Ye ministers of the gospel! look at the heavens above, and the earth beneath! Mark well the unchangeable order which pervades the whole! How admirably every thing is arranged! how skilfully the means are adapted to the end intended! No arranging, and then re-arranging: no missing the mark—no going beyond or wide of the mark. Before you talk of the “unblushing Infidel,” and deal out the vengeance of your Bible God, look at the order, the grandeur the undisturbed harmony that governs the whole; and then pause, and ask yourselves, if it be possible for the Sovereign Ruler of all worlds, to have dictated the Bible, which you so positively assert is the Word of the only true and living God? CHAPTER VI. THE REIGNS OF SAUL, DAVID, AND SOLOMON SAMUEL, the last of the Judges of Israel, when very old, appointed his sons to judge the people—“But they took bribes and perverted judgment.” The Israelites complained to Samuel of their injustice, and demanded a King, like other nations. Now, considering the unsettled state of the Jews for hundreds of years, “when there was no King in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes” the request was reasonable; for they were tired of the unsettled state of their national affairs. Samuel inquired of the Lord what was to be done? The reply from the Lord was, that Samuel was to let them have a King, agreeably to their wishes; at the same time, it displeased Jehovah, who chose Saul without consulting the people. His choice is recorded to have been pleasing to the Lord, who gave Saul a good character. This kingly government seemed fair in the beginning, and we ought to expect it would have proved a change for the better, as it was by Jehovah’s own appointment At the commencement of Saul’s reign, he was ordered to go and fight against the Amalekites. The order was thus given:—“_Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel; how he laid wait for him in the way when he came up from Egypt_” This offence was given some hundred years before, when the Israelites were passing to the land of promise; when the Amalekites opposed them, and refused to let them go through their land. To us, this vengeance appears cruel and unjust. This was visiting the sins of the fathers on the children with a vengeance. At the present day, no tyrant could be found that would imitate such base conduct as is fathered on the all-wise, all-powerful Ruler of the World.