David the Many-Sided

It is very rarely that a nation has associated all her attributes with the life of a single man. tesay rarely to; avoid the possibility? of exaggeration; but I do not myself know one instance of a purely national gallery having done so. The pride of a country has generally been to have a diversified gallery — to divide her great professions among different men. Britain places her Shakespeare in a unique position of glory; but she would not seek to claim for him a union of af the professions. She is content to behold his genius in his special sphere — the sphere of the poet. She does not insist on recognising in him a concentration of all departments — the science of a Newton, the logic of a Bacon, the statesmanship of a Chatham, the military skill of a

Marlborough. She is proud to think that in enumerating her different sources of glory she can assign each of them to a separate name. But in that one Gallery which is not national we meet with the spectacle which is elsewhere absent. We find a people, through long centuries of its history and through devious changes of its fortune, consistently ‘and persistently agreeing to heap upon a single individual the aggregate glories of every profession in life. Israel has fixed her affections upon an ideal whose very name expresses the object uniting all desires — David — the beloved. To claim one man as the object of all national desires is a claim not easily sustained. It can only be supported on the supposition that this one man has passed through every national experience, has filled every sphere, has partaken of every circumstance. Accordingly, the David of Israel is not simply the greatest of her £zmgs; he is the man great in everything. He monopolises all her institutions. He is her shepherd boy — the representative of her zozleng classes. He is her musician — the successor of Jubal and Miriam and Deborah. He is her soldier — the conqueror of all the Goliaths that would steal her peace. He is her knight-errant — bringing mercy into war. He is her king — numbering her armies and regulating her polity. He is her priest — substituting a broken and contrite spirit for the blood of bulls and rams. He is her prophet — presaging with his latest breath the everlastingness of his kingdom. He is her poet — all her psalms are called by his name. The truth is, in the estimation of Israel this man is a personification of the nation itself — the embodiment of her qualities, the incarnation of her spirit, the type of her destiny. A conception so unique deserves consideration. - How can we better photograph the form of David than by presenting the analogy between the picture of his life and the life of ancient Israel — that Israel which saw in him a mirror of her own soul! Even the “zstory of Israel seems to repeat itself in David. What do we see at the outset of his life? A shepherd boy. with a very unlikely prospect of success and a very big presentiment of glory! Like the nation, he was born to a pastoral life; he fed his father’s sheep on the plains of Bethlehem. Like the nation, he was deemed, in his morning, very insignificant. He had seven brothers — strong, stalwart, gigantic men. Zhese were pointed to as the men who would serve their country. Little David was, like little Israel, a pigmy among the giants; and the world said, ‘ He will never equal his brothers!’ Yet little David had within that soul of his an ambition, compared to which that of his brothers was a molehill. He, like his tiny country, had a dream of empire — that dream which had its beginning when Abraham heard his mission under the Chaldean stars. He, like Abraham, had received a prophetic voice, had felt the touch of an anointing hand. Ever, amid the bleating of the sheep, there had sounded in his ear a deep refrain, ‘ You will be king of Israel! you will be king of Israell’ He kept the dream in his heart, he told it not; but all the warmer did it burn because it could not be spoken. And though it could not be spoken, it could be sung; it made songs without words. It tuned the strings of his harp; it accompanied his music; it imparted to his notes a wild dash and daring which made them seem to strike the stars. He was unconscious of their power; he played spontaneously — played to relieve himself. But just on that account he was overheard; unconscious genius ever zs overheard. Men stood and listened in the night to the great musician. They spread his fame. They told how a nightingale had come. They spoke of a harp with chords inspired. And by and by the tidings reached the most august ear in all

the land. They came to the royal palace; they were heard by Saul the king. Saul was passing through an hour of mental darkness. There had come to him, as there comes to many of us, an unaccountable unrest. We are told of a peace that ‘ passeth understanding’; there is also a dspeace that ‘passeth understanding.’ There are clouds in the mind which are not explained bycloudsin the sky, for they often come in our days of outward sunshine. Saul had such an experience. He was afflicted from within — afflicted in the midst of his exaltation, on the pinnacle of that proud height to which fortune had raised him. Matertal conditions had not caused the malady; material conditions could not remove the malady. Might not zmaterial conditions be tried! If the disorder originated from within, might it not be conquered from within! Might not muszc have power to minister to a mind diseased! Why not call in the aid of this wonderful player whose powers of melody were bruited everywhere! Why not send for David!

David is sent for, and comes; and, as he comes, the Gallery repeats in him another of. its past stages. He has already heard the call of Abraham; he is about to experience the call of Isaac. The call of Abraham was the summoning to a life of glory; the call of Isaac was the summoning to a life of domestic ministration. When David entered the house of Saul he abandoned, for the time, his dream.

