"Peace, peace be unto thee, and peace be to thine helpers; for thy God helpeth thee." Who that has applied these glorious words of Amasai, chief of the captains, to his own deliverance from untruth can do otherwise than rejoice, as did David, in the companions sent to him? Though Truth is always at hand as our one and constant helper, leading us beside the still waters and in the paths of righteousness, yet it is only by degrees that this is understood, and so, as we make our stand against the threatening shows of evil, helper after helper seems to come to us, sometimes in one guise, and sometimes in another, but ever on the side of the son of Jesse, considered as the standard bearer of Principle.
How unexpected and how various were the companions of David in his onward progress! How exactly also was their aid proportioned to the task he had in hand, in his three principal places of sojourn, before he set out to bring the ark of God to the tabernacle prepared for it on Mount Zion! To the cave of Adullam he came in the guise of a mere madman. At Ziklag, where Amasai accepted his leadership, he was acknowledged by the Philistines, but still kept himself close because of Saul. As anointed king over the house of Judah, he remained more than seven years in Hebron before there came the moment, symbolized by the removal of the ark to Mount Zion, when it seemed possible to make Jerusalem the seat of government of both Israel and Judah.
David's helpers, it should be noted, grew in nobility the whole time. Outward peace was not then, nor is it now, a sure sign of the advent of such companions. What they bring is that inward calm and hopefulness which must have been the portion of David, even when he dwelt in the cave of Adullam. Who were his helpers there? A strange band; "every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented." There was thus revealed a process of separation between those who were content to remain under conditions of injustice and untruth, and such as, unable to endure their base surroundings, gathered themselves together into the natural fortress that David had chosen. On the thoughts of each of us, Mrs. Eddy makes the same demand to-day, when she says, "Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate" (Science and Health, p.451). Our stronghold is apart from mortal conditions; the thoughts in us that mourn because of carnal persecutions turn to that fastness and are comforted.
