160 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

If David had never been a King—if he had never done
anything but write that matchless Twenty-third psalm—he
would have laid the whole world under everlasting obliga-
tions to him.

The life of David—poet, warrior, and king—is so crowded
with great events that a reasonable study of his whole career
would fill not one volume, but many volumes. Mr. Spur-
geon, the pastor of the Tabernacle in London, has _pub-
lished six great volumes in commenting on the Psalms alone.
Of course you know the Psalms are not all by David, but

so many of them are that we commonly speak of the whole
book of Psalms, as the Psalms of David.

What boys are most interested in in the life of David,
is the great battle on the heights of Ephes-dammim, when the
opposing armies really consisted of a giant and a shepherd
boy, and to this episode of David’s boyhood we shall be
compelled to limit our references to this wonderful son of
Jesse.

Dayid was one of the sons of Jesse. Jesse was a grand-
son of Boaz, who married Ruth the Moabitess, who returned
with Naomi to Bethlehem after the death of Elimelech. Beth-
lehem, the “House of Bread,” was the birthplace of David,
as it came to be in the fullness of times, the birthplace of
“Great David’s Greater Son.”

David’s quiet youth was spent in the fields, guarding and
tending the flocks and folds of his father. Much of his time
was engaged in the simplest kind of work, leaving him
ample opportunity for their King, musing and day-dreaming;
and as he kept watch over his father’s flocks by night, he.
would have time to ponder over the beauty, and wonder at
the grand, unchanging order of the starry heavens. His sling,
by his side by day, would bring down the birds from the