in the spring thereafter, I used to come early and direct my father's servants to their work, and retire again to the fields, having still a watchful eye and under the fear of the enemy; and, at night, went to some retired place, and lay sometimes in one barn and sometimes in another." One night he occupied a barn belonging to an acquaintance, at a short distance from his father's house, and being very wearied and oppressed in body, he continued on his couch of straw longer than usual in the morning, a circumstance which was the means of saving his life, for his father's abode was that morning visited by a party who would have apprehended him had he been at his occupation at his accustomed hour. The man, in whose outhouse he slept, saw from the door of his dwelling the soldiers at the farm house, and, not knowing that the refugee was still in his dormitary, exclaimed " I fear James is taken, for a party of horsemen have alighted on his father's green.” This exclamation being heard by our worthy in his hiding-place, he sprang from his bed, and, having hastily donned his clothes, immediately came out and satisfied his friend that he was safe. As the place was near his father's house, he had no doubt that the troopers would pay it a visit, and, in order to elude them, he resorted to the following expedient: He repaired to a moss in the vicinity, where a poor cottager had been digging peats for his winter's fuel, and, hastily casting his coat, put on the cottar's, and was instantly at work in the dark moss hag, heaving out the brick-shaped peats to the surface. As he was thus employed, the troopers, as was anticipated, passed the edge of the moss in search of him, and returned back without discovering him, never suspecting that the person so near them was the individual of whom they were in quest. The dragoons plundered his father's house, and then went to other places, passing and repassing the house, full in his view, without effecting their object, while he continued unnoticed, and thus escaped. Nimmo felt grateful to the great preserver of his life for this deliverance, and says, they missed me, at which I was glad, and desired to bless the Lord for inclining me to lie so long in my bed, and for determining me where to go and work for myself when I arose; and though they got some of my clothes, which they took with them, yet they missed the substance." But he was spared for greater trials; and as every man is immortal till his work be done," Nimmo was preserved by many hairbreadth escapes, till God had accomplished by him that service which he designed. 66 We shall take leave of James Nimmo for the present, hoping to meet with him again, and to accompany him in his wanderings, and to observe a few of the more stirring incidents of his life. R. S. MINOR SCRIPTURE CHARACTERS -No. H. DOEG THE EDOMITE. "Who marks in church-time others' symmetry, Let vain or busy thoughts have there no part: GEORGE HERBERT, THE first occasion on which Doeg is introduced to our notice is in the tabernacle at Nob. There are present at the same moment David and Ahimelech the priest. To judge aright of the conduct of Doeg we must observe what passes between these two latter personages. David is now fleeing from the presence of Saul, and about to seek refuge from the fury of his relentless persecutor beyond the borders of his native country in a voluntary exile. There is one place, however, sacred to his pious heart by inany sweet remembrances, which he longs once more to visit ere he leaves Israel: and that is the tabernacle of his God. Hither, therefore, he has now come with hurried steps. The change in his appearance at once strikes the kind and venerable priest with suspicion and surprise. He had been wont to appear attended by a retinue suited to his rank as the king's son-in-law, and with such indications of influence and power as became the rising hope of Israel. But now, what a change! Alone, unarmed, with the air of one that is conscious of imminent danger;-can it be that the sun of royalty has ceased to shine on him?" Ahimelech is afraid at the meeting of David." "Why art thou alone," he inquires," and no man with thee." To remove these not unnatural anxieties, which, if encouraged by full information, might seriously impede his escape, David pretends that he is now performing an important embassy for the king that requires secresy and haste; and, moreover, on the ground of his royal mission, asks Ahimelech to give him such supplies as may be needful for the further duties of the embassy. "David said unto Ahimelech the priest, The king hath commanded me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no man know anything of the business whereabout I send thee, and what I have commanded thee: and I have appointed my servants to such and such a place. Now, therefore, what is under thine hand? give me five loaves of bread in mine hand or what there is present." Some may be disposed to defend this act of dissimulation on the part of David. They may tell us, for example, that his life was now in jeopardy, and that delay would have been ruin. Or it may be urged that the pretence he made was but a harmless stratagem, and that no possible injury could befall Ahimelech by being temporarily misled