Twenty-second Sunday.
KING DAVID REIGNING.
FIRST READING.
"How are the mighty fallen!"—2 Samuel 1:19.
THE last thing that has to be told about Saul is very sad. You know he would not do as God bade him, but chose to go his own way. Then God forsook him, and left him to grow worse and worse. Then his enemies, the Philistines, came up against him, and his army came together on the hills to meet them.
But God was not with Saul, so his men could not fight, and he was beaten back step by step up into his own hills, close to his home; and there, when he found he could go no further, and that the Philistines would soon be upon him, he did the saddest thing of all—he threw himself on his own sword, that they might not take him alive.
He did not quite kill himself; and when a young robber came by, trying to get garments and weapons from the dead bodies, the unhappy king begged for a death-blow as he lay. The robber gave him the last stroke, and then took the crown from his helmet, and his bracelets, and brought them to David, to show that he was dead.