BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 181

ago—in England especially—-the sentence passed upon the
foulest criminals was that they should be “hung and
gibbetted.” There are some venerable people living to-day,
who can faintly remember some of these horrible scenes,
where, high on the gallows-tree, the bleached bones of
criminals swayed to and from the gibbet-post, thousands of
people coming from far and near to look upon the ghastly
sight.

How ancient Israel looked upon this disgrace of leaving
the bodies of the dead to be the prey of vultures and
jackals, may be gathered from this sad strain from one of
the psalms of Asaph—

“O God, the heathen are come into thine
inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled;
they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. The dead
bodies of thy servants have they given to be
meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of
thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.

“Their blood have they shed like water
round about Jerusalem; and there was none to
bury them. We are become a reproach to our

neighbors, a scorn and derision to them that are
round about us.”

Let us turn our attention again to Gibeah’s sad moun-
tain. The terrible execution has taken place. Beside the altar
on the hill-top of Saul’s own village swing the lifeless forms
of Saul’s sons and grandsons —butchered to satisfy a cruel and
unholy vengeance, and to expiate the wrongs he had done a
generation before.

We may well pause a moment here to learn a lesson—a
lesson both for boys and men, a lesson for all time. The easiest
way to get at the lesson will be by asking one or two
questions.

Now that these Gibeonites were avenged, what better