He laid aside his desire to rule; he tried to serve, to dig wells of comfort for the heart of another. And not without success. As he played, the malady of Saul subsided; the clouds parted, and a stream of sunshine burst upon his soul. If a pupil in a Sunday-school were asked, ‘ Who was the first man influenced by the Psalms of David?’ he would not go very far wrong if he answered, ‘Saul.’ It is true, these melodies were songs without words; but they were not songs without thoughts. On the poor wandering soul of the monarch they had all the effect of a sweet and solemn Draverns they said, mibeaceunbBerstul ly: ieihey were the earliest psalms of David — psalms of unspoken words, psalms of undefined comfort, psalms whose Divine message came only in music. When the critics have disposed of all the rest, they will leave to the minstrel these jirsé chords.

And now the scene changes once more, and there is repeated another past phase of the Hebrew Gallery. The experience of David has echoed the call of Abraham and the

domestic ministration of Isaac; it is now to echo the troubles of Joseph. He has had the dream of empire; he has had the stage of domestic life; he is now to have the experience of private jealousies — jealousies of which, like Joseph, he is to be, not the sharer, but the victim. There is a passion which music cannot quell, which culture cannot calm, which art cannot allay; it is envy. In the court of Israel the personality of the young minstrel is magnetic; he draws all eyes, he wins all hearts. Men begin to contrast his face of morning brightness with the dark and lowering countenance of their monarch. Saul awakes from his nervous derangement and looks round. He sees the situation at a glance. He is losing ground; he is being superseded in the affections of his people — superseded by a Stripling! He must vemove this centre of magnetism from the eyes of men. What is he to do! How is he to get rid of him! By open violence? No; that would be unpopular. He will follow the method of Joseph’s brethren; he will cause him to disappear by ‘seeming accident. He will make him captain of a thousand men; he will send him into the front of battle, into positions where death will be almost inevitable. By means that will waken no suspicion he will remove this shepherd boy.

But the means are allin vain. David at the head of the thousand is only more magnetic still He performs deeds of prowess and becomes the right hand of Israel. What is to be done with this troublesome prodigy! <A new device presents itself to the mind of Saul — so at least I read the narrative! He will simulate a return of his malady. He will pretend to be agazz mad; and in this seeming madness he will give David his deathblow. Again the project fails; the musician eludes the javelin. Did the penetrating eye of David see through the subterfuge? I think it did. Be this as it may, the mask is now withdrawn. The baffled monarch turns at bay. He has failed in strategy; he will take means direct, to rid himself of this rival. David is warned —

1 T think the incident recorded in t Samuel xviii. 11 a” misplaced anticipation of that recorded in 1 Samuel xix. Io.

warned from within the palace, warned by Saul’s own son. There is but one refuge — flight. David disappears from court. He wanders a while in the secluded parts of Israel. But no part of Israel is secluded enough to screen him from the eye of Saul. He must fly farther. He must leave his country altogether. He must become a stranger in a strange land. Again the national history repeats itself in David. He, like his country, becomes an exile, and wanders in a land of Egypt. He treads a foreign soil; he is a fugitive and an outcast; he is indebted to the charity of others. He is oppressed and weary, now on the mountain, now in the vale — to-day skirting a ravine, to-morrow lurking in a cave — sometimes alone in the wilderness, sometimes within touch of his adversary. At one moment he is seen in Philistia; at another he treads the mountains of Engedi; at a third he is by the waters of the Dead Sea. The sea of his own life is dead; he has hung his harp on the willows; he has resolved to sing no more. Then the curtain rises anew, and the life of

DAVID THE MANY-SIDED ag sh

David continues to repeat the history of Israel. After the exile comes the exodus; after the land of bondage comes the conquest of Canaan. David’s life has hitherto been itself a harp of many strings. Each chord has renewed the existence of some bygone age of the national annals. He has begun with the shepherd life of-Abel: ‘He ‘has: received the anointing mission of Abraham. He has served at the domestic hearth with Isaac. He has experienced the envy that assailed the life of Joseph. He has passed into that exile where dawned the day of Moses. He is now to emerge into that struggle which secured the land to Joshua, and to repeat in his own life the transition from exile into empire.

