So, one day, while these Gathites are watching King David with increased suspicion, they see him standing by the door, running his hands meaninglessly up and down the panels--scrabbling on the door as though he would climb up, his mouth wide open, drooling like an infant. I suppose the boys of the streets threw missiles at him, but the sober people of the town said: “This is not fair. Do you not see that he has lost his reason? Do not touch this madman. Hands off! Hands off!” So David escaped. But what an exhibition he made of himself before all the ages! There was a majesty in King Lear’s madness after Regan and Goneril, his daughters, had persuaded him to banish their sister, Cordelia, and all the friends of the drama have been thrilled with that spectacle. The craziness of Meg Merrilies was weird and imposing, and formed the most telling passage in Sir Walter Scott’s “Guy Mannering.” There was a fascination about the insanity of Alexander Cruden, who made the best concordance of the Bible that the world ever saw--made it between the mad houses. But there was nothing grand, nothing weird, nothing majestic, nothing sublime about this simulation on the part of David. Instead of trusting in the Lord, as he had trusted on other occasions, he gathers before him a vast audience of all generations that were to come, and, standing on that conspicuous stage of history, in view of all the ages, he impersonates the slavering idiot. Taking the behavior of David as a suggestion, I wish to show you how many of the wise, the brave and the regal sometimes play the fool. Those men as badly play the fool as did David who, in any crisis of life, take their case out of the hand of God. David, in this case, acted as though there were no God to lift him out of the predicament. What a contrast between his behavior, when this brave little man stood up in front of the giant ten feet in height, looking into his face, and this time, when he debased himself and bedraggled his manhood by affecting insanity in order that he might escape from the grip of the Gathites! In the one case, he played the hero; in the other case, he played the fool. There came a time when David fled from his pursuers. The world runs very fast when it is chasing a good man. The country is trying to catch David, and to slay him. David goes into the house of a priest, and asks him for a sword or spear with which to defend himself. The priest, not being accustomed to use deadly weapons, tells David that he can not supply him; but suddenly the priest thinks of an old sword that had been carefully wrapped up and laid away--the very sword that Goliath formerly used. He takes down that sword, and while he is unwrapping the sharp, glittering and memorable blade it flashes upon David’s mind that this is the very sword that was used against himself when he was in the fight with Goliath, and David can hardly keep his hand off it until the priest has unwound it.