preserved here mainly because of its bearing on following events; and
certainly the statement which has been made that it contained a gospel
for the Philistines is one we cannot endorse. Yet like many witty
sayings the riddle has a range of meaning far wider than Samson
intended. Adverse influences conquered, temptation mastered,
difficulties overcome, the struggle of faithfulness will supply us not
only with happy recollections but also with arguments against
infidelity, with questions that confound the unbeliever. One who can
glory in tribulations that have brought experience and hope, in bonds
and imprisonments that have issued in a keener sense of liberty, who
having nothing yet possesses all things--such a man questioning the
denier of divine providence cannot be answered. Invigoration has come
out of that which threatened life and joy out of that which made for
sorrow. The man who is in covenant with God is helped by nature; its
forces serve him; he is fed with honey from the rock and with the finest
of the wheat. When out of the mire of trouble and the deep waters of
despondency he comes forth braver, more hopeful, strongly confident in
the love of God, sure of the eternal foundation of life, what can be
said in denial of the power that has filled him with strength and peace?
Here is an argument that can be used by every Christian, and ought to be
in every Christian's hand. Out of his personal experience each should be
able to state problems and put inquiries unanswerable by unbelief. For
unless there is a living God Whose favour is life, Whose fellowship
inspires and ennobles the soul, the strength which has come through
weakness, the hope that sprang up in the depth of sorrow cannot be
accounted for. There are natural sequences in which no mystery lies.
When one who has been defamed and injured turns on his enemy and pursues
him in revenge, when one who has been defeated sinks back in languor and
waits in pitiful inaction for death, these are results easily traced to
their cause. But the man of faith bears witness to sequences of a
different kind. His fellows have persecuted him, and he cares for them
still. Death has bereaved him, and he can smile in its face. Afflictions
have been multiplied and he glories in them. The darkness has fallen and
he rejoices more than in the noontide of prosperity. Out of the eater
has come forth meat, out of the strong has come forth sweetness. "Except
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if
it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." The paradox of the life of Christ
thus stated by Himself is the supreme instance of that demonstration of
divine power which the history of every Christian should clearly and
constantly support.
XXI.
_DAUNTLESS IN BATTLE, IGNORANTLY BRAVE._
JUDGES xv.
Given a man of strong passions and uninstructed conscience, wild courage
and giant energy, with the sense of a mission which he has to accomplish
against his country's enemies so that he reckons himself justified in
doing them injury or killing them in the name of God, and you have, no
complete hero, but a real and interesting man. Such a character,
however, does not command our admiration. The enthusiasm we feel in
tracing the career of Deborah or Gideon fails us in reviewing these
stories of revenge in which the Hebrew champion appears as cruel and
reckless as an uncircumcised Philistine. When we see Samson leaving the
feast by which his marriage has been celebrated and marching down to
Ashkelon where in cold blood he puts thirty men to death for the sake of
their clothing, when we see a country-side ablaze with the standing corn
which he has kindled, we are as indignant with him as with the
Philistines when they burn his wife and her father with fire. Nor can we
find anything like excuse for Samson on the ground of zeal in the
service of pure religion. Had he been a fanatical Hebrew mad against
idolatry his conduct might find some apology; but no such clue offers.
The Danite is moved chiefly by selfish and vain passions, and his sense
of official duty is all too weak and vague. We see little patriotism and
not a trace of religious fervour. He is serving a great purpose with
some sincerity, but not wisely, not generously nor greatly. Samson is a
creature of impulse working out his life in blind almost animal fashion,
perceiving the next thing that is to be done not in the light of
religion or duty, but of opportunity and revenge. The first of his acts
against the Philistines was no promising start in a heroic career, and
almost at every point in the story of his life there is something that
takes away our respect and sympathy. But the life is full of moral
suggestion and warning. He is a real and striking example of the wild
Berserker type.
1. For one thing this stands out as a clear principle that a man has his
life to live, his work to do, alone if others will not help, imperfectly
if not in the best fashion, half-wrongly if the right cannot be clearly
seen. This world is not for sleep, is not for inaction and sloth.
"Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy might." A thousand men
in Dan, ten thousand in Judah did nothing that became men, sat at home
while their grapes and olives grew, abjectly sowed and reaped their
fields in dread of the Philistines, making no attempt to free their
country from the hated yoke. Samson, not knowing rightly how to act, did
go to work and, at any rate, lived. Among the dull spiritless Israelites
of the day, three thousand of whom actually came on one occasion to
beseech him to give himself up and bound him with ropes that he might be
safely passed over to the enemy, Samson with all his faults looks like a
man. Those men of Dan and Judah would slay the Philistines if they
dared. It is not because they are better than Samson that they do not
go down to Ashkelon and kill. Their consciences do not keep them back;
it is their cowardice. One who with some vision of a duty owing to his
people goes forth and acts, contrasts well with these chicken-hearted
thousands.
