Why Be a Christian ?; Addresses (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DAVID: A STUDY FOR YOUNG MEN David being designed for a position of supreme influence, was prepared for it by a life full of difficulty and temptations. Three of these were temptations which tested his trust in God. They showed to himself and others how far and in what sense he was actually depending on God; counting upon His help as a real aid, and believing in His providence as a sure guide. In two of these temptations he triumphed: in one he was defeated. The first trial was of the most practical kind. When he went to the army with supplies for his brothers he found all Israel quelled by one Philistine champion. The lad trained on the moors, and who had single- handed hunted down the lion and the bear, was not likely to be dismayed by the bravo, huge and well-armed as he was. But David was confident of success, not because he was infallible with his sling, but because the cause was the cause of God. The story is told not as illustrative of David's spirit and prowess, but as proof that he was the fit king of Israel, because he best understood the God of Israel. Saul wasphysically more powerful than David; he was a sterner ruler, and in some respects more of a hero than David; but he was always out of his place on the throne of Israel, because he had not meekness and humility enough to recognise Jehovah as the true King, and to trust in Him. So far as his rule went, the people would never learn to trust in the unseen, to believe in righteousness more than in sword and spear. With David from the first his fitness to rule lay in his trust in Israel's God. And yet at the close of his career it was under this very temptation he fell? the temptation to pride himself in the material of war rather than in God. He began his career, saying to his armed foe, ' Thou comest to...