If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me :" and the only alternative, therefore, which suggests itself in such a case, instead of the right one, is to cease to pray, and not to mock either God or self with the insult of a pretence. Perhaps, like many another man caught in the toils of God's providence, he had been without a fixed and steady act of prayer for many months! The half-conscious sigh of a germinating repentance might have occasionally heaved his bosom, even by the couch of Bathsheba; but he had shunned, because he was not yet prepared for the acknowledgement of his transgression. He had not yet felt its guilt. He was a stranger to contrition.

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How rich then were the aboundings of mercy to him! How full the tenderness and the pity of omnipotent holiness to a fallen creature! fitted is the aspect of such dealings to win the sinner, if he rightly considers them, back to holiness and to God! Before God sent the correcting afflic tion, he sent his servant Nathan on a