We are not at present stating the complete motive of human activity nor
setting forth the ideal of life. To that we shall come afterwards. But
before you can have ideal action you must have action. Before you can
have life of a fine and noble type you must have life. Here is an
absolute primal necessity; and it is the key to both evolutions, the
natural and the spiritual. First the human creature must find its power
and capability and must use these to some end, be it even a wrong end,
rather than none; after this the ideal is caught and proper moral
activity becomes possible. We need not look for the full corn in the ear
till the seed has sprouted and grown and sent its roots well into the
soil. With this light the roll of Hebrew fame is cleared and we can
trace freely the growth of life. The heroes are not perfect; they have
perhaps barely caught the light of the ideal; but they have strength to
will and to do, they have faith that this power is a divine gift, and
they having it are God's pioneers.
The need is that men should in the first instance live so that they may
be faithful to their calling. Deborah looking round beheld her country
under the sore oppression of Jabin, saw the need and answered to it.
Others only vegetated; she rose up in human stature resolute to live.
That also was what Gideon began to do when at the divine call he
demolished the altar on the height of Ophrah; and Jephthah fought and
endured by the same law. So soon as men begin to live there is hope of
them.
Now the hindrances to life are these--first, slothfulness, the
disposition to drift, to let things go; second, fear, the restriction
imposed on effort of body or of mind by some opposing force ingloriously
submitted to; third, ignoble dependence on others. The proper life of
man is never reached by many because they are too indolent to win it. To
forecast and devise, to try experiments, pushing out in this direction
and that is too much for them. Some opportunity for doing more and
better lies but a mile away or a few yards; they see but will not
venture upon it. Their country is sinking under a despot or a weak and
foolish government; they do nothing to avert ruin, things will last
their time. Or again, their church is stirred with throbs of a new duty,
a new and keen anxiety; but they refuse to feel any thrill, or feeling
it a moment they repress the disturbing influence. They will not be
troubled with moral and spiritual questions, calls to action that make
life severe, high, heroic. Often this is due to want of physical or
mental vigour. Men and women are overborne by the labour required of
them, the weary tale of bricks. Even from youth they have had burdens to
bear so heavy that hope is never kindled. But there are many who have no
such excuse. Let us alone, they say, we have no appetite for exertion,
for strife, for the duties that set life in a fever. The old ways suit
us, we will go on as our fathers have gone. The tide of opportunity ebbs
away and they are left stranded.
Next, and akin, there is fear, the mood of those who hear the calls of
life but hear more clearly the threatenings of sense and time. Often it
comes in the form of a dread of change, apprehension as regards the
unknown seas on which effort or thought would launch forth. Let us be
still, say the prudent; better to bear the ills we have than fly to
others that we know not of. Are we ground down by the Philistines?
Better suffer than be killed. Are our laws unjust and oppressive? Better
rest content than risk revolution and the upturning of everything. Are
we not altogether sure of the basis of our belief? Better leave it
unexamined than begin with inquiries the end of which cannot be
foreseen. Besides, they argue, God means us to be content. Our lot in
the world however hard is of His giving; the faith we hold is of his
bestowing. Shall we not provoke Him to anger if we move in revolution or
in inquiry? Still it is life they lose. A man who does not think about
the truths he rests on has an impotent mind. One who does not feel it
laid on him to go forward, to be brave, to make the world better has an
impotent soul. Life is a constant reaching after the unattained for
ourselves and for the world.
And lastly there is ignoble dependence on others. So many will not exert
themselves because they wait for some one to come and lift them up. They
do not think, nor do they understand that instruction brought to them is
not life. No doubt it is the plan of God to help the many by the
instrumentality of the few, a whole nation or world by one. Again and
again we have seen this illustrated in Hebrew history, and elsewhere the
fact constantly meets us. There is one Luther for Europe, one Cromwell
for England, one Knox for Scotland, one Paul for early Christianity. But
at the same time it is because life is wanting, because men have the
deadly habit of dependence that the hero must be brave for them and the
reformer must break their bonds. The true law of life on all levels,
from that of bodily effort upwards, is self-help; without it there is
only an infancy of being. He who is in a pit must exert himself if he is
to be delivered. He who is in spiritual darkness must come to the light
if he is to be saved.
Now we see in Samson a man who in his degree lived. He had strength like
the strength of ten; he had also the consecration of his vow and the
sense of a divine constraint and mandate. These things urged him to life
and made activity necessary to him. He might have reclined in careless
ease like many around. But sloth did not hold him nor fear. He wanted no
man's countenance nor help. He lived. His mere exertion of power was the
sign of higher possibilities.
