Psalm lxxviii. 71, 72, 73. He chose David his servant, and took him
away from the sheep-folds. As he was following the ewes great with
young ones, he took him; that he might feed Jacob his people, and
Israel his inheritance. So he fed them with a faithful and true
heart, and ruled them prudently with all his power.
I am about to preach to you four sermons on the character of David.
His history, I take for granted, you all know.
I look on David as an all but ideal king, educated for his office by
an all but ideal training. A shepherd first; a life--be it
remembered--full of danger in those times and lands; then captain of
a band of outlaws; and lastly a king, gradually and with difficulty
fighting his way to a secure throne.
This was his course. But the most important stage of it was
probably the first. Among the dumb animals he learnt experience
which he afterwards put into practice among human beings. The
shepherd of the sheep became the shepherd of men. He who had slain
the lion and the bear became the champion of his native land. He
who followed the ewes great with young, fed God's oppressed and
weary people with a faithful and true heart, till he raised them
into a great and strong nation. So both sides of the true kingly
character, the masculine and the feminine, are brought out in David.
For the greedy and tyrannous, he has indignant defiance: for the
weak and helpless, patient tenderness.
My motives for choosing this subject I will explain in a very few
words.
We have heard much of late about 'Muscular Christianity.' A clever
expression, spoken in jest by I know not whom, has been bandied
about the world, and supposed by many to represent some new ideal of
the Christian character.
For myself, I do not understand what it means. It may mean one of
two things. If it mean the first, it is a term somewhat
unnecessary, if not somewhat irreverent. If it mean the second, it
means something untrue and immoral.
Its first and better meaning may be simply a healthy and manful
Christianity, one which does not exalt the feminine virtues to the
exclusion of the masculine.
That certain forms of Christianity have committed this last fault
cannot be doubted. The tendency of Christianity, during the
patristic and the Middle Ages, was certainly in that direction.
Christians were persecuted and defenceless, and they betook
themselves to the only virtues which they had the opportunity of
practising--gentleness, patience, resignation, self-sacrifice, and
self-devotion--all that is loveliest in the ideal female character.
And God forbid that that side of the Christian life should ever be
undervalued. It has its own beauty, its own strength too made
perfect in weakness; in prison, in torture, at the fiery stake, on
the lonely sick-bed, in long years of self-devotion and resignation,
and in a thousand womanly sacrifices unknown to man, but written for
ever in God's book of life.
But as time went on, and the monastic life, which, whether practised
by man or by woman, is essentially a feminine life, became more and
more exclusively the religious ideal, grave defects began to appear
in what was really too narrow a conception of the human character.
The monks of the Middle Ages, in aiming exclusively at the virtues
of women, generally copied little but their vices. Their unnatural
attempt to be wiser than God, and to unsex themselves, had done
little but disease their mind and heart. They resorted more and
more to those arts which are the weapons of crafty, ambitious, and
unprincipled women. They were too apt to be cunning, false,
intriguing. They were personally cowardly, as their own chronicles
declare; querulous, passionate, prone to unmanly tears; prone, as
their writings abundantly testify, to scold, to use the most
virulent language against all who differed from them; they were, at
times, fearfully cruel, as evil women will be; cruel with that worst
cruelty which springs from cowardice. If I seem to have drawn a
harsh picture of them, I can only answer that their own documents
justify abundantly all that I have said.
Gradually, to supply their defects, another ideal arose. The
warriors of the Middle Ages hoped that they might be able to serve
God in the world, even in the battle-field. At least, the world and
the battle-field they would not relinquish, but make the best of
them. And among them arose a new and a very fair ideal of manhood:
that of the 'gentle, very perfect knight,' loyal to his king and to
his God, bound to defend the weak, succour the oppressed, and put
down the wrong-doer; with his lady, or bread-giver, dealing forth
bounteously the goods of this life to all who needed; occupied in
the seven works of mercy, yet living in the world, and in the
perfect enjoyment of wedded and family life. This was the ideal.
Of course sinful human nature fell short of it, and defaced it by
absurdities; but I do not hesitate to say that it was a higher ideal
of Christian excellence than had appeared since the time of the
Apostles, putting aside the quite exceptional ideal of the blessed
martyrs.
A higher ideal, I say, was chivalry, with all its shortcomings. And
for this reason: that it asserted the possibility of consecrating
the whole manhood, and not merely a few faculties thereof, to God;
and it thus contained the first germ of that Protestantism which
conquered at the Reformation.
