For one moment, let us compare the joy of this company with the feelings of men revelling in the pleasures of sin and sensuality, or even of men storing a pile of gold, the result of some successful venture or the legacy of some deceased relative. How poor the quality of the one joy compared to that of the other! For what is there outside themselves that can make men so happy as the smile of God? Or what condition of the soul can be so full, so overflowing with healthy gladness, as when the heart is ordered in accordance with God's law, and men are really disposed and enabled to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and to love their neighbours as themselves? Is there not something of heaven in this joy? Is it not joy unspeakable and full of glory? One other question: Is it _yours_? CHAPTER XVI. _SAMUEL'S VINDICATION OF HIMSELF._ 1 SAMUEL xii. 1-5. It was a different audience that Samuel had to address at Gilgal from either that which came to him to Ramah to ask for a king, or that which assembled at Mizpeh to elect one. To both of these assemblies he had solemnly conveyed his warning against the act of distrust in God implied in their wishing for a king at all, and against any disposition they might feel, when they got a king, to pay less attention than before to God's will and covenant. The present audience represented the army, undoubtedly a great multitude, that had gone forth with Saul to relieve Jabesh-Gilead, and that now came with Samuel to Gilgal to renew the kingdom. As the audience now seems to have been larger, so it very probably represented more fully the whole of the twelve tribes of Israel. This may explain to us why Samuel not only returned to the subject on which he had spoken so earnestly before, but enlarged on it at greater length, and appealed with more fulness to his own past life as giving weight to the counsels which he pressed upon them. Besides this, the recognition of Saul as king at Gilgal was more formal, more hearty, and more unanimous than at Mizpeh, and the institution of royalty was now more an established and settled affair. No doubt, too, Samuel felt that, after the victory at Jabesh-Gilead, he had the people in a much more impressible condition than they had been in before; and while their minds were thus so open to impression, it was his duty to urge on them to the very uttermost the truths that bore on their most vital well-being. The address of Samuel on this occasion bore on three things: 1 his own personal relations to them in the past (vers. 1-5); 2 the mode of God's dealing with their fathers, and its bearing on the step now taken (vers. 6-12); and 3 the way in which God's judgments might be averted and His favour and friendship secured to the nation in all time coming (vers. 13-25).