life are traceable to parental indulgence on one side, or to filial ingratitude on the other? David's last great mistake with Absalom was the forgiveness and restoration of his son to confidence and public favor, after his return from the exile of Geshur. He forgave Absalom without repentance, though he pre tended it; and he then trusted him without watching his conduct. Forgiveness and restoration, without repentance and reformation, would ruin both earth and heaven and turn loose bad men and devils, and such clemency would be criminal and unmerciful to the good of heaven and earth. Absalom played the hypocrite, and took advantage of his father's unwary ignorance and innocence, and his fatal end soon culminated in the just retribution of his diabolical ingratitude.

The end of Absalom is sad, especially when we reflect upon what that young man "might have been;" and the saddest wail which ever went up from a broken heart was that of David at Mahanaim when he learned of his boy's death: "And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" He knew that his bad boy, impenitent and unbelieving and ungrateful to the last, was not only dead, but lost! He knew, too, that his own training and indulgence had been such as to be. somewhat the cause of his final disaster; and nothing can be more torturing to a parental heart than to feel that it has a boy in hel! with a sense of responsibility for his being there. God save us all from David's last lament over a lost boy! and may God save your boys from Absalom's fatal end, his everlasting ruin!

HOUSE ON A ROCK.

NCIENT cities and houses were generally built upon high places, and especially in cities they sought some high eminence for the citadel, as at Rome, and as the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus at Athens and Corinth. These places, however, were chosen rather for defense than for foundations; but in Matthew vii. 24-27 we find a sort of parabolic illustration of the pictorial idea before us. It reads as follows, from the lips of Jesus: "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it."

The reason for the fall, of course, is implied in the fact that it was built upon the sand. It could not stand against the floods, built down in the sandy valley, where foolishly some built their houses in ancient times, just as they do to-day. The house built upon

the rocky summit or hill-side could never be affected by the flood, however severely the winds might blow or the rains fall or the storm beat upon it. Hence the wise man builds his house upon a rock, far above the flood-tide; and it is only the foolish man who, when he could help it, would build in the sandy gorge or upon the overflowing valley.

We have seen a recent illustration of this truth in the terrible disaster of Johnstown and other localities swept by the awful floods of 1889. The breaking of a great dam above the city carried off hundreds of houses, destroyed three thousand lives, and eighteen million dollars' worth of property. Every thing in the valley was devastated, while the buildings on the hills were untouched and not a life lost. So at Johnstown, N. Y., more recently-a strange coincidence of two cities having the same name, damaged alike by floods in the same season-and so of Xenia, Ohio, a year or two ago.

Often, in this country and in others, many people are compelled in our cities to build in the valleys and hollows and along the river-banks, but they have to risk the flood, however unwise and precarious the situation, by necessity. No wise man, however, where he was not forced by circumstances to locate, would build his house in the sandy valley, or in the creek or river bottom, when he might know that sooner or later he would be swept away by the flood. The fool alone would be guilty of such a folly; and yet there are thousands of just such fools in the world.

A certain village located at the foot of Vesuvius has been destroyed fourteen times, and yet successive generations continue to repeat the folly and risk the destruction which will some time certainly follow, un