David broods over these memories, he longs with a yearning, homesick feeling for Bethlehem and its well.  And, like a poet as he was, he conceives that if he could but drink of its water, it would relieve this feverish unrest and longing for the past.  It was a very natural feeling.  You are too young to know what it means; but we who are older think of these little things in a strange, yearning way.  It is the little things of childhood that we long for—­to lie under the roof on which we heard the rain patter years and years ago; to gather fruit in the old orchard; to fish in the same streams; to sit on the same rock, or under the same elm or maple, and see the sun go down behind the same old hills; to drink from the same spring that refreshed us in summer days that will not come again—­you are too young for this, but we who are older know well how David felt.  He was not a man to hide his feelings, and so he uttered his longing for the water of the well by the gate of Bethlehem.  His words are overheard; and three of these terrible followers of his—­fierce as lions and fleet as deer—­took their swords and fought their way through the Philistines, slaying we know not how many, and brought back some of the water.  It was enough for them that David wanted it.

Now, some people would say that it was very foolish and sentimental of David to be indulging in such a whim, and still more foolish in these men to gratify it at the risk of their lives; but I think there is a better way of looking at it.  If David had required them to procure the water at the risk of their lives, it would have been very wrong; but the whole thing was unknown to him till the water was brought.  I prefer to regard it as an act of splendid heroism, prompted by chivalric devotion, and I will not stop to consider whether or not it was sensible and prudent.  And I want to say to you that whenever you see or hear of an action that has these qualities of heroism and generosity and devotion, it is well to admire and praise it, whether it will bear the test of cold reason or not.  I hope your hearts will never get to be so dry and hard that they will not beat responsive to brave and noble deeds, even if they are not exactly prudent.

But David took even a higher view of this brave and tender act of his lion-faced, deer-footed followers.  It awoke his religious feelings; for our sense of what is noble and generous and brave lies very close to our religious sensibilities.  The whole event passes, in David’s mind, into the field of religion; and so what does he do?  Drink the water, and praise his three mighty warriors, and bid them never again run such risks to gratify his chance wishes?  No.  David looks a great deal further into the matter than this.  The act seemed to him to have a religious character; its devotion was so complete and unselfish that it became sacred.  He felt what I have just said—­that a brave and devoted act that incurs danger is almost if not quite a religious