Do you hear the wild outcry from that broken-hearted king named David? There he stands upon the wall and looks away across the wistful plain. A lone runner is coming. He knows he is a messenger from the battlefield. "Good tidings," he shouts. But the king has no ear for good tidings. His one question is this, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" And the runner does not rightly answer his question. Then the second messenger comes with the news of his son's death. And there is no more pathetic cry in literature than that that breaks from the lips of this pathetic king. "O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!" He is sobbing over his lost boy. But there is an added pang to his grief. It is the awful pang that comes from the torturing fear that he himself is in large measure responsible for the loss of his boy. And there is no more bitter agony than that. Oh, men and women, let us who are fathers and mothers spare ourselves David's terrible agony. Let us spare our children Absalom's tragic ruin. Let us give ourselves the joys of this old time mother. While our children are about us, may we hear the very voice of God speaking to us on their behalf, saying: "Take this child and train it for me and I will give thee thy wages." And wages we shall receive just as surely as did this mother of Moses. We will be privileged to love, to give, to bless. And God Himself can give no richer reward than that. XV A GOOD MAN'S HELL--MANASSEH _Jeremiah 15:4_ "And I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh." The prophet of the Lord is here fixing the responsibility for the downfall of Jerusalem. He says that the wreck was due in an especial sense to one man. He makes it very plain that it was one man's hands that had planted the infernal bomb that was destined in later years to blast the foundation from under the nation. "I will cause them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh." Had a jury at that day been impanelled to try this man Manasseh I do not know whether they would have found him guilty or not. Possibly they would. It is also possible that they would not. Had they failed to have done so it would have been because they did not know the facts; they were not entirely familiar with all the evidence in the case. But when God sought the man upon whose shoulders rested the chief responsibility for the wreck of the nation, He fixed on this man. When Manasseh stood on trial before Him, charged with the terrible crime of blasting a kingdom, he was found guilty.