fore hold him not guiltless; but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood." Shimei is not accused of murder by David, and the punishment of a murderer was therefore not his due; but this verse reads as if David had instructed Solomon to put Shimei to death. But by a singular construction in the original, which our translators in this instance have not noticed, the negative particle in the Hebrew when given in one clause is understood to continue in the clause that follows, and that being the case this verse reads strictly, according to the Hebrew, precisely the reverse of what is stated in the last clause. He said, "Now therefore hold him not guiltless; but his hoar head bring NOT thou down to the grave blood." This is the true rendering of the passage.

with

Adonijah shewed on this occasion an impudence the most daring and inexcusable. He had narrowly escaped death because he had usurped a throne that was not his right, and being deposed from his assumed supremacy and royalty, he determined that if he could not get all he wanted he would take at least all that he could lay his hand upon. Being deprived of the throne he had most unjustly usurped, he thought now that he might have Abishag, David's secondary wife, seeing David was dead, to be his wife, and knowing that Bathsheba was beloved by her son Solomon, and that she had, what a mother should always have, very great influence over her son, he did not go directly to Solomon, as he ought to have gone, but he went to Bathsheba, and said to her, "I have somewhat to say unto thee. And she said, Say on. And he said, Thou knowest that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign;

howbeit the kingdom is turned about, and is become my brother's; for it was his from the Lord;" which seems a very pious sentiment. "And now I ask one petition from thee, deny me not. And she said unto him, Say on. And he said, Speak, I pray thee, unto Solomon the king (for he will not say thee nay) that he give me Abishag the Shunamite to wife." Well, Bathsheba did not see any particular objection to it; she thought she might comfort the deposed king for the loss of a crown which he thought was his own, and with all a woman's kindliness and characteristic sympathy with recent misfortune, and feeling for one who had lost what he thought was his right and dignity, she said, "Well, I will speak for thee unto the king." She therefore came before the king, and he bowed himself to Bathsheba his mother. The human is never lost in the royal; we must never forget that the grief and joy, the aches, and fears, and sorrows that rend the heart of the humblest peasant touch also the heart of the mightiest sovereign upon earth. Solomon bowed himself to his mother, and set her on his right hand. And then she said, "I desire one small petition of thee; I pray thee say me not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother; for I will not say thee nay," supposing it was some personal favour she was asking for herself. Then she said, "Let Abishag the Shunamite be given to Adonijah thy brother to wife." King Solomon said, “The thing is absurd; it would be introducing him into a relationship which he would use as a lever probably for upsetting my throne; he has been disappointed of getting the supremacy in one direction, and with a traitor's heart, and with all the cunning and the per

severance of a very ingenious and accomplished candidate for royalty, he wants to get a hold upon what he has now lost, and therefore in asking me to give him to wife one of royal blood, you might as well ask me to give him a slice of my kingdom or a portion of my throne. The thing is utterly impossible, and I must in this matter refuse you.' We have in this refusal an instance of public duty superseding private feeling. I have not the least doubt that Solomon's greatest wish was to give to his mother anything he could give compatible with what was duty; but duty to his God, to his throne, and to the promise that was to bring the Messiah out of that lineage, in the fulness of the time, made him refuse what in other circumstances he would with great pleasure have given.

It is stated of Joab here, that "he fled unto the tabernacle of the Lord, and caught hold on the horns of the altar," in order to find shelter and protection. But he was there pursued, and died as a murderer and a traitor ought to die, the death of a criminal.

We then read of Solomon's conduct to Shimei. We have seen it was a mistranslation which made it appear that David ordered Shimei to be put to death; that such interpretation is right the original bears out, but the sequel of the story also confirms it, for you observe Solomon did not put Shimei to death, but knowing him to be, as David said, anything but an innocent man, with bad designs, fit for a conspiracy, he kept a watch upon him; and therefore he says to him, "You must go and live in a certain house in a certain part of Jerusalem. You know you are a criminal; it is in mercy that I thus speak to you, and you must not come out of that house; if you leave it then you incur

the penalty of death." Well, Shimei looked upon this as real kindness, and said, “The saying is good,” and acquiesced in it. But he had no sooner done so than he broke his promise, broke his parole, came out from the house where he had been placed, and in consequence incurred that sentence which was duly executed upon him.

How inveterate is evil in the heart of man, breaking out in all circumstances, and ineradicable except by Almighty grace.

NOTE.-5. Shed the blood of war in peace; murdered men, slaying them when in peace, as though in battle. Joab deserved death for his crimes (Gen. ix. 6); but he was too powerful for David to punish.- 9. Shimei was a daring enemy to the peace of the kingdom, and was punished by Solomon not from feelings of revenge, but as an act of justice.- -10. City of David; that part of Jerusalem which David took from the Jebusites, and called after his own name.- -15. Was mine; Adonijah was the eldest son, but such did not regularly succeed to kingdoms in the east.

-17. Abishag to wife; this request shewed a design to obtain the throne. The wives of a deceased king were under the charge of his successor.—34. In his own house; in a sepulchre there. This is not uncommon in the east."

LINKS BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH.

"I go the way of all the earth." 1 Kings ii. 2.

SURELY some great disaster must have happened to our world, inasmuch as he that wears a crown and sways the sceptre of the mightiest empire, and the humblest beggar that begs for daily bread upon the public streets, must move together in the same procession to the tomb; no exemption to the highest, no sparing of the humblest. The only solution of this strange fact, which was not originally meant to be the characteristic of our race, is in these words, "Sin entered, and death by sin? Sin opened the door into our world for the access of death; and from that day in Paradise till the present hour death walks along every street, enters the humblest hut, and the loftiest palace, mows down with an unsparing scythe the strong and the delicate, the young and the old; till we find that every city has its graves as well as its solemn temples, and that victorious soldiers and humble. peasants must equally go the way of all the earth.

But there are important questions lying upon the: surface of such a statement as this that it becomes us to analyse. Does the soul go with the body; does the disorganization of the one imply the death of the other? Does the insensibility of the body, cold, damp,