It seems to have been after the manner of the seed on stony ground that king Saul's faith grew and withered. It came away quickly at first, and presented a goodly appearance for a while; but the ground, broken and softened on the surface by Samuel's ministry and the call to the kingdom, was rocky underneath, and the rock was never rent. When he was seated on the throne, with the thousands of Israel coming and going at his word, he began to feel the restraints of piety irksome, and to count the rebukes of the aged prophet rude. The sun of prosperity scorched the green growth of religious profession that had suddenly overspread his outward life. Michal, his daughter, better acquainted, probably, with the kingly airs of his later than with the pious confession of his earlier days, seems to have partaken of his inward hardness while she had no share of his superficial piety. Like him, she was ungodly in the depths of her soul; but unlike him, she disdained to wear the outward garb of godliness. When she exerted all the force of her irony in order to make her husband David ashamed of his own zeal in dancing before the Lord, she truly reflected the inner spirit though not the external profession of her father's court. That taunt from the supercilious, curling lip of the royal princess, who had honoured him by consenting to become his wife, was a burning ray of persecution streaming on David's defenceless head. If his religion had been confined to the surface, while the pomp and circumstance of royalty occupied his heart, it would have died out then and there, as the tender sprouting corn, whose roots rest on a rock, dies out under the scorching sun of Galilee. But David's faith was deep, and it ripened rather than withered under the scornful glance of the worldly-minded princess, as corn, growing in good ground, fills better and ripens sooner where the sky is cloudless and the sun is fierce.