There is, in true religion, a sameness, an absence of hue and brilliancy, in the eyes of the natural man; a plainness, austereness, and (what he 15 considers) sadness. It is like the heavenly manna of which the Israelites complained, insipid, and at length wearisome, "like wafers made with honey." They complained that "their soul was dried away." "There is nothing at all," they said, 20 "beside this manna, before our eyes.... We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick."[1] Such were the dainty meats in which their soul 25 delighted; and for the same reason they desired a king. Samuel had too much of primitive simplicity about him to please them, they felt they were behind the world, and clamored to be put on a level with the heathen. 30 [1] Exod. xvi.; Numb. xi. 5. Saul, the king whom God gave them, had much to recommend him to minds thus greedy of the dust of the earth. He was brave, daring, resolute; gifted, too, with strength of body as well as of mind--a circumstance which seems to 5 have attracted their admiration. He is described in person as if one of those sons of Anak, before whose giant-forms the spies of the Israelites in the wilderness were as grasshoppers--"a choice young man, and a goodly; there was not among 10 the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people."[2] Both his virtues and his faults were such as became an eastern monarch, and were adapted to secure the fear and 15 submission of his subjects. Pride, haughtiness, obstinacy, reserve, jealousy, caprice--these, in their way, were not unbecoming qualities in the king after whom their imaginations roved. On the other hand, the better parts of his character 20 were of an excellence sufficient to engage the affection of Samuel himself. [2] 1 Sam. ix. 2--_vide ibid._ x. 23.