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1 Samuel
Chapter Thirty-one
1 Samuel 31
Chapter Contents
Saul's defeat and death. (1-7) Saul's body rescued by the
men of Jabesh-gilead. (8-13)
Commentary on 1 Samuel 31:1-7
(Read 1 Samuel 31:1-7)
We cannot judge of the spiritual or eternal state of any
by the manner of their death; for in that, there is one event to the righteous
and to the wicked. Saul, when sorely wounded, and unable to resist or to flee,
expressed no concern about his never-dying soul; but only desired that the
Philistines might not insult over him, or put him to pain, and he became his
own murderer. As it is the grand deceit of the devil, to persuade sinners,
under great difficulties, to fly to this last act of desperation, it is well to
fortify the mind against it, by a serious consideration of its sinfulness
before God, and its miserable consequences in society. But our security is not
in ourselves. Let us seek protection from Him who keepeth Israel. Let us watch
and pray; and take unto us the whole armour of God, that we may be able to
withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Commentary on 1 Samuel 31:8-13
(Read 1 Samuel 31:8-13)
The Scripture makes no mention what became of the souls
of Saul and his sons, after they were dead; but of their bodies only: secret
things belong not to us. It is of little consequence by what means we die, or
what is done with our dead bodies. If our souls are saved, our bodies will be
raised incorruptible and glorious; but not to fear His wrath, who is able to
destroy both body and soul in hell, is the extreme of folly and wickedness. How
useless is the respect of fellow-creatures to those who are suffering the wrath
of God! While pompous funerals, grand monuments, and he praises of men, honour
the memory of the deceased, the soul may be suffering in the regions of
darkness and despair! Let us seek that honour which cometh from God only.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on 1 Samuel》
1 Samuel 31
Verse 2
[2] And
the Philistines followed hard upon Saul and upon his sons; and the Philistines
slew Jonathan, and Abinadab, and Malchishua, Saul's sons.
Jonathan —
David's dear friend; God so ordering it for the farther exercise of David's
faith and patience; and that David might depend upon God alone for his crown, and
receive it solely from him, and not from Jonathan; who doubtless, had he lived,
would have speedily settled the crown upon David's head. There was also a
special providence of God, in taking away Jonathan, (who of all Saul's sons,
seems to have been the fairest for the crown) for preventing divisions, which
might have happened amongst the people concerning the successor: David's way to
the crown being by this means made the more clear.
Abinadab —
Called also Ishui, chap. 14:49. Ishbosheth was not here, being possibly
at home for the management of affairs there.
Verse 8
[8] And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the
slain, that they found Saul and his three sons fallen in mount Gilboa.
Saul and his three sons — "The scripture, as Mr. Henry well observes, makes no mention of the
souls of Saul and his sons, what became of them after they were dead: secret
things belong not to us."
Verse 9
[9] And
they cut off his head, and stripped off his armour, and sent into the land of
the Philistines round about, to publish it in the house of their idols, and
among the people.
Cut off his head — As
the Israelites did by Goliath, and fastened it in the temple of Dagon, 1 Chronicles 10:10.
Idols — To
give them the glory of this victory. And by this respect shewn to their
pretended deities, how do they shame those, who give not the honour of their
achievements to the living God?
Verse 12
[12] All
the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the body of Saul and the
bodies of his sons from the wall of Bethshan, and came to Jabesh, and burnt
them there.
Took the body, … —
This they did, not only out of a concern, for the honour of Israel, and the
crown of Israel, but out of gratitude to Saul, for his zeal and forwardness to
rescue them from the Ammonites.
Verse 13
[13] And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted
seven days.
Fasted — To
testify their sorrow for the loss of Saul, and of the people of God; and to
intreat God's favour to prevent the utter extinction of his people. But you
must not understand this word of fasting strictly, as if they eat nothing for
seven whole days; but in a more large sense, as it is used both in sacred and
profane writers; that they did eat but little, and that but mean food, and
drank only water for that time. This book began with the birth of Samuel, and
ends with the death of Saul: The comparing these together will teach us to
prefer the honour that comes from God, before all the honours of the world.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on 1 Samuel》
31 Chapter 31
Verses 1-13
Verse 4
Saul took a sword and fell upon it.
The death of Saul
Saul’s life is a tragedy, and his death is the closing scene.