Nor is there wanting a point of resemblance between the conquest by Joshua and the conquest by David. In both cases there is an absence of personal glory. I have shown this in the case of Joshua; it is even more marked in the case of David. It is not really David’s prowess that wins him the kingdom; it is the

trend of circumstances — or, as men would then have called it, the hand of the Lord. The battle which shattered the fortunes of Saul was not fought by David — was not fought even in the interest of David. It was the Phzlstines that made room for David in Israel — made room without meaning to do so. It was on the field of Gilboa that the pride of Saul was extinguished — a field on which Israel and Philistia fought for their own ends. That battle almost annihilated the house of Saul. He perished; three of his sons perished; the flower of his army perished. Israel was in the position of England after the Wars of the Roses. She had lost ‘the last of the barons ’ — the last of the great leaders on whom Saul’s house could depend. Any strong hand would be sure to hold the reins in a nation so struck with panic. Yet, even in this panic-struck nation, the strong hand of David did not at once become supreme. There was a lingering loyalty to the house of Saul. Eleven of the tribes clung to his memory and enthroned his son. One tribe alone declared for David — the

tribe of Judah. For seven years there were two kings in Israel — each claiming undivided empire. For seven years there was internecine war between David and the remnant of Saul’s house; and, though the balance of success inclined to David, his final triumph came not from his sword. It came from an act of desertion on the part of an enemy, from the abandonment of the house of Saul by one of its leading supporters. On the whole, I am disposed to think that David realised his mission mainly by the grace of God; or, if you prefer its rationalistic equivalent, mainly by the stream of tendencies which converged, in place and time, so as to effect the issue. His stage of climax was the stage of Joshua. The walls of his Jericho happened to fall precisely at the moment when he happened to blow the trumpet. He was little more than a sfectator of the scene which crowned him. His merit was in waiting for the tide and taking the tide. He was never more humble than on his road to the throne.

I have thus sought to institute a parallel between the history of David and the history

S of the Jewish race. The evolutionist tells us that in the stages of birth the human individual passes through the phases of the ascending animal series from the fish to the mammal. I think the individuality of David repeated the history of its Auman ancestors — incarnated within itself the previous life of the nation. But it is not only David’s Azstory that reveals the collective life of Israel; his character does so too. There is not in all biography a more remarkable delineation than the character of David. We have pictures of strikingly good men; we have pictures of singularly bad men; we have pictures of men who are half good and half bad. None of these designations will cover David. Measured by a Christian standard, he is no saint. Measured by a heathen standard, he is no sinner. Measured by ay standard, he is no mixture — he never exhibits a blending of good and bad. How, then, shall we describe him? If he is not a telescope of uniform sublimities, nor a microscope of uniform littlenesses, nor yet a union of telescope and, microscope in which one eye can see the sublime and the other the small, what is he? Heisa kaleidoscope. He reveals a series of seemingly disconnected scenes of which the later often reverses the picture given by the earlier. In each scene appears, not a phase of the man, not a quality of the man, but the whole man. Yet the David of to-day is often a direct contrast to the David of yesterday; but for his face and form we should not recognise him. Yesterday, he had one pure spiritual friendship — the devotion to Jonathan; to-day, he has many sensuous loves. Yesterday, he was modest and retiring; to-day, through vanity, he vaunts the number of his fighting men. Yesterday, he was open and confiding; to-day, he deceives his benefactor Achish. Yesterday, he was chivalrous to his enemies; to-day — if the passage be genuine — he denies forgiveness to his greatest general. Yesterday, he saved the life of Saul, his foe; to-day, he takes the life of Uriah, his friend. How came such a character to exist? Is there any connection in its acts beyond what is effected by the shaking of life’s kaleidoscope? Can we account for a phenomenon seemingly so grotesque and really so contradictory?

I think we can. I believe this man epitomised not only the past history, but the past passions, of Israel. I believe the two streams of heredity which had run in separate channels through the path of the nation met at last in a single life — the life of David. If I were to christen these two streams, I should call them ‘The Lion’ and ‘The Lamb.’ Look back over the history of the Hebrew race, you will find the moral life of that race ever depicted as a strife between two. Go where you will, you are ever confronted by a pair. Every lamb has its opposing lion. Abel has his Cain; Abraham has his Lot; Isaac has his Ishmael; Jacob has his Esau; Joseph has his‘ Brethren’; Moses has his Amalek; Joshua has his Achan. In David the two pass into one. He becomes the heir to a double heredity. The strings of his life-harp are swept by two impulses — a south wind and a north — the one bringing music, the other discord. When you see him proceeding from the altar of God to a life of sensuality, it is not correct to say that he has had a fall from grace. If you walk through a town and at certain parts come to vacant spaces, will this prove that the city is losing its inhabitants? It will prove the reverse. These vacant spaces are the survivals of yesterday. They suggest that yesterday there were no buildings at all — that the present amount of population has been planted on spots which were originally in the same condition. So is it with the bad deeds of David. They are survivals of an old time — not falls from new grace. Not all at once could the city of God be built within him. Not all at once could the barren swamps be filled with homes and hearths of culture. Not all at once could the wild beasts of the forest be rooted out and the voice of Man be made to echo through the waste places. Not all at once could the forms of the past that lived within him die — the violent Cain, the wild Ishmael, the selfish Lot, the reckless Esau, the deceitful brethren of Joseph. These remained as the memories of yesterday; they waited the

expansion of the city to clear them away.

