Now I would have you observe that this is one of the prominent lessons of the Bible; on many a page does it bring out an unexpected development like this.  Again and again it is the unlikely that happens in the lives which figure on its pages.  They rise or they fall in a way that no one looked for, and which they, least of all, anticipated themselves.  We seem to hear them saying with Hazael, “Impossible,” and then, before we get far, the thing is done.  Impossible, we say, that king Saul should ever descend so low as to deal in witches; or that Solomon, the wise, God-fearing youth, should give himself up to the sway of lustful passions and idolatries.  Yet that comes to pass.  Impossible, we say, that the cunning, lying Jacob should ever develop into a man of prayer; and the outcast beggar, Jephthah, ever grow into a hero-patriot and king.  Yet we see it.  In the Bible stories greatness always comes to those who have neither marked themselves out for it, nor deemed themselves fit for it; and, on the contrary, its most infamous deeds are done, and its most shameful lives lived, by those who have given promise of fairer things, and who in their early manhood would have scouted the possibility of descending so low.  The men whom it describes have no suspicion, to begin with, of the great power for good that is in them, or the equally great possibilities of evil.  Tell the shepherd youth, David, that he has in him the making of a king and an immortal poet, and he will think you are poking fun at him.  Tell him that he will one day fall into the crimes of adultery and murder, and make all Israel blush for him, and he will be indignant enough to strike you to the ground.  Speak to the fisherman, Peter, of the commanding influence which awaits him in some coming kingdom of God, and he will think you are beside yourself:  and then tell him that he will one day deny and curse his sworn Master and kindest Friend, and he will ask you, Do you think I am a dog or a devil that I should do this?  Impossible!  And yet the thing comes off.

Why do the sacred writers give us so many stories of this kind?  Surely it is because we need both the warning and encouragement.  It is to prove to us that on one side of our nature we are greater than we think, and on the other side weaker and lower than we believe.  It is to inspire the diffident with courage, and the despairing with hope, while it pulls up the forward, the careless, and the over-confident with the wholesome and humbling word, “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”  These men of the Bible were strangely mixed.  They were conspicuous instances of the contradictions and surprises which are in us all.  For that is the point:  the thing comes home to us.