God guided him through all the
dangers and temptations of youth, and through them all he trusted
God. God brought him safely to success, honour, a royal crown; and
he thanked God, and acknowledged his goodness. And yet after a while
his heart was puffed up, and he forgot God, and all he owed to God,
and became a tyrant, an adulterer, a murderer. He repented of his
sin: but he could not escape the punishment of it. His children
were a curse to him; the sword never departed from his house; and his
last years were sad enough, and too sad.
Perhaps that was God's mercy to him; God's way of remembering him
again, and bringing him back to him. Perhaps too that same is God's
way of bringing back many a man in our own days who has wandered from
him in success and prosperity.
God grant that we may never need that terrible chastisement. God
grant that we, if success and comfort come to us, may never wander so
far from God, but that we may be brought back to him by the mere
humbling of old age itself, without needing affliction over and
above.
Yes, by old age alone. Old age, it seems to me, is a most wholesome
and blessed medicine for the soul of man. Good it is to find that we
can work no longer, and rejoice no more in our own strength and
cunning. Good it is to feel our mortal bodies decay, and to learn
that we are but dust, and that when we turn again to our dust, all
our thoughts will perish.
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