THE TEARS OF PARENTS-(continued from p. 40.)

My dear friend,-A promise is sacred on the part of the promiser, even though his friend should have forgotten it, or failed to exact it, unless indeed he should have expressly remitted its execution; which as you have not done in my case, I am still debtor to you for certain remarks upon "the tears of parents," promised as long since as the first day of this fastwaning year, but which other occupations, more pressing, though not more pleasing, have obliged me thus long to postpone. I find, however, that if I wait for leisure, I shall wait like Horace's rustic on the margin of the river, and invoke it in vain; therefore you must accept with your wonted kindness my first thoughts in my first words: and even if my poor remarks should not be worth the cost of production, I shall be amply satisfied if they elicit from your more fertile mind something better worth excogitating. In my former letter I observed that the combined joys and sorrows of parents would be too large a subject for my management; and that even the sorrows must be divided, so that I would confine my thoughts-if such cursory sketches shall deserve that name-to those tears alone which fall upon the funeral bier. I mentioned the case of David as an illustration on which some monitory advices might be grounded. It is a painful one to begin with, but others of brighter hue may follow; and possibly the most distressing will not be the least useful. There is a sense, indeed, in which even in the most painful of such cases true faith will find repose, by resolving all into the unerring will of Him who is infinitely wise and merciful; with the feeling, "What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter." "All these things are against me," said Jacob, in the agony of parental bereavement; and yet how soon had he reason to dry his tears, and to acknowledge the ultimate mercy couched in dispensations at the time the most afflicting; for truly "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to his purpose." The woman of Shunem, when she was weeping over her beloved child, replied calmly to the inquiry of the prophet, "Is it well with thee? is it well with thy husband? is it well with the child;"-"It is well." She had perhaps some presentiment of a miraculous deliverance; for when she set out upon her journey to the prophet she expressly told her husband that it should be well; but even without any such special manifestation, a firm reliance upon the infinite mercy of God, amidst the darkest dispensations, might have led her to use the same language. And yet how difficult for a parent under such circumstances to say, "It is well!" This son was her only child. She had lived in hospitality and independence, beloved and respected, a great woman in her own village; and had refused the splendours of a court, and the triumphs of a camp, with the simple dignified answer, "I dwell among mine own people." One thing only seemed wanting to her happiness-she had no child. And now a child was given to her, and "he was grown ;" but "it fell on a day that he went to his father to the reapers, and he said unto his father, My head, My head ; and his father said to a lad, Carry him to his mother; and when he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon, and then died." Well might the man of God perceive that "her soul was vexed within her." Yet her vexation was not the indulgence of rebellious discontent; she uttered no murmur, unless we so construe her poignant remark to the prophet, "Did I desire a son of my lord? did I not say, Do CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 369.

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not deceive me?" She felt that all was well; the visitation was afflictive, but it was right and merciful; and, her faith and patience being tried, it pleased God to send her deliverance. In this case, most probably, there were not those bitterest tears which are shed upon the corpse of an impenitent child, dying apparently (for who shall limit the Most High, or come between a man, in the hour of death, and his Creator?) without God and without hope. The Shunamite's child, we may well believe, had been nurtured in the lessons taught by the man of God; and the afflicted mother, as she saw him languishing upon her knees till noon, might indulge the hope that he was only leaving the bosom of his earthly parents, to go to the presence of his Father in heaven.

In this case it was well, and even weak faith might echo the blessed truth; but to say the same in a case like that to which I am about to advert-David weeping over Absalom—is difficult indeed. And yet, difficult as it is, the doctrine is not the less true; for man's short-sightedness, or unbelief, or natural affection, mars not God's promise. How it could be well, David could not at the time understand: nor can I, who am writing so many thousand years after, with all the facts before me, discover the solution: but I doubt not that David now acknowledges the truth, and feels even the death of Absalom to have been a portion of the designs of an infinitely wise and gracious Providence. But the soul of Absalom !— Ah, my dear friend, I said I could not solve the mystery. A Christian parent mourning over an ungodly son like Absalom, cut off in the midst of his wickedness, cannot but be deeply afflicted;-afflicted not merely in the ordinary pangs of bereavement, but by alarms infinitely more heart-rending; and it would be infidelity and ruthless hardness of heart if he did not thus feel; but if he were to feel thus in heaven, that world would be to him no scene of blessedness. Some would solve this difficulty by supposing, that, whether or not the spirits of the justified recognise their fellow-heirs of glory, they do not remember their ungodly relatives: others think that they may remember, but feel no longer any sympathy, their will being absorbed in the will of God, and all their human feelings being swallowed up in a knowledge of His infinite wisdom and love. There are several other conjectures also on the subject: my own is, that we know nothing of the matter. David will weep, and ought to weep, over ungodly Absalom on earth— but there is no weeping in heaven. These are the facts; the solution I leave to wiser heads. The Bible does not, I think, clear up the question ; nor was it necessary that it should do so; except indeed as it clears up many others, with "Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?" "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

