No doubt every position in life has its own peculiar temptations. The ill-favoured lad, who is the butt at school and the scapegoat at home, is in serious danger of becoming bitter and revengeful, and of growing crooked in character, like a plant in a dark vault, which will have no beauty because it enjoys no sunshine. But, on the other hand, physical beauty, which attracts attention and wins admiration, especially if it is associated with brilliant conversational gifts, and great charm of manner, has befooled both men and women into sin and misery. Many a girl has been entrapped into an unhappy marriage; and many a lad, moved by a vaunting ambition which overleaped itself, has fallen never to rise: like Icarus, when his waxen wings melted in the sun. There must have been sad laxity of discipline in the home of David. It is said of Adonijah that "_his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so_?" In other words, Adonijah had never been checked and rebuked as he ought to have been, and this foolish indulgence was as fatal to him as it had been to the sons of Eli. There are still such homes as David's, although their inmates do well to draw down the veil of secrecy over them with loyal hands, and never blazon abroad the grief and anxiety which rend their hearts. In one home a fair, bright girl mars the beauty of her early womanhood by a flippant disregard of her mother's wishes, and by an exaltation of her own pleasure-loving disposition as the one law of her life. In another, a mere child, hasty and uncontrolled in temper, is the dread of the whole household, and at last becomes its tyrant, because every wish is gratified rather than that a scene should be provoked. In yet another a grown-up son is callous about his mother's anxiety and his father's counsels; and gladly ignores his home associations as he drifts away upon the sea of vice, and there becomes a miserable wreck. With each of these it might have been otherwise. If authority had been asserted, and steadily maintained, before bad habits were formed; if firm resolution on the part of the parents had taken the place of indulgent laxity, if, instead of being left to chance, character had been moulded during the time when it was plastic--these might, with God's blessing, have grown up to be wise, pure-hearted, courageous followers of Christ--who would not only have sweetened the atmosphere of home, but would have done something to purify and illumine society, as the salt and the light of the world. The sin of which Adonijah was guilty, whose sources we have tried to discover, was the assumption of unlawful authority and state, which involved rebellion against his own father.