passions. Why should they put restraint on theirs? How can he
command them when he has not commanded himself? And yet self-
restraint is what they, above all men, need. Upstart princes--the
sons of a shepherd boy--intoxicated with honours to which they were
not born; they need the severest discipline; they break out into the
most frantic licence. What is there that they may not do, and dare
not do? Nothing is sacred in their eyes. Luxury, ambition,
revenge, vanity, recklessness of decency, open rebellion, disgrace
them in the sight of all men. And all these vices, remember, are
heightened by the fact that they are not brothers, but rivals; sons
of different mothers, hating each other, plotting against each
other; each, probably, urged on by his own mother, who wishes, poor
fool, to set up her son as a competitor for the throne against all
the rest. And so are enacted in David's house those tragedies which
have disgraced, in every age, the harems of Eastern despots.

But most significant is the fact, that those tragedies complete
themselves by the sin and shame of David's one virtuous and famous
son. Significant truly, that in his old age Solomon the wise should
love strange women, and deserting for their sakes the God of his
fathers, end as an idolater and a dotard, worshipping the
abominations of the heathen, his once world-famous wisdom sunk into
utter folly.

But, it may be said, the punishment of David's sin fell on his sons,
and not upon himself.

How so? Can there be a more heavy punishment, a more bitter pain,
than to be punished in and by his children; to see his own evil
example working out their shame and ruin? But do not fancy that
David's own character did not suffer for his sin. The theory that
he became, instantly on his repentance, as good and great a man as
he was before his fall, was convenient enough to certain theologians
of past days; but it is neither warranted by the facts of Scripture,
nor by the noble agonies, however noble, of the 51st Psalm.

It is a prayer for restoration, and that of the only right and true
kind: 'Take not thy Holy Spirit from me;' and, as such, it was
doubtless heard: but it need not have been fulfilled instantly and
at once. It need not have been fulfilled, it may be, till that life
to come, of which David knew so little. It is a fact, it was not
fulfilled in this life. We read henceforth of no noble and heroical
acts of David. From that time forth--