Then was asserted, once for all, on the grounds of nature and
reason, as well as of Holy Scripture, the absolute sanctity of
family and national life, and the correlative idea, namely, the
consecration of the whole of human nature to the service of God, in
that station to which God had called each man. Then the Old
Testament, with the honour which it puts upon family and national
life, became precious to man, as it had never been before; and such
a history as David's became, not as it was with the mediaeval monks,
a mere repertory of fanciful metaphors and allegories, but the
solemn example, for good and for evil, of a man of like passions and
like duties with the men of the modern world.
These great truths, once asserted, could not but conquer; and they
will conquer to the end. All attempts to restore the monastic and
feminine ideal, like that of good Nicholas Ferrar at Little Gidding,
failed. They withered like hot-house exotics in the free, keen,
bracing English air; and in our civil wars, Cavalier and Puritan, in
whatever they differed, never differed in their sound and healthy
conviction that true religion did not crush, but strengthened and
consecrated a valiant and noble manhood.
Now if all that 'Muscular Christianity' means is that, then the
expression is altogether unnecessary; for we have had the thing for
three centuries--and defective likewise, for it is not a merely
muscular, but a human Christianity which the Bible taught our
forefathers, and which our forefathers have handed down to us.
But there is another meaning sometimes attached to this flippant
expression, 'Muscular Christianity,' which is utterly immoral and
intolerable. There are those who say, and there have been of late
those who have written books to shew, that provided a young man is
sufficiently brave, frank, and gallant, he is more or less absolved
from the common duties of morality and self-restraint.
That physical prowess is a substitute for virtue is certainly no new
doctrine. It is the doctrine of every red man on the American
prairies, of every African chief who ornaments his hut with human
skulls. It was the doctrine of our heathen forefathers, when they
came hither slaying, plundering, burning, tossing babes on their
spear-points. But I am sorry that it should be the doctrine of any
one calling himself a gentleman, much more a Christian.
It is certainly not the doctrine of the Catechism, which bids us
renounce the flesh, and live by the help of God's Spirit a new life
of duty to God and to our neighbour.
It is certainly not the doctrine of the New Testament. Whatsoever
St. Paul meant by bidding his disciples crucify the flesh, with its
affections and lusts, he did not mean thereby that they were to
deify the flesh, as the heathen round them did in their profligate
mysteries and in their gladiatorial exhibitions.
Neither, though the Old Testament may seem to put more value on
physical prowess than does the New Testament, is it the doctrine of
the Old Testament, as I purpose to show you from the life and
history of David.
Nothing, nothing, can be a substitute for purity and virtue. Man
will always try to find substitutes for it. He will try to find a
substitute in superstition, in forms and ceremonies, in voluntary
humility and worship of angels, in using vain repetitions, and
fancying that he will be heard for his much speaking; he will try to
find a substitute in intellect, and the worship of intellect, and
art, and poetry; or he will try to find it, as in the present case,
in the worship of his own animal powers, which God meant to be his
servants and not his masters. But let no man lay that flattering
unction to his soul. The first and the last business of every human
being, whatever his station, party, creed, capacities, tastes,
duties, is morality: Virtue, Virtue, always Virtue. Nothing that
man will ever invent will absolve him from the universal necessity
of being good as God is good, righteous as God is righteous, and
holy as God is holy.
Believe it, young men, believe it. Better would it be for any one
of you to be the stupidest and the ugliest of mortals, to be the
most diseased and abject of cripples, the most silly, nervous
incapable personage who ever was a laughingstock for the boys upon
the streets, if only you lived, according to your powers, the life
of the Spirit of God; than to be as perfectly gifted, as exquisitely
organised in body and mind as David himself, and not to live the
life of the Spirit of God, the life of goodness, which is the only
life fit for a human being wearing the human flesh and soul which
Christ took upon him on earth, and wears for ever in heaven, a Man
indeed in the midst of the throne of God.
And therefore it is, as you will yourselves have perceived already,
that I have chosen to speak to you of David, his character, his
history.
It is the character of a man perfectly gifted, exquisitely
organised. He has personal beauty, daring, prowess, and skill in
war; he has generosity, nobleness, faithfulness, chivalry as of a
mediaeval and Christian knight; he is a musician, poet, seemingly an
architect likewise; he is, moreover, a born king; he has a
marvellous and most successful power of attracting, disciplining,
ruling his fellow-men. So thoroughly human a personage is he, that
God speaks of him as the man after his own heart; that our blessed
Lord condescends to call himself especially the Son of David.