by it. To all this, and to much more than this that we can suppose to be advanced, and even favourably entertained to some extent by the lax morality of the world, we must oppose the express autho.. rity of the divine law, which cannot lower its demands to suit our con venience, and which condemns everything like trifling with the sacredness of truth. Moreover, it ought to be remembered, that in no case are we fit judges of the consequences of any word or action whatsoever. One false statement may involve in it a train of disasters, at the sight of which the man that uttered it would shudder. Perhaps David reasoned with himself at this time, and said, "This stratagem of mine can do Ahimelech no possible injury, while it will relieve my hunger and aid my escape-what is it but an arrow shot in the air." Yes, David, but that arrow will descend to pierce the heart of the unoffending priest, and to extinguish the name of the priestly house of Eli in a shower of blood. And would it not have been far more worthy of one who had already experienced such astonishing deliverances, simply to commit his case into the divine hand, and remembering the years of the right hand of the Most High, to believe that the God who had been with him in six troubles would also be with him in seven, and would with the present, as with former trials, open up a way of escape. "Lord, what is man." "He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool." The false pretence, however, has the desired effect upon Ahimelech, and dispels every lingering suspicion from the mind of the generous and confiding priest. To relieve David's wants is not only to do an act of kindness to him, but of loyalty to Saul. Even the sacred loaves, therefore, which had just been removed from the table of the shewbread, and which, in common circumstances, might not be consumed by any but those who had consecrated their lives to the altar, are cheerfully given to David in the name of that God who will have mercy rather than sacrifice. Never was there an act performed from a more pure and simple motive; but, alas! there was one present in the tabernacle all the while, who was watching the whole transaction with an evil eye, and resolved to turn it to the most fatal account, and Doeg the Edomite was that malignant spy, that false accuser. This is the juncture at which he is first introduced to our notice in the sacred history. "Now a certain man," we are told, "of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord; and his name was Doeg, an Edomite, the chiefest of the herdmen that belonged to Saul."* If the reader will take the trouble to examine the chapter in which these words occur, he will be struck with the extreme abruptness with which they are introduced. The regular flow of the narrative is stopped, just for a moment, to point our attention to Doeg, and then the history of David is again immediately resumed. It is as if the historian had said, "mark that manobserve him well-we shall have more to say of him soon." Short and abrupt, however, though the statement be, it puts us in possession of several particulars. As to country, it informs us that Doeg was an Edomite, a member of an accursed and bloody race, which for centuries had shown itself the hereditary and remorseless foe of Israel. It seems, however, that he had professed himself a proselyte to the faith of the Jews, and, thus qualified, he was now employed by Saul in a post of some responsibility, having risen to be "the chiefest" of Saul's herdsmen. To explain this latter fact, we may mention that a considerable part of * 1 Sam. xxi. 7. the royal revenue at this period was drawn from herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, in the charge of which numerous servants were necessarily employed, and Doeg appears to have been entrusted with the general management and care of this valuable part of Saul's property. Behold him, then, standing in the tabernacle of Nob, and engaged in presenting some offering, or performing some vow. At heart, however, he is an Edomite still-the work of devotion is felt by him to be uncongenial and irksome-he is "detained before the Lord," and therefore, while he is yielding to the Lord an external homage, mark where the hypocrite's eyes have wandered. They are fixed malignantly upon Ahimelech and David-he is watching their every gesture, and drinking in their every word with the design of revealing all to Saul at a convenient season, and thus ingratiating himself the more into the royal confidence and favour. Oh, there are men who can 66 seem the flower, yet be the serpent under it ;" and such a wretch was Doeg. See him with demureness on his countenance, and words of devotion on his lips, while the devices of hell are in his heart! What wicked motives may sometimes bring a man even to the house of God! All falsehood and treachery are abomination in the sight of God; but it is the highest act of wickedness to make religion the handmaid of deceit, and to steal the very vestments of heaven to serve the devil in. A considerable period must now be supposed to elapse, and David having returned to the land of Israel from his voluntary exile, to be concealed, with his followers, in the forest of Hareth. We must further