THE MAN AFTER THE FLESH. PART II. THE KING OF MAN'S CHOICE.

Chapter 7:THE NEW KING. (1 Sam. 10:17-11:)

(Continued from page 36.)

God having dealt faithfully and fully with Saul in private and through the prophet, now manifests to the nation at large the man whom He has chosen for them. Samuel is again the honored instrument here and calls the people to meet the Lord, as he had already, so far as possible, brought the future king face to face with Jehovah. The people are to come together at Mizpah, the place where God had signally manifested His delivering hand, in rescuing them from the Philistines and also one of the stations where Samuel was accustomed to judge Israel. Its name, as we have seen, means "Watch-tower," appropriate surely for those who would rightly survey the past and the future, and heed the admonitions with which God would address them. "I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower and will watch to see what He will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved" (Hab. 2:i). Good would it have been, for them and their king, had this attitude of soul truly marked them. It was that indeed to which God called them, as He ever does His people, to hearken to the admonitions and reproofs of love, and thus to be guarded from the snares into which we will otherwise surely fall. Well would it have been for Peter had he been spiritual at Mizpah to receive the warning of our Lord.

God again reminds them of His work for them as a nation, from the tit^ of their deliverance out of Egypt, and from all the power of the enemy up to the present. He reiterates the fact that in their desire for a king they, and not He, have been the rejecters. He, blessed be His name, never turns from His people whom He has redeemed. His love to them is measured by that redemption, and all their future experience would be but repetitions, according to need, of that deliverance; but, alas, how prone are His people to forget the past, and measure the present by their unbelief, rather than by His power as manifested for them again and again.

It is not, however, with any view of securing a change of mind on the part of the people. They were determined in their course. That wretched watchword "like all the nations" had gnawed into their spiritual vitals and produced its necessary results. A king they must and will have, and it must be the one who answers to such a state of heart as that. What other kind of one could it be?

God deigns still to serve His people, as we have been seeing, and to interpret their own wretched minds for them, giving expression to their desires, far better than they could themselves. For this purpose He uses the lot, leaving nothing to mere chance or to the caprice of any part of the people, still less to that modern fallacy, the will of the majority. "The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing is of the Lord." It also causes contentions to cease. We cannot for a moment think that though thus guiding in the choice, God was pleased with it, or that the man selected thus would represent His desires for the people. We have already dwelt upon this.

And now the tribes are brought up one by one, and "little Benjamin" is taken, ominously significant as one which up to this time had been distinguished chiefly by its fearful rebellion. The one who rules others must rule himself first of all, and he who claims obedience from a nation must be preeminently the obedient one. How perfectly has our blessed Lord manifested His capacity for rule in this way, resigning, as we might say, the place of authority, "taking the form of a servant," learning obedience in all His life of lowliness. Truly He has qualified Himself to be the true King of Israel as well as the Ruler and Lord of all His people.

There is no account of Benjamin's repentance, and therefore we may well suppose that the tribe was still marked by that spirit of rebellion which had wrought such havoc in the days of the judges. And yet that hardihood of spirit, that rash courage which marked them at that time-one of the least of the tribes facing the entire nation, and "giving a good account of itself " in the conflicts that ensued- was doubtless rehearsed and handed down, and became matter for boasting, rather than for humiliation and true self-abhorrence before God. Thus it will ever be with the flesh. It will boast in that which is its shame and plume itself upon a strength which must be broken to pieces before God can come in. It thus represents, as a tribe, the nation, and while we cannot say that all this was intensified in that branch of the tribe from which Saul came, neither is there any indication of its absence.

The various families are sifted out and finally the choice falls upon Saul himself. We have already looked at his genealogy. Another name is here mentioned, the "family of Matri," which is said to mean "Jehovah is watching," which ought, at least, to have been a reminder that the holy eye of God had seen all their past, and knew well too their present. How the mention of this should have caused both the people and Saul to have halted! God's holy eye was upon them. He had searched out their secret thoughts. He knew their motives, their state of soul, their self-confidence, their pride. Could they, with that holy eye of love resting upon them, proceed in this wretched course of disobedience, that which was practically apostasy from Himself? Alas, while Jehovah's eye is open upon them, theirs is closed as to Him. They have eyes only for the king whom they desire, and he is soon presented to their gaze.

(To be continued.)