when he was old and blind, suffered for years an agony of grief because
he had been falsely told that Joseph, his favourite son, was dead.

Probably few men have known domestic sorrows, so many and so great, as
those which befell David. He shared, in all its bitterness, the misery
of a parent who sees his best hopes disappointed, and who is racked
with anxiety as to what his wayward boy will do next, sometimes wishing
that before such dishonour had befallen him his son had been laid to
rest under the daisies, in the time of infant innocence. David's
eldest son, Amnon, after committing a terrible crime, was assassinated
by his brother Absalom. In his turn, Absalom, the fairest of the
family, rebelled against his own father, and was killed by Joab, as he
hung in the oak. Chiliah, or Daniel, died we know not how, and then
Adonijah, the fourth son, the eldest of those surviving, followed in
Absalom's footsteps.

Adonijah's sin appears at first sight so unnatural that, in justice to
him as well as for our own instruction, we should try to discover the
sources whence this stream of evil flowed which was so bitter and so
desolating in its results.

This is not an easy task, because the full details of his life are not
recorded. There are, however, no less than three evil influences
hinted at in these words: "_His father had not displeased him at any
time, in saying, Why hast thou done so? and he also was a very goodly
man, and his mother bare him after Absalom_" (1 Kings i. 6). Taking
them in reverse order: _Heritage_, _Adulation_, and _Lack of
Discipline_, were three sources of moral peril, and these would tend to
the ruin of any man. Let us think of each of these, for they are not
extinct by any means.