David
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his own eyes. One wrong step had prepared the way for another, until
his sins called for the rebuke from Jehovah through Nathan. David
awakens as from a dream. He feels the sense of his sin. He does not
seek to excuse his course, or palliate his sin, as did Saul; but with
remorse and sincere grief, he bows his head before the prophet of God,
and acknowledges his guilt. Nathan tells David that because of his
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repentance, and humble confession, God will forgive his sin, and avert
a part of the threatened calamity, and spare his life. Yet he should
be punished, because he had given great occasion to the enemies
of the Lord to blaspheme. This occasion has been improved by the
enemies of God, from David’s day until the present time. Skeptics
have assailed christianity, and ridiculed the Bible, because David gave
them occasion. They bring up to Christians the case of David, his sin
in the case of Uriah and Bathsheba, his polygamy, and then assert that
David is called a man after God’s own heart, and if the Bible record is
correct, God justified David in his crimes.
I was shown that it was when David was pure, and walking in
the counsel of God, that God called him a man after his own heart.
When David departed from God, and stained his virtuous character
by his crimes, he was no longer a man after God’s own heart. God
did not in the least degree justify him in his sins, but sent Nathan
his prophet, with dreadful denunciations to David because he had
transgressed the commandment of the Lord. God shows his displeasure
at David’s having a plurality of wives by visiting him with judgments,
and permitting evils to rise up against him from his own house. The
terrible calamity God permitted to come upon David, who for his
integrity was once called a man after God’s own heart, is evidence to
after generations that God would not justify any one in transgressing
his commandments, but that he will surely punish the guilty, however
righteous, and favored of God they might once have been while they
followed the Lord in purity of heart. When the righteous turn from
their righteousness and do evil, their past righteousness will not save
them from the wrath of a just and holy God.
Leading men of Bible history have sinned grievously. Their sins are
not concealed, but faithfully recorded in the history of God’s church,
with the punishment from God, which followed the offenses. These
instances are left on record for the benefit of after generations, and
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should inspire faith in the word of God, as a faithful history. Men who