14-27, Joab must have smiled grimly to himself when he received his master’s letter. ‘‘This king of ours can sing psalms with the best, but I have to do his dirty work. He wants to rid himself of Uriah —I wonder why? Well, I’ll help him to it. At any rate, he will not be able to talk to me about Abner!’’ 3:27. It is an awful thing when the servants of God give the enemy such occasion to blaspheme.

Uriah was set in the battle-line and left to die. The king was duly notified and, on hearing the news, must have given a sigh of relief. The child could be born under cover of lawful wedlock. There was, however, a fatal flaw in the whole arrangement: The thing that David had done displeased the Lord. David and the world would hear of it again. But, oh, the bitter sorrow, that he who had spoken of walking in his house with a perfect heart, who had so great a faculty for divine fellowship, should have fallen into this double sin! The psalmist, king, lover of God,—all trampled in the mud by one passionate act of self-indulgence!

2 Samuel 12: 1-14. A year followed on his sin, but David gave no sign. He describes his condition during ‘that awful time in Psalm 32: 3, 4. Conscience scourged him incessantly, but he did not return to God until Nathan had been sent to fetch him. The Good Shepherd went after that which was lost until he found it. ‘‘He restoreth my soul!’’ But soul-agony is not enough, keen though it be; there must be confession,

Nathan’s parable was the mirror in which the true enormity of the king’s sin was held up to his face. He was judged, and he judged himself. By the manifestation of the truth, Nathan commended himself to the king’s conscience, as in the sight of God. And finally came the home-thrust—Thou art the man. The words of confession were immediate and deeply sincere.