Live at all hazards, imperfectly if perfection is not attainable,
half-wrongly if the right cannot be seen. Is this perilous advice? From
one point of view it may seem very dangerous. For many are energetic in
so imperfect a way, in so blundering and false a way that it might
appear better for them to remain quiet, practically dead than degrade
and darken the life of the race by their mistaken or immoral vehemence.
You read of those traders among the islands of the Pacific who, afraid
that their nefarious traffic should suffer if missionary work succeeded,
urged the natives to kill the missionaries or drive them away, and when
they had gained their end quickly appeared on the scene to exchange for
the pillaged stores of the mission-house muskets and gunpowder and
villainous strong drink. May it not be said that these traders were
living out their lives as much as the devoted teachers who had risked
everything for the sake of doing good? Napoleon I., when the scheme of
empire presented itself to him and all his energies were bent on
climbing to the summit of affairs in France and in Europe--was not he
living according to a conception of what was greatest and best? Would it
not have been better if those traders and the ambitious Corsican alike
had been content to vegetate--inert and harmless through their days? And
there are multitudes of examples. The poet Byron for one--could the
world not well spare even his finest verse to be rid of his unlawful
energy in personal vice and in coarse profane word?
One has to confess the difficulty of the problem, the danger of praising
mere vigour. Yet if there is risk on the one side the risk on the other
is greater: and truth demands risk, defies peril. It is unquestionable
that any family of men when it ceases to be enterprising and energetic
is of no more use in the economy of things. Its land is a necropolis.
The dead cannot praise God. The choice is between activity that takes
many a wrong direction, hurrying men often towards perdition, yet at
every point capable of redemption, and on the other hand inglorious
death, that existence which has no prospect but to be swallowed up of
the darkness. And while such is the common choice there is also this to
be noted that inertness is not certainly purer than activity though it
may appear so merely by contrast. The active life compels us to judge of
it; the other a mere negation calls for no judgment, yet is in itself a
moral want, an evil and injury. Conscience being unexercised decay and
death rule all.
Men cannot be saved by their own effort and vigour. Most true. But if
they make no attempt to advance towards strength, dominion and fulness
of existence, they are the prey of force and evil. Nor will it suffice
that they simply exert themselves to keep body and soul together. The
life is more than meat. We must toil not only that we may continue to
subsist, but for personal distinctness and freedom. Where there are
strong men, resolute minds, earnestness of some kind, there is soil in
which spiritual seed may strike root. The dead tree can produce neither
leaf nor flower. In short, if there is to be a human race at all for the
divine glory it can only be in the divine way, by the laws that govern
existence of every degree.
2. We come, however, to the compensating principle of
responsibility--the law of Duty which stands over energy in the range of
our life. No man, no race is justified by force or as we sometimes say
by doing. It is faith that saves. Samson has the rude material of life;
but though his action were far purer and nobler it could not make him a
spiritual man: his heart is not purged of sin nor set on God.
Granted that the time was rough, chaotic, cloudy, that the idea of
injuring the Philistines in every possible way was imposed on the Danite
by his nation's abject state, that he had to take what means lay in his
power for accomplishing the end. But possessed of energy he was
deficient in conscience, and so failed of noble life. This may be said
for him that he did not turn against the men of Judah who came to bind
him and give him up. Within a certain range he understood his
responsibility. But surely a higher life than he lived, better plans
than he followed were possible to one who could have learned the will of
God at Shiloh, who was bound to God by a vow of purity and had that
constant reminder of the Holy Lord of Israel. It is no uncommon thing
for men to content themselves with one sacrament, one observance which
is reckoned enough for salvation--honesty in business, abstinence from
strong drink, attendance on church ordinances. This they do and keep the
rest of existence for unrestrained self-pleasing, as though salvation
lay in a restraint or a form. But whoever can think is bound to
criticise life, to try his own life, to seek the way of salvation, and
that means being true to the best he knows and can know, it means
believing in the will of God. Something higher than his own impulse is
to guide him. He is free, yet responsible. His activity, however great,
has no real power, no vindication unless it falls in with the course of
divine law and purpose. He lives by faith.
Generally there is one clear principle which, if a man held to it, would
keep him right in the main. It may not be of a very high order, yet it
will prepare the way for something better and meanwhile serve his need.
And for Samson one simple law of duty was to keep clear of all private
relations and entanglements with the Philistines. There was nothing to
hinder him from seeing that to be safe and right as a rule of life. They
were Israel's enemies and his own. He should have been free to act
against them: and when he married a daughter of the race he forfeited as
an honourable man the freedom he ought to have had as a son of Israel.