Here, then, was a region in which David was not king — the region of the heart. I mean, his own heart. He had a power of captivating the heart of others; but he never took captive his own. All the winds of the past strove for the mastery of that great sea. Each prevailed in turn. Sometimes it was swept by the gust of anger, sometimes by the blast of impurity, sometimes by the storm of doubt, sometimes by the breeze of generous sympathy. At morning it caught the glow, at noon the glare, at evening the gloom. It was the heart of a child; the impression of the moment ruled it. David fe/¢t the weakness, and cried out for a king over kzmself. He called aloud for some one mighty enough to still the tempest of his heart. This is the deepest note of his whole biography — his distrust of himself, of his own power, of his own judgment. I do not wonder the hymns of Israel are called the psalms of David; they reflect him, they mirror him — mirror most of all his distrust of himself. When they cry ‘I have made the Most High my Refuge!’ — when they exclaim, ‘O God my Shield, look on the face of Thine anointed!’ — when they pray,

“Hide me’ in the ‘secret, of Ehy pavilion |’ do we not hear the refrain of that life which could

find no help but in God! There is not in the

whole Gallery the picture of a soul so conscious

of its weakness. David will do nothing without

God. He will neither lead an army nor build

a temple without the preliminary Voice. He

has no confidence in his own will. Sau, had

confidence in his own will. He was a weaker

man all round; but he rarely felt the need of the Lord. David has in his veins the strength

of two conflicting streams of heredity; yet his

deepest sense is that of his own nothingness.

His name has become almost a synonym for

the conviction of personal sin.

And do you not see that David’s sense of moral impotence has originated precisely in the strength of the contending elements within him. Had there been only one element — whether good or bad — he would never have felt that impotence. Had he been simply an amiable passionless creature untempted by

violent impulses and unassailed by the glitter of vice, he might have done less harm to his veneration, but he would never have cultivated his special flower — the thirst for God. Why is this man ever longing in a dry parched land where no water is? Precisely because his was not an untempted nature. He wanted to be good, but he could not. He had too big an inheritance of past corruption to believe in his own strength. His thirst for God came from his personal experience of the meagreness of his own soul. A placid nature would never have felt the impotence and would never have known the thirst; he would have failed to cultivate David’s special flower. David stands in the Gallery with a unique message — that the forces of the natural world are not sufficient to make a man good. It is the message commonly called evangelical. The man who preaches it from his heart must ever be one who has come fresh from the storm. He who knows not the power of passion, who feels not the seductions of sense, who never sails except on summer seas, may say indeed, ‘ Give us our daily bread,’ but will find little need to say, ‘ Deliver us from evil,’ If David is to cultivate the flower whose ‘ language’ is that prayer, he will have to hear the roar of the breakers and experience the crash of the timbers and learn what it is to utter the piercing cry, ‘Save us; we perish!’ That was the education adapted to him; that was the education he received. To the city of his habitation he was led by a rough way, because the rough way was for him the only right way; his mission was to proclaim the heart’s need of God.

Y heart needs Thee, O Lord, my heart
needs Thee! Wo part of my being

needs Thee like my heart. All else within me can be filled by Thy gz/ts. My hunger can be satisfied by daily bread. My thirst can be allayed by earthly waters. My cold can be removed by household fires. My weariness can be relieved by outward rest. But no outward thing can make my heart pure. The calmest day will not calm my passions. The

fairest scene will not beautify my soul. The richest music will not make harmony within. The breezes can cleanse the air; but no breeze ever cleansed a spirit. This world has not provided for my eart. It has provided for my eye; it has provided for my ear; it has provided for my touch; it has provided for my taste; it has provided for my sense of beauty — but it has not provided for my heart. Provide 7hou for my heart, O Lord! It is the only unwinged bird in all creation; give it wings, O Lord! Earth has fazed to give it wings; its very power of loving has often dragged it in the mire. Be Zhou the strength of my heart! Be Thou its fortress in temptation, its shield in remorse, its covert in the storm, its star in the night, its voice in the solitude! Guide it in its gloom; help it in its heat; direct it in its doubt; calm it in its conflict; fan it in its faintness; prompt it in its perplexity; lead it through its labyrinths; raise it from its ruins! / cannot rule this heart of mine; keep it under the shadow of Thine

own wings!