Circumstances close round him, and press him to his doom. These circumstances
know no remorse. They never pause for pity. The last foe that Saul meets is
himself. His death was neither more nor less than suicide; the death of all
deaths the most loathsome and despised of men; of all deaths the only one that
men call cowardly. Yet to this Saul came, as if he had not been the anointed of
the Lord, as if he never had been the glory of God’s people Israel. The whole
of the preceding history had a sound in it portentous of change and death. And
Saul himself, better than any other man, was aware that his end was near; and
he went on to that end in a most pitiable plight; a hero without a hero’s hope.
There is a singular fitness in the chapter which closes this life of Saul.
There is no sentimental dallying with the tragic facts. The battle was set, and
from the first, the Philistines did the fighting. We need not dwell on the
features of this tragedy. It was a great historical event, meaning much to the
nation which saw its first king thus sadly fall. It was the end of Saul’s
kingdom: his sons and all his family, and, with them, all his hopes, died with
him that night on Mount Gilboa. And it is still a conspicuous moral, as well as
historical, event, on which we may well pause to look across the ages. Saul
brought down thousands with him when he fell, but he had been lowering the tone
of the spiritual nation almost from the time when he began his reign. The
people had, indeed, got in him what they asked for--a king like unto their
neighbours. And as he had been in his life in the land, so was he when he died
at Gilboa. For “there was the shield of the mighty vilely cast away--the shield
of Saul--as of one not anointed of the Lord.” When we look at this life in its
most general, human aspects, it is hard to escape the question: “Why did God
bring Saul into all these circumstances of trial where he so ignobly failed and
fell? Would it not have been better for Saul never to have been called from his
father’s plough?” There is something more serious by far than to be a king; it,
is more serious to be a man. If mere safety and immunity from trial and danger
are all that are to be desired by us, we must needs rank ourselves with the
irrational creation. But when we are made men we are called with a high
calling. We have set before us an immortal destiny, either to work that out or
wreck it away. We are all on our trial. The highest issues of human life are
brought out by the greatness and the strength of our trials. So was it with
Saul. His trial began with his great opportunity. The highness of his calling
measures the deepness of his falling. There are three points which indicate the
departure of Saul from the path of peace and duty.
1. He had not long reigned until he began to separate himself from
good men in the land. He was soon separated from Samuel, the best, the noblest,
the representative good man of the time he was soon separate from David, the
man of the future, the man after God’s own heart, and who desired to do only
God’s will. He was soon cruel and fierce in his wrath, slaying one by one the
priests of the Lord.
2. Then we find that he was separate from God. He prayed to God, and
God gave him no answer. He asked in vain for God’s guidance, and then called in
vain for the dead Samuel.
3. Last of all, Saul got separated from himself; from his own best
nature. There was a great chasm in his nature, between his evil and his
controlling, better self; and thus he was left to the wreck and ruin which his
own worst nature prompted. Such is the spiritual history of him whose tragic
life we have now read to its close. (Armstrong Black.)
Suicide
Our Creator, it is said, has given us a general desire to obtain
good, and avoid evil; why may we not obey this impulse? We leave a kingdom, or
a society, of which we do not approve; we avoid bodily pain by all the means
which we can invent; why may we not cease to live, when life becomes a greater
evil, than a good? Because, in avoiding pain, or in procuring pleasure, we are
always to consider the good of others, as well as our own. Poverty is an evil,
but we may not rob to avoid it; power is a good, but it is not justifiable to
obtain it by violence or deceit; we have only a right to consult our own good
within certain boundaries, and after such a manner that we do not diminish the
good of others: Every evil incapable of such limited remedy, it is our duty to
bear; and if the general idea that we have a right to procure voluntary death
to ourselves, be pregnant with infinite mischief to the interests of religion,
and morality, it is our duty to live, as much as it is our duty to do anything
else for the same reason; a single instance of suicide may be of little
consequence; nor is a single instance of robbery of much; but we judge of
single actions, by the probability there is of their becoming frequent, and by
the effects they produce, when they are frequent.
1. Suicide, is as unfavourable to human talents, and resources, as it
is to human virtues; we should never have dreamt of the latent power, and
energy of our nature, but for the struggle of great minds with great
afflictions, nor known the limits of ourselves, nor man’s dominion over
fortune: What would the world now have been, if it had always been said,
because the archers smite me sore, and the battle goeth against me, I will die?