Doubtless he did not understand fully the evil of idolatry nor the
divine law that Hebrews were to keep themselves separate from the
worshippers of false gods. Yet the instincts of the race to which he
belonged, fidelity to his forefathers and compatriots made their claim
upon him. There was a duty too which he owed to himself. As a brave
strong man he was discredited by the line of action which he followed.
His honour lay in being an open enemy to the Philistines, his dishonour
in making underhand excuses for attacking them. It was base to seek
occasion against them when he married the woman at Timnah, and from one
act of baseness he went on to others because of that first error. And
chiefly Samson failed in his fidelity to God. Scarcely ever was the name
of Jehovah dragged through the mire as it was by him. The God of truth,
the divine guardian of faithfulness, the God who is light, in Whom is no
darkness at all, was made by Samson's deeds to appear as the patron of
murder and treachery. We can hardly allow that an Israelite was so
ignorant of the ordinary laws of morality as to suppose that faith need
not be kept with idolaters; there were traditions of his people which
prevented such a notion. One who knew of Abraham's dealings with the
Hittite Ephron and his rebuke in Egypt could not imagine that the Hebrew
lay under no debt of human equity and honour to the Philistine. Are
there men among ourselves who think no faithfulness is due by the
civilised to the savage? Are there professed servants of Christ who dare
to suggest that no faith need be kept with heretics? They reveal their
own dishonour as men, their own falseness and meanness. The primal duty
of intelligent and moral beings cannot be so dismissed. And even Samson
should have been openly the Philistines' enemy or not at all. If they
were cruel, rapacious, mean, he ought to have shown that Jehovah's
servant was of a different stamp. We cannot believe morality to have
been at so low an ebb among the Hebrews that the popular leader did not
know better than he acted. He became a judge in Israel, and his
judgeship would have been a pretence unless he had some of the justice,
truth and honour which God demanded of men. Beginning in a very
mistaken way he must have risen to a higher conception of duty,
otherwise his rule would have been a disaster to the tribes he governed.
Conscience has originated in fear and is to decay with ignorance, say
some. Already that extraordinary piece of folly has been answered.
Conscience is the correlative of power, the guide of energy. If the one
decays, so must the other. Living strongly, energetically, making
experiments, seeking liberty and dominion, pressing towards the higher
we are ever to acknowledge the responsibility which governs life. By
what we know of the divine will we are to order every purpose and scheme
and advance to further knowledge. There are victories we might win,
there are methods by which we might harass those who do us wrong. One
voice says Snatch the victories, go down by night and injure the foe,
insinuate what you cannot prove, while the sentinels sleep plunge your
spear through the heart of a persecuting Saul. But another voice asks,
Is this the way to assert moral life? Is this the line for a man to
take? The true man swears to his own hurt, suffers and is strong, does
in the face of day what he has it in him to do and, if he fails, dies a
true man still. He is not responsible for obeying commands of which he
is ignorant, nor for mistakes which he cannot avoid. One like Samson is
clean-handed in what it would be unutterably base for us to do. But
close beside every man are such guiding ideas as straightforwardness,
sincerity, honesty. Each of us knows his duty so far and cannot deceive
himself by supposing that God will excuse him in acting, even for what
he counts a good end, as a cheat and a hypocrite. In politics the rule
is as clear as in companionship, in war as in love.
It has not been asserted that Samson was without a sense of
responsibility. He had it, and kept his vow. He had it, and fought
against the Philistines. He did some brave things openly and like a man.
He had a vision of Israel's need and God's will. Had this not been true
he could have done no good; the whole strength of the hero would have
been wasted. But he came short of effecting what he might have effected
just because he was not wise and serious. His strokes missed their aim.
In truth Samson never went earnestly about the task of delivering
Israel. In his fulness of power he was always half in sport, making
random shots, indulging his own humour. And we may find in his career no
inapt illustration of the careless way in which the conflict with the
evils of our time is carried on. With all the rage for societies and
organizations there is much haphazard activity, and the fanatic for rule
has his contrast in the free-lance who hates the thought of
responsibility. A curious charitableness too confuses the air. There are
men who are full of ardour to-day and strike in with some hot scheme
against social wrongs, and the next day are to be seen sitting at a
feast with the very persons most to blame under some pretext of finding
occasion against them or showing that there is "nothing personal." This
perplexes the whole campaign. It is usually mere bravado rather than
charity, a mischief not a virtue.
Israel must be firm and coherent if it is to win liberty from the
Philistines. Christians must stand by each other steadily if they are to
overcome infidelity and rescue the slaves of sin. The feats of a man who
holds aloof from the church because he is not willing to be bound by its
rules count for little in the great warfare of the age. Many there are
among our literary men, politicians