But to return to our narrative. Open your Bible, my dear friend, at 2 Sam. xviii. 33, and there you will read: "And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went up, he said, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" We should scarcely be prepared to expect that this was the sequel of joyful news; a descant upon the punishment of filial ingratitude, the requital of treachery, treason vanquished, and rebellion quelled. Far other sounds might we have expected to hear from the monarch of a rejoicing nation, on this day of public triumph; a day when he beheld a disaffected army defeated in battle, the head traitor slain, his people returning to their allegiance, and himself restored in peace to his throne. Yet so it was; for, in this chequered world, joy and sorrow are ever linked hand in hand; and the shouts of national victory cannot overpower the shrieks of the widow and the orphan, or convert the sighs and tears of private grief into concordant symphony with the jubilant strains of rejoicing numbers. Amidst the

national acclamations, the king sought his chamber, alone, to weep: the glad shouts of the multitude were painful to his ear, he shrank from the voice of gratulation: treason was defeated, but the traitor was his child; the rebel army was vanquished, but its leader was his beloved Absalom; he himself was restored to his crown, and entered in security his royal abode, but he who was infinitely dearer to him than his own life was a gory and mutilated corse in the woods of Ephraim. What to him, at that moment, were the splendours of victory? what the applauses of the multitude? Of every messenger he had eagerly inquired-not, Is the enemy flying? is the royal ensign glittering from afar ? but—" Is the young man Absalom safe?" and when the mournful tidings fell upon his ear, he could not contain the outburst of his agony till he had reached his secret chamber, but "he wept as he went," and covered his face, and cried with a loud voice, "O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!" "And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people, for the people heard say that the king was grieved for his son."

These were bitter tears; let us analyse their sorrowful ingredients. Sin, indeed, is the cause of all sorrow; but many sins have their specific punishments, and thus it was here. It is not enough that we trace up every thing to abstract generalities; that we find ourselves reminded of the Fall and the Atonement, of man's misery and God's mercy: we must go through the process of discovery step by step; we must ask, "Wherefore smitest thou me ?" and if, while the affliction brings us low for the sin of our nature and the evil of our heart, it leads us also to look at the peculiar causes for which God contends with us, it will have a doubly salutary effect,-it will not only illustrate essential truth, but teach us its personal application; it will not only remind us what God says, but make us feel how he acts and when in penitent self-examination we can discover-it may not be that we always can, but often we may-the more immediate and probable design of the trial, we shall be brought the better to understand the way in which the Lord our God has led us, to prove us, and to shew what is in our hearts, ultimately to endear the more to us the Redeemer's sacrifice and the Holy Spirit's cleansing-pardoning grace and sanctifying mercy.

There were, I think, three peculiar ingredients of bitterness in David's cup of sorrow; namely, parental affliction, self-reproach, and distressing apprehensions.

There was, first, that deep affliction which as a parent he could not but feel, at being deprived of one whom, with all his vices, he so tenderly loved. A child does not cease to be naturally dear to a parent's heart because of his conduct exciting moral disapprobation; and, as we see exemplified in the case of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, there are paternal sentiments of pity and commiseration, which are closely allied to love, even when mixed with the severest displeasure. Now, David was a man of remarkably tender feelings, and more especially in relation to his children. When he lost the infant child of his shame, his servants were afraid to apprise him of the event; and so poignant was his grief, that it had but one alleviation: "I shall go to him, though he shall not return to me." But that was an object of affection of but a few days' endearment; it had not lived long enough to entwine itself so closely around his heart as it might have done, had it been spared to add to the affections of nature the caresses and endearments of infancy and childhood: but Absalom was a young man, in the vigour of life; his father had fondly watched his dawning years; and now" in all Israel there was none to be praised so much for his beauty, as Absalom;"" he had no blemish in him." If David was gratified at this pleasing exterior, it might be his folly; but it is a folly so common,

that he was not singular in it. But, besides attraction of form, Absalom had blandishments of manner: he exhibited that false amiableness which penetrates only the surface, and the origin of which is vanity and the love of admiration; but which is so winning, to those who look only to the outward appearance, and care not what vices lurk within, that he stole the hearts of the men of Israel as one man. He was, doubtless, popularly considered as a noble, generous youth; no person's enemy but his own; and one in whom every thing was to be forgiven, because he varnished over his selfishness and cruelty, his parricidal ingratitude and abominable licentiousness, with the gloss and hollow tinsel of an urbane and affectedly amiable and open-hearted deportment.

