man is right for the king upon his throne, for God is
no respecter of persons.

And you must have admired, too, the frankness, and fulness, and
humbleness of David's repentance, and liked and loved the man still,
in spite of his sins, as much almost as you did when you heard of
him as a shepherd boy slaying the giant, or a wanderer and an outlaw
among the hills and forests of Judaea.

But did it now seem strange to you that David's repentance, which
was so complete when it did come, should have come no sooner? Did
he need Nathan to tell him that he had done wrong? He seduced
another man's wife, and that man one of his most faithful servants,
one of the most brave and loyal generals of his army; and then, over
and above his adultery, he had plotted the man's death, and had had
him killed and put out of the way in as base, and ungrateful, and
treacherous a fashion as I ever heard of. His whole conduct in the
matter had been simply villanous. There is no word too bad for it.
And do you fancy that he had to wait the greater part of a year
before the thought came into his head that that was not the fashion
in which a man ought to behave, much more a king?--that God's
blessing was not on such doings as those?--and after all not find
out for himself that he was wrong, but have to be told of it by
Nathan?

Surely, if he had any common sense, any feeling of right and wrong
left in him, he must have known that he had done a bad thing; and
his guilty conscience must have tormented him many a time and oft
during those months, long before Nathan came to him. Now, that he
had the feeling of right and wrong left in him, we cannot doubt; for
when Nathan told him the parable of the rich man who spared all his
own flocks and herds, and took the poor man's one ewe lamb, his
heart told him that _that_ was wrong and unjust, and he cried out,
'The man who has done this thing shall surely die.' And surely that
feeling of right and wrong could not have been quite asleep in him
all those months, and have been awakened then for the first time.

But more; if we look at two psalms which he wrote about that time,
we shall find that his conscience had _not_ been dead in him, but
had been tormenting him bitterly; and that he had been trying to
escape from it, and afterwards to repent--only in a wrong way.

If we look at the Thirty-second Psalm, we shall see there he had
begun, by trying to deceive himself, to excuse himself before God.
B