For there is in this man (as there is said to be in all great
geniuses) a feminine, as well as a masculine vein; a passionate
tenderness; a keen sensibility; a vast capacity of sympathy,
sadness, and suffering, which makes him truly the type of Christ,
the Man of sorrows; which makes his Psalms to this day the text-book
of the afflicted, of tens of thousands who have not a particle of
his beauty, courage, genius; but yet can feel, in mean hovels and
workhouse sick-beds, that the warrior-poet speaks to their human
hearts, and for their human hearts, as none other can speak, save
Christ himself, the Son of David and the Son of man.
A man, I say, of intense sensibilities; and therefore capable, as is
but too notorious, of great crimes, as well as of great virtues.
And when I mention this last fact, I must ask you to pause, and
consider with me very solemnly what it means.
We may pervert, or rather misstate the fact in more than one way, to
our own hurt. We may say cynically, David had his good points and
his bad ones, as all your great saints have. Look at them closely,
and in spite of all their pretensions you will find them no better
than their neighbours. And so we may comfort ourselves, in our own
mediocrity and laziness, by denying the existence of all greatness
and goodness.
Nathan the prophet said that David's conduct would be open to this
very interpretation, and would give great occasion to the enemies of
the Lord to blaspheme. But I trust that none of you wish to be
numbered among the enemies of the Lord.
Again, we may say, sentimentally, that these great weaknesses are on
the whole the necessary concomitants of great strength; that such
highly organised and complex characters must not be judged by the
rule of common respectability; and that it is a more or less fine
thing to be capable at once of great virtues and great vices.
Books which hint, and more than hint this, will suggest themselves
to you at once. I only advise you not to listen to their teaching,
as you will find it lead to very serious consequences, both in this
life and in the life to come.
But if we do say this, or anything like this, we say it on our own
responsibility. David's biographers say nothing of the kind. David
himself says nothing of the kind. He never represents himself as a
compound of strength and weakness. He represents himself as
weakness itself--as incapacity utter and complete. To overlook that
startling fact is to overlook the very element which has made
David's Psalms the text-book for all human weaknesses, penitences,
sorrows, struggles, aspirations, for nigh three thousand years.
But this subject is too large for me to speak of to-day; and too
deep for me to attempt an explanation till I have turned your
thoughts toward another object, which will explain to you David, and
yourselves, and, it seems to me at times, every problem of humanity.
Look not at David, but at David's greater Son; and consider Christ
upon his Cross. Consider him of whom it is written, 'Thou art
fairer than the children of men: full of grace are thy lips,
because God hath blessed thee for ever. Gird thee with thy sword
upon thy thigh, O thou most Mighty, according to thy worship and
renown. Good luck have thou with thine honour; ride on, because of
the word of truth, of meekness, and righteousness; and thy right
hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thy arrows are very sharp,
and the people shall be subdued unto thee, even in the midst among
the King's enemies.' Consider him who alone fulfilled these words,
who fulfils them even now eternally in heaven, King over all, God
blessed for ever. And then sit down at the foot of his Cross:
however young, strong, proud, gallant, gifted, ambitious you may be-
-sit down at the foot of Christ's Cross, and look thereon, till you
see what it means, and must mean for ever. See how he nailed to
that Cross, not in empty metaphor but in literal fact, in agonising
soul and body, all of human nature which the world admires--youth,
grace, valour, power, eloquence, intellect: not because they were
evil, for he possessed them doubtless himself as did none other of
the sons of men--not, I say, because they were evil, but because
they were worthless and as nothing beside that divine charity which
would endure and conquer for ever, when all the noblest accidents of
the body and the mind had perished, or seemed to perish. In the
utmost weakness and shame of human flesh he would shew forth the
strength and glory of the Divine Spirit; the strength and the glory
of duty and obedience; of patience and forgiveness; of benevolence
and self-sacrifice; the strength and glory of that burning love for
human beings which could stoop from heaven to earth that it might
seek and save that which was lost.
Yes. Look at Christ upon his Cross; the sight which melted the
hearts of our fierce forefathers, and turned them from the worship
of Thor and Odin to the worship of 'The white Christ;' and from the
hope of a Valhalla of brute prowess, to the hope of a heaven of
righteousness and love. Look at Christ upon his Cross, and see
there, as they saw, the true prowess, the true valour, the true
chivalry, the true glory, the true manhood, most human when most
divine, which is self-sacrifice and love--as possible to the
weakest, meanest, simplest, as to the strongest, most gallant, and
most wise.
Look upon him, and learn from him, and take his yoke upon you, for
he is meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest unto your
souls; and in you shall be fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah, which
he spake, saying, 'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither
the mighty man glory in his might, neither let the rich man glory in
his wealth: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he
understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, who exercises
loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in
these things I delight, saith the Lord.'