Paul, “the Captain of our salvation, to be made perfect through sufferings.” And why? “Because,” answers St. Paul, “it was proper for Him to be made in all things like His brothers”—like us, the children of God—“that He might be a faithful and merciful high priest;” for, just “because He has suffered being tempted, He is able to succour us who are tempted.” A strange text, but one which, I think, this very history of David’s troubles will help us to understand. For it was by suffering, long and bitter, that God trained up David to be a true king, a king over the Jews, “after God’s own heart.” You all know, I hope, something at least of David’s psalms. Many of them, seven of them at least, were written during David’s wanderings in the mountains, when Saul was persecuting him to kill him, day after day, month after month, as you may read in the First Book of Samuel, from chapters xix. to xxviii. Bitter enough these troubles of David would have been to any man, but what must have made them especially bitter and confusing to him was, that they all arose out of his righteousness. Because he had conquered the giant, Saul envied him—broke his promise of giving David his daughter Merab—put his life into extreme danger from the Philistines, before he would give him his second daughter Michal; the more he saw that the Lord was with David, and that the young man won respect and admiration by behaving himself wisely, the more afraid of him Saul was; again and again he tried to kill him; as David was sitting harmless in Saul’s house, soothing the poor madman by the music of his harp, Saul tries to stab him unawares; and not content with that proceeds deliberately to hunt him down, from town to town, and wilderness to wilderness; sends soldiers after him to murder him; at last goes out after him himself with his guards. Was not all this enough to try David’s faith? Hardly any man, I suppose, since the world was made, had found righteousness pay him less; no man was ever more tempted to turn round and do evil, since doing good only brought him deeper and deeper into the mire. But no, we know that he did not lose his trust in God; for we have seven psalms, at least, which he wrote during these very wanderings of his; the fifty-second, when Doeg had betrayed him to Saul; the fifty-fourth, when Ziphim betrayed him; the fifty-sixth, when the Philistines took him in Gath; the fifty-seventh, “when he fled from Saul in the cave;” the fifty-ninth, “when they watched the house to kill him;” the sixty-third, “when he was in the wilderness of Judah;” the thirty-fourth, “when he was driven away by Abimelech;” and several more which appear to have been written about the same time.