that he might fight for them, and judge for them, and take care of them, while they just ate and drank, and made money, and lived like slaves, careless of what happened to them or their country, provided they could get food, and clothes, and money enough. And as long as they got that, if you will remark, they were utterly careless as to what sort of king they had. They said not one word to Samuel about how much power their king was to have. They made not the slightest inquiry as to whether Saul was wise or foolish, good or bad. They did not ask God’s counsel, or trouble themselves about God; so they proved themselves unworthy of being free. They turned, like a dog to his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire, cowardly back again into slavery; and God gave them what they asked for. He gave them the sort of king they wanted; and bitterly they found out their mistake during several hundred years of continually increasing slavery and misery. There is a deep lesson for us, my friends, in all this. And that is, that God’s gifts are not fit for us, unless we are more or less fit for them. That to him that makes use of what he has, more shall be given; but from him who does not, will be taken away even what he has. And so even the inestimable gift of freedom is no use unless men have free hearts in them. God sets a man free from his sins by faith in Jesus Christ; but unless that man uses His grace, unless he desires to be free inwardly as well as outwardly—to be free not only from the punishment of his sins, but from the sins themselves; unless he is willing to accept God’s offer of freedom, and go boldly to the throne of grace, and there plead his cause with his heavenly Father face to face, without looking to any priest, or saint, or other third person to plead for him; if, in short, a man has not a free spirit in him, the grace of God will become of no effect in him, and he will receive the spirit of bondage (of slavery, that is), again to fear. Perhaps he will fall back more or less into popery and half-popish superstitions; perhaps, as we see daily round us, he will fall back again into antinomianism, into the slavery of those very sins from which God once delivered him. And just the same is it with a nation. When God has given a nation freedom, then, unless there be a free heart in the people and true independence, which is dependence on God and not on man; unless there be a spirit of justice, mercy, truth, trust of God in them, their freedom will be of no effect; they will only fall back into slavery, to be oppressed by fresh tyrants.