imagine Saul, apprized of the circumstance, coming forth to pursue his unoffending victim, and, at the particular moment when he now claims our notice, seated on an eminence in Gibeah under a tamarisk-tree, with a spear in his hand, and surrounded by a numerous company of officers and soldiers. Looking beneath these outward trappings of royalty, we behold in Saul the very picture of human wretchedness. Oh, how much of ingenious self-torture is there in those bitter words which he addresses to his followers-" Hear now, ye Benjamites, will the son of Jesse give every one of you fields and vineyards, and make you all captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds? That all you have conspired against me, and there is none that sheweth me that my son hath made a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you that is sorry for me, or sheweth unto me that my son hath stirred up my servant against me to lie in wait, as at this day." For all these dark suspicions there is no ground whatever save in the fancies of his own gloomy spirit. The report has reached him that Jonathan and David have entered into a covenant with each other, and immediately he transmutes this covenant into a conspiracy against his own life, and even persuades himself that those around him are parties in the plot. Thus it is that guilty minds extract misery from every thing, hear voices in the wind, and even tremble at the shaking of an aspen leaf. His servants are silent though innocent either because they are afraid to speak, or because they know from experience that speaking is vain. At length one voice is heard fanning the flame of resentment, and goading Saul on to atrocity-" I saw the son of Jesse coming to Nob, to Ahimelech, the son of Ahitub. And he inquired of the Lord for him, and gave him victuals, and gave him the sword of Goliath the NO. VIII. VOL. I. 3 c And in his words we Philistine." That voice was the bloody Doeg's. have a specimen of that partial statement of facts by no means uncommon still, which often has all the evil effects, and uniformly has all the crime of direct falsehood. No doubt all that he said was true, but then all the truth was not said; he took care to conceal the fact that Ahimelech had granted these various favours to David, under the distinct impression that he was on an embassy for Saul, and by withholding this essential circumstance, confirmed Saul in the suspicion that Ahimelech had become a party to the imagined conspiracy. But the lie would probably advance his ambitious designs; and if it but raised the wretch to a higher eminence, what cared he though he should walk to that guilty eminence through blood. The lie does succeed. Messengers are instantly dispatched to Nob, the city of the priests, to summon Ahimelech and his brethren into the king's presence. Conscious of innocence, and all unwitting of what is about to happen, they hasten to obey the summons. Behold them then in number eighty-five, all clothed in the beautiful linen vestments of the priesthood, taking their position in the presence of the enraged king. But what is their horror of mind when Ahimelech, their venerable chief, is charged with conspiracy and treason. He replies, however, to the fearful accusation with a calmness and dignity worthy of his sacred office. How could he ever have supposed that he was wrong in obliging one whom the king himself had chosen as his son-in-law, and to whom he had formerly entrusted so many embassies and enterprises. Assuredly, if any secret or sinister designs had lurked under David's movements, he at least had no part in them—" he knew nothing of it, either less or more." Will not an explanation, so natural and simple, satisfy Saul, and be more than enough to set over against the malicious hints of yonder base Edomite? Justice now forbade that he should touch even a hair of his head. But to speak to Saul now is to reason with the whirlwind. His ear is only open to the voice of vengeance, and he shall have it now in full measure. 66 Turn," says he to the guards that surround him," and slay the priests of the Lord." But the men, though inured to sights of blood, recoil from the thought of becoming the executioners of so fearful a sentence. "And Doeg, the Edomite, turned, and he fell on the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod. And Nob, the city of the priests, smote he with the edge of the sword, both men and women, and sucklings, and oxen, and asses, and sheep, with the edge of the sword." Oh, who can sound the depths of depravity in a human heart? What do we behold in the scene before us? A man sacrificing to his insane jealousies, which have no better origin than in the shadows cast by his own distempered soul,-sacrificing with one fell swoop, not Ahimelech merely, but the whole priestly race, their wives and smiling children, and making Nob itself, the place of their habitation, a heap of ruins. Nay, does it not seem as if the very office of these murdered priests had given an additional zest to Saul's revenge. "Turn," says he, "and slay the priests of the Lord." As if he had said-" if I cannot wound Him who has withdrawn from me his favour, and rejected me from being king, I shall go as near Him as I can, and satiate my resent |