To lose such a son must have been an aggravated affliction: his vices and his rebellion were forgotten; the father thinks only of one object; and should some miserable comforter have suggested, as indeed Joab did, that the character of Absalom was a drawback upon the debt of sorrow due to his memory, he would have found that a parent's heart needs much discipline before it can so calmly reason as to feel the force of such a conclusion. The most striking illustration of this, perhaps, is, that God compares himself to a parent; and in this I suppose especially, that He loves us though we deserve not his love. Was not the parable of the Prodigal Son intended to teach us this truth? Yet it does not teach it in such a manner as to lead to sin that grace may abound; for equally clear is the counterpart, that "if his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments, then will I visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquities with stripes." If we choose God for our Father, we must choose him with his parental rebukes, as well as his manifestations of love; and, indeed, what are those very rebukes, but one of its most solicitous manifestations? God is an infinitely kind Parent; but it would be no proof of kindness to connive at the waywardness of his children. He has nothing

in His character that resembles what men call amiable weaknesses, such as David himself exhibited towards Absalom.

I have spoken of the pangs of natural affection, as one ingredient in the royal mourner's cup of affliction; but it was not the most bitter of those ingredients. It would have been some consolation to the weeping parent, if, while he lamented over the remains of his child, his own conscience had been free from reproach. It is painful enough, under any circumstances, to behold a child cut off in the midst of his sins; but for the parent to feel that his own conduct has been the cause of the catastrophe, must be immeasurably poignant. Yet this has been often the heart-rending affliction even of good men. Eli was a servant of God, but keenly did he suffer for his weakness and inconsistency as a parent; for "his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not :" and when he witnessed their melancholy end, it was little consolation to him that he remembered having irresolutely said, "Why do ye such things? it is no good report that I hear;" instead of having early and firmly exercised fatherly authority and discipline, and trained them to habits of duty and obedience. He blamed them, when too late, for gross acts of licentiousness; but we are not told that he had interfered with their selfishness, luxury, imperiousness, and avarice, or had early and duly taught them habits of moderation, self-denial, integrity, the fear of God, and the love of their neighbour. The result was, that he was punished with the weapons he had himself prepared; and melancholy must it have been to behold him by the way-side watching, trembling for the ark of God; and upon receiving the afflicting news that his sons Hophni and Phineas were dead, and the ark taken, falling down backward by the side of the gate, so that "his neck brake and he died, for he was an old man, and heavy." How

much must his calamity have been increased by the stings and arrows of self-reproach!

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And so, doubtless, in some measure of David. Think you not, my dear friend, that as he went up to his chamber, weeping, and deploring the loss of his beloved child, that he called to mind the thrilling words, sword shall never depart from thine house?" He knew that in the retributive providence of God he had justly brought down this punishment upon his own head: for the blood of Uriah still stained his hands; he felt himself to be the oppressor who had taken from the poor man his little ewe-lamb, which he could never restore to eat again of his meat, and to drink of his cup, and to lie in his bosom, and to be unto him as a daughter. He doubtless remembered the fearful declaration, "I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house;" a prediction tremendously fulfilled in the whole course of Absalom's vices and treason, and now by his awful and untimely death. He now found how terrible it is to fall under the anger of God, even in his fatherly chastisements; and when he thought of his departed child, how must he have writhed under the stings of remorse for the evils which his own transgressions had brought down upon his beloved family!

It is probable, also, that David's feelings of self-reproach were heightened by another circumstance; for Absalom was the child of a forbidden marriage, the monarch having wedded Maacah, a heatheness, the daughter of the king of Geshur. Political expediency, as those count expediency who reject the word of God to follow worldly maxims of aggrandizement, was probably the cause of this marriage; but it was unblest, and led to evils not to be thought of without horror; thus teaching us, what every thing else in history sacred and profane teaches, that God is a jealous God, and that nothing is really expedient that is contrary to his will.

Added to the above causes of remorse, David had doubtless great reason to reproach himself for his conduct towards his children. He appears to have sinned in the same manner as Eli, by over-indulgence, and the neglect of firm discipline; or if not altogether by its neglect, yet by its occasional absence or misdirection. We indeed hear him saying, Come, ye children, hearken unto me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord;" and yet there was often a great want of authoritative restraint in the guidance of his own house. He did not punish Ammon for his atrocities; and he inflicted scarcely the name of punishment upon Absalom for the murder of Ammon. These sins of David are not palliated in Scripture; and, great as must be our veneration for that eminent man, when we take into consideration his whole life, and remember his agony of penitence and remorse as well as his transgressions, we need not wish to palliate them. They are left upon record for our warning; and if any man should think that they encourage sin in order that grace may abound, let him read the writings and mark the chastisements of David, and he will see cause to correct his estimate. One such psalm as the Fifty-first, one such scene as that of the death of Absalom, will abundantly shew that sin is no trifle, and that it is not so accounted, either by God himself or by the people of God.

But I must advert to the third and chief ingredient in this cup of bitterness-namely, the distressing apprehensions which David must have felt as regarded the eternal interests of his vicious and impenitent son. Where was the soul of Absalom? - What a question for a parent under such awful circumstances! And yet, could David avoid it? must it not have forced itself upon him every moment? He was not a sceptic; he was not a scoffer; he believed and trembled at God's word; and what said that word of those who live and die as, to all human appearance, did Absalom? Was there