2 Samuel 12:23

Now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? &c.— If David meant only that he should die, and go to the grave like his son, as some commentators explain this passage, the consolation which it conveys would be very poor, and we should lose one of the noblest lessons that was ever penned, upon all that is reasonable and religious in grief. There can be no doubt that David believed the immortality of the soul. His writings abundantly prove it: and in this view we may well paraphrase the words thus, "If I cannot have the consolation to partake with this infant the temporal happiness wherewith the divine goodness has blessed me, yet, I hope, to rejoin his soul one day in Heaven, and to partake with him eternal felicity." Considered in this light, the words convey the most satisfactory comfort; and, surely, it would be wrong to suppose that David was unacquainted with the felicities of that future state, and incapable of drawing the only solid consolation from that knowledge, when a heathen confessedly has done so. For who admires not those fine sentiments of Cato of Utica, who cries out with so much rapture, "O happy day! when I shall quit this impure and corrupted multitude, and join myself to that divine company of great souls, who have quitted the earth before me! There I shall find not only those illustrious personages, but also my Cato, who, I can say, was one of the best men, of the best nature, and the most faithful to his duty. I have placed his body upon that funeral pile whereon he ought to have laid mine. But his soul has not left me, and, without losing sight of me, he has only gone before into a country where he saw I should soon rejoin him!" See Cic. de Senect. ad fin.