In the quaint language of the sacred scribes, we find David's frequent battles graphically described. Rapid and pitiless as Attila or Napoleon, he "smote" the Amalekites, and the Ammonites, and the neighboring warlike peoples, and compelled them to pay tribute. He was not more rapacious than France has recently shown herself to Siam, or than England to India, and he was emphatically the "battle-axe of God." It was enlightenment against savagery, the true religion against the idolatries and witchcrafts of a false worship. In every way David displayed statesmanship, not carrying on war for the mere pleasure of it, but strengthening his national lines, and laying deep the foundations on which his successor was to carry forward a kingdom of peace. It was not until Hiram, king of Tyre, sent cedar from Lebanon, on floats down the Mediterranean, that David built him a house. The hardy soldier had often slept with the sky for his roof, and the grass for his bed, but as he grew rich and strong he needed a palace. With the pleasure and security of the palace, the ceiled house, came the wish of the devout soul to erect a temple to God. Never was sacrifice greater nor pain more intense than that which the great king experienced when told that not for him was to be this crowning joy, this felicity which would have made his cup overflow. His hands had shed too much blood. He had been a man of war from his youth. The temple on Mount Zion, a glittering mass of gold and gems, shining like a heap of snowflakes on the pilgrims going up to the annual passover, was to be the great trophy not of David's, but of Solomon's time. David acquiesced in the divine ordering, though with a sore heart. But he occupied himself with the accumulation of rich materials, so that when Solomon came to the throne he might find much and valuable preparation made. The troubles of David's reign, gathering around him thickly, as the almond blossoms of age grew white upon his head, were chiefly brought upon him through dissensions in his family. Did so loving a father spoil his sons in their early youth, or were they, as is probable, influenced by the spites, the malignities, and the weaknesses of the beautiful foreign princesses who were their mothers? In the rebellion of Absalom, the king tasted the deepest draught of sorrow ever pressed to mortal lips, and the whole tragic tale is as vivid in its depiction, and as intensely real in its appeal to-day, as when fresh from the pen of the writer. The conduct of Absalom, whose beauty and vanity were equalled by his ambition and his ingratitude, has made him forever infamous. He omitted no act that could convict him of shameless infidelity to all that was worthy a prince, and with an armed host he set his battle in array against his father. One charge, reiterated again and again, showed the depth of that father's heart--a heart like that of the Father in Heaven for its yearning over ingrates and rebels: