Such was precisely the case with the parable before us. Had Nathan addressed to David a direct and formal expostulation, it is probable that the king would have considered his interference as intrusive and impertinent; would have either driven him from his presence, or have been prepared, by some plausible excuse, to cast a veil over the hideousness of his crimes. But the royal offender, though he could readily palliate his own atrocity, could not bear to hear of cruelty in another. When it was reported to him, that there were two men in a city, the one rich and the other poor; that the rich man, when there came a traveller unto him, spared to take of the abundance of his own flock, and of his own herd, and took from the poor man a little ewe lamb, which was all he had in the world; took it from him under the most affecting circumstances; “for he had bought and nourished it up, and it grew up together with him and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.” When the king heard all this, his feelings were violently excited, “his anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, as the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die.” {174} This was the moment for making the application: and judge of David’s shame and confusion of face, on finding that all his pity, and all his anger, and all his condemnation, had in truth been directed against himself: “Thou art the man.” He could not help perceiving, that great as was the cruelty, which he had been reprobating in the case laid before him, he had been guilty of still greater himself: though he had the whole kingdom for the exercise of his legitimate choice, he would rather deprive an humble servant of the only object of his conjugal affection, deprive him, by becoming, in the first instance, accessary to his murder. We may here observe, how terrible is the infatuation of sin. It might have been thought that David, if he had not immediately perceived the full intention of the prophet in laying this parable before him, would at least, from an instantaneous recollection of his own notorious guilt, have treated, with some degree of lenity or forbearance, the barbarity of which Nathan appeared to be complaining; that he would not so soon have denounced against a delinquent, so much less heinous than himself, the utmost severity of punishment. But, as if his own conscience were clear, he immediately exclaimed against the imagined offender, as a wretch unfit to live; he does not appear to have been awakened to a sense of his own crimes, till he heard the overwhelming application, “Thou art the man.”