Alas! man has gained all his joy by his pains; misery, hunger, and nakedness,
have been his teachers, and goaded him on to the glories of civilised life;
take from him his unyielding spirit, and if he had lived at all, he would have
lived the most suffering creature of the forest.
2. Suicide has been called magnanimity; but what is magnanimity? A
patient endurance of evil, to effect a proposed good; and when considering the strange
mutability of human affairs, are we to consider this endurance as useless, or
when should hope terminate but with life? To linger out year after year,
unbroken in spirit, unchanged in purpose, is doubtless, a less imposing destiny
than public, and pompous suicide; but if to be, is more commendable, than to
seem to be; if we love the virtue, better than the name, then is it true
magnanimity to extract wisdom from misery, and doctrine from shame; to call
day, and night upon God; to keep the mind’s eye sternly riveted on its object
through failure, and through suffering; through evil report, and through good
report; and to make the bed of death the only grave of human hope; but at the
moment when Christianity warns you that your present adversity may be a trial
from God; when experience teaches that great qualities come in arduous
situations; when piety stimulates you to show the hidden vigour, the
inexhaustible resources, the beautiful capacities of that soul, which God has
exempted from the destruction which surrounds it; at that moment, the law of
self-murder gives you, for your resource, ignominious death, frightful
disobedience, and never-ending torments.
3. It may be imagined that suicide is a crime of rare occurrence, but
we must not so much overrate our love of life, when there is hardly a passion
so weak, which cannot at times, overcome it; many fling away life from
ambition, many from vanity, many from restlessness, many from fear, many from
almost every motive; nature has made death terrible, but nature has made those
evils terrible, from the dread of which we seek death; nature has made
resentment terrible, infamy terrible, want terrible, hunger terrible; every
first principle of our nature alternately conquers and is conquered; the
passion that is a despot in one mind, is a slave in the other; we know nothing
of their relative force.
4. It is hardly possible be conceive this crime, committed by anyone
who has not confounded his common notions of right and wrong by some previous
sophistry, and cheated himself into a temporary scepticism; but who would trust
to the reasoning of such a moment in such a state of the passions, when the
probability of error is so great, and the punishment so immeasurable? Men
should determine, even upon important human actions, with coolness, and
unimpeded thought; much less, then, is a rash and disturbed hour enough for
eternity.
5. It has often been asked, if self-murder is forbidden by the
Christian religion; but those who ask this question forget, that Christianity is
not a code of laws, but a set of principles from which particular laws must
frequently be inferred; it is not sufficient to say, there is no precise, and
positive law, naming, and forbidding self-murder; there is no law of the
gospel, which forbids the subject to destroy his ruler; but there is a law,
which says, fear, and obey him; there is no law which prevents me from slaying
my parent; but there is a law which says, love, and honour them; “be meek, says
our Saviour;” “be long suffering; abide patiently to the last; submit to the
chastening hand of God,” and let us never forget, that the fifth, and greatest
gospel is the life of Christ; that he acted for us, as well as taught, that in
the deserts of Judea, in the hall of Pilate, on the supreme cross, his patience
shows us, that evil is to be endured, and his prayers point out to us, how
alone it can be mitigated. (Sidney Smith, M. A.)
Lessons from a suicide
There is always something solemn in doing things which, when done,
cannot be undone--in taking steps which, when taken once, can never be
recalled. We sign our contracts with a trembling hand; and enter into those
bonds which least of all we desire to break, with a solemnity which arises from
the thought that, once entered upon, we cannot recede. The act of suicide
affords the most decisive evidence of the extensive delusion which men can
practise on themselves, and of the blinding power which they permit the tempter
to exercise over them, when, under the idea of relief and escape, they involve
themselves in a deeper calamity, and in order to effect an oblivion of present
suffering, they grasp the cup of eternal woe, and put it to their lips. “From
what shall I escape?” is but one-half of the question--“Into what shall I bring
myself?” is the still more momentous portion of the inquiry.
1. Looking at the circumstances of Saul’s death in their connection
with the history of the people over whom he reigned, it is impossible not to
perceive that they were fraught with instruction to the nation, with lessons
valuable though humiliating. They reiterate with deeper emphasis the
truth--that when men are determined to have their own way--when they will not
listen to heavenly suggestions, to Divine remonstrances--and when they think
that they can manage better for themselves than God can manage for them, there
is but one way of convincing them of their error. They must be allowed to take
the problem of their peace and happiness into their own hands, to attempt to
work it out in their own fashion, and then to reap the bitter results of
failure, which in such a case are inevitable. Israel worked out their own
problem, and they brought it to this issue--“And the men of Israel flee from
before the Philistines, and fell down slain in Mount Gilboa,” etc. And thus
will it ever be, where men expect to reap more from their own theories than
from God’s fixed laws and plans.
2. We may take, as a second suggestion from the spectacle before us,
the thought--How dreadful it is for a man to be in trouble without God to
sustain and support him. The waves and billows were indeed going over Saul. We
see here the acting out of one of those principles which regulate the Divine
dealings with men If they seek Him, He will be found of them; if they forsake
Him, He will cast them off foreverse Fearful as is the lesson taught us by the
self-murder of Saul, it is consolatory to know that no one need be in trouble
without God. Precious promises point out the way in which we may be delivered
from any such fear.
3. We see, in Saul’s case, that there is no surer sign that a man is
on the high road to ruin than that his heart is hardened against Divine
warnings. Quickly, one after another, came solemn calls to the king of Israel
to humble himself at last before God. We wait; and the thought rushes into our
heart, “He will break down at last; he will stand out no longer. But it did
not. And then it was seen that the heart which can stand out against solemn
calls, ruin will be the result.” “He that being often reproved,” etc. It is a
grievous miscalculation, moreover, which men make, when, conscious that life is
passing on in the neglect of God and of duty, they reckon within themselves
upon a certain power which they imagine the approach of death will have to
awaken their attention to religious duties, and to bring with it the
disposition to return to God in repentance and prayer.
4. As we compare the conclusion of this history with its
commencement, we cannot but discover an impressive lesson as to the influence
of external circumstances upon personal character. As Saul rose in his social
position, he sunk in his moral condition. It is dangerous to keep an idol for
ourselves; it is not less perilous to become the idol of others. Never was
there a man more frequently instructed in the lesson of entire dependence upon
God. (J. A. Miller.)
Verse 6
So Saul died and his three sons.
Death of Saul and Jonathan
There is a proverb of the ancients, “Whom the gods wish to destroy
they first make mad.” Or, to express the same idea in the language of the
Bible, “Be sure your sins will find you out.” This was the truth brought out so
forcibly in the last days, and especially in this death scene, of Saul.
1. Saul was what the Bible calls a “reprobate.” By that we do not
mean that he was a man hurried forward to his doom by a blind fate, or lashed
to such a doom against his will by the scourge of relentless furies. There is
no such case in all the Bible. Yes, Saul was a sinner, and a persistent
sinner--a sinner who sinned against light and knowledge, against providence and
grace, against mercy and judgment. “God gave him over to strong delusions, to
believe a lie.” God will not force men to obey him--will not compel them to
repent when they have done wrong.
2. God’s retributions are slow but sure. It had been a long time
since Saul committed that first grievous offence against God. There were years
of apparent peace and prosperity, when God seemed to have forgotten his old
curse, and when Saul might have thought that God had changed his mind and
purpose.
3. To forsake God is to be lost. That was the fatal turning point in
Saul’s history, both as a man and as the first king of Israel. There was
everything to make him loyal to God. It was not the want of knowledge or the
want of counsel that led him to stumble. It was a want of reverence for God as
“King of kings.” It was a want of will to do God’s will, and a desire to follow
the bent of his own heart in spite of all that God told him was right and
wrong. So he forsook God. And what could God do, as a lover of truth and a
lover of Israel, but forsake him. (T. W. Hooper, D. D.)
The dead march of Saul
1.We begin with this: “Sin, when it is finished, bringing forth
death.” The career of the first monarch Israel ever had is now actually
completed: his life is a failure; the wrong beginning has reached the fetal
end. The parallel has more than once been drawn between the rejected Saul and
the Roman Brutus at Philippi. They seem to have had a warning in very similar
terms the night before they died. And the terrible destruction of their
respective forces, the entire rout and ruin of their cause, worked the same
maddening result. Each fell on his own sword, and so sealed his guilt with
suicide. One thinks of the story which naturalists tell concerning the
scorpion, which, girded by the circle of fire, coils up on itself into narrower
and narrower folds, till, when it can endure the heat no longer, it turns its
deadly venom against itself and buries the sting of destruction in its own
brain. Saul knew he must die before nightfall that day; it was not necessary he
should let himself be tortured.
2. So there is a second text of God’s Word illustrated here in the
incident: “None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.” The
lines and links of connection with bind us to our fellow men are often very
subtle, and sometimes unexpected; but they are certainly always very strong. We
do not know that Saul cared much about others’ interests, but his guilt was
visited on many innocent, souls. By a tradition of the Rabbins we are told that
the armour bearer mentioned here was named Doeg, and the tale adds that both of
these men were slain by the same weapon, that was indeed the one with which the
Lord’s servants had been massacred at Nob.
3. Notice, therefore, closely in this connection that another of the
Bible texts phrases for us a new lesson: “One sinner destroyeth much good.”
There was more in this tremendous catastrophe at Gilboa than an individual wreck.
Great public interests were shaken almost as if the nation had been rocked by
the force of an earthquake. Saul reaped the wind before he died, and when he
died too; but it was his people that, with sickles of humiliation and loss and
shame unutterable, reaped the whirlwind in his stead.
4. Happily there is another side even to this. We choose again from
the utterances of inspiration, and we read, “The triumphing of the wicked is
short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.” It has been noticeable
in human history that the Almighty deals somewhat surprisingly with remnants;
even in great devastations there is often left a seed that tries to serve him
and retrieve the disasters. It does our hearts good just now to learn that
Jabesh-Gilead was aroused: somebody after all was alive in the land. A good
turn often comes back again. Years before this Saul had saved the inhabitants
of that town from losing their eyes at the hands of some brutal enemies; now
they sent a faithful band to take reverently down from the spikes the bodies of
the royal victims and give them decent burial at last. It is wiser always to
side with the Lord of hosts, no matter how discouraging the present prospect
may be.
5. Once more, we find an illustration also here of the text that has
grown so familiar in our times: “In the place where the tree falleth, there it
shall be.”
Saul’s character and end
I. The character
of Saul.
1. Proud preference of his own will to God’s, carried out boldly in
the life; deadly jealousy, that coloured and distorted his view of things,
determined the special mould of his character and destiny, and threw over both
deep shades of darkness; cruelty, that was causeless as against an innocent
man, unnatural as against a son-in-law, sacrilegious, in smiting without
scruple a whole city of priests with their families; impiety, that dared to
stand up against God. Potentially the tyrant lurked in the king, the monster in
the man. Circumstances alone would not, could not, make him such as he became.
They helped to mould and colour his character, and gave it its peculiarity of
aspect. But the regulating power lay within. From the same circumstances a
different character would have been fabricated by a different disposition. Does
not the same sunlight nourish Hemlock and All-heal, the Nettle and the Lily,
the Thistle and the foodful Grain? Do not all flowers drink their own colours
from the same flood of sunbeams? Even so, the plastic power of evil within
employed for deadly harm the very circumstance which another would have turned
to good and holy purposes.
2. His careless naturalism of heart. Let us call it by its Scripture
name: “carnal mindedness.” This was the warp on which were woven all the
glaring designs of his life. His heart was never broken by a sense of sin, or
melted with the love of God, or touched by the marvellous grace that shone in
the economy of type and shadow.
II. The moral
purposes of his reign.
1. Punitive. His whole reign was a judgment. Disaffection,
despondency, internal strife, and enfeebled power, were but different aspects
of the same black cloud. It was throughout a ministry of retribution.
2. Disciplinary. These terrible years had a forward as well as a
backward look. The harvest of the past they were also the seed time of the
future.
3. Instructive.
1. No change of circumstance can slacken God’s hold of His creatures.
Convincing proof of this might have been given by a character and history
directly the opposite of Saul’s. But doubly impressive is the demonstration
made by a life like his.
2. No human institution can of itself bring real blessings to a
people. The Hebrews fondly dreamed that royalty would bring with it healing for
all social ills. In their case the dream was not only baseless, but signally
dishonouring to God. In every case it is really so. The folly of it is written
conspicuously on all history. It is taught clearly by our common sense. With
multitudes, a bright vision of happiness seems hovering over some great
political amelioration yet to come. And it is to be feared that the noble
instinct of our nature, which craves for true enjoyment, is bidden fill itself
here. Deluded multitudes, to set down an immortal nature to these husks of the
prodigal! True happiness is a heavenly gift. It is madness to seek it growing
among the political improvements or social amenities of earth.
3. No combination of outward advantages can save or sanctify the soul
of man. We cannot well conceive a human being surrounded by greater and more
powerful means of improvement than was the first king of Israel.
4. There is in human nature a tendency to growth in evil. Here,
again, Saul stands for the race. And in him this growth is terribly
conspicuous. The modest man has come to stand without shame in the light of a
public exposure; and he who had been so winningly regardful of the life of
rebels now pants for the blood of the righteous, and barbarously sacrifices to
the Moloch of his passion the whole innocent population of a city. Keeping pace
with the monstrous growth of evil, and probably accounting for it, we observe
in him the gradual consolidation of infernal agency. The human nature refused
to admit its full operation all at once. At first the dark influence came in
pulses over him, like the sullen ripples of the sea of death on a boat’s resisting
sides. But soon that influence gained so thorough a mastery that all sounds of
resistance ceased. With terrible facility the infernal power abated the
reluctancy of his nature, and at last identified itself so completely with him
that all trace of a struggle vanished, and the occasional impulses of its first
contact changed eventually to a steady and uniform influence. It would be
comforting to believe that this appalling progressiveness was peculiar to Saul.
But this consolation we dare not take. While differing from him in the line of
descent, and in the circumstances, enormity, and visible effects of our growth
in evil, that growth itself is beyond question. The heart gravitates to sin. A
malign influence has breathed upon our race. As surely as the body of the
newborn babe tends earthwards unsupported, its moral nature tends to
corruption. Deeper and deeper it sinks into sin. Habit adds new strength to
nature. Surrounding temptations hasten the speed of the soul’s departure from
God and holiness. How dreadful this downward pressure! What miracle has
preserved the world from perishing by the excess of its own vices? A kindly
Providence has done it. (P. Richardson, B. A.)
Verse 8
The Philistines came to strip the slain.
After the battle
Is there any sadder sight than a battlefield after the guns have
stopped firing? A similar scene is described in our text. Before I get through
today, I will show you that the same process is going on all the world over,
and every day, and that when men have fallen, Satan and the world, so far from
pitying them or helping them, go to work remorselessly to take what little
there is left, thus stripping the slain. There are tens of thousands of young
men every year coming from the country to our great cities. They come with
brave hearts and grand expectations. But our young man has a fine position in a
dry-goods store. The month is overse He gets his wages. He is not accustomed to
have so much money belonging to himself. He is a little excited, and does not
know exactly what to do with it, and he spends it in some places where he ought
not. Soon there come up new companions and acquaintances from the barrooms and
the saloons of the city. Soon that young man begins to waver in the battle of
temptation, and soon his soul goes down. In a few months, or few years, he has
fallen. He is morally dead. Why do the low fellows of the city now stick to him
so closely? Is it to help him back to a moral and spiritual life? Oh, no! I
will tell you why they stay; they are Philistines stripping the slain. The
point I want to make is this: Sin is hard, cruel, and merciless. Instead of
helping a man up, it helps him down; it will come and steal your sword and
helmet and shield, leaving you to the jackal and the crow. But the world and
Satan do not do all their work with the outcast and abandoned. A respectable
impenitent man comes to die. He could not get up if the house was on fire. What
does Satan do for such a man? Wily, he fetches up all the inapt, disagreeable
and harrowing things in his life. He says: “Do you remember those chances you
had for heaven, and missed them? Do you remember all those lapses in conduct?”
And then he takes all the past and empties it on that death bed, as the mail
bags are emptied on the post office floor. The man is sick. He cannot get away
from them. Come, now, I will tear off from you the last rag of expectation. I
will rend away from your soul the last hope. I will leave you bare for the
beating of the storm. It is my business to strip the slain. Sin is a luxury
now; it is exhilaration now; it is victory now. But after a while it is collision;
it is defeat; it is extermination; it is jackalism; it is robbing the dead; it
is stripping the slain. Give it up today--give it up! (T. De Witt Talmage,
D. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》