when he had left hold of God. Had he left hold of God in the
wilderness he would have become a mere robber-chieftain. He does
leave hold of God in his palace on Zion, and he becomes a mere
Eastern despot.

And what of his sons?

The fearful curse of Nathan, that the sword shall never depart from
his house, needs, as usual, no miracle to fulfil it. It fulfils
itself. The tragedies of his sons, of Amnon, of Absalom, are
altogether natural--to have been foreseen, but not to have been
avoided.

The young men have seen their father put no restraint upon his
passions. Why should they put restraint on theirs? How can he
command them when he has not commanded himself? And yet self-
restraint is what they, above all men, need. Upstart princes--the
sons of a shepherd boy--intoxicated with honours to which they were
not born; they need the severest discipline; they break out into the
most frantic licence. What is there that they may not do, and dare
not do? Nothing is sacred in their eyes. Luxury, ambition,
revenge, vanity, recklessness of decency, open rebellion, disgrace
them in the sight of all men. And all these vices, remember, are
heightened by the fact that they are not brothers, but rivals; sons
of different mothers, hating each other, plotting against each
other; each, probably, urged on by his own mother, who wishes, poor
fool, to set up her son as a competitor for the throne against all
the rest. And so are enacted in David's house those tragedies which
have disgraced, in every age, the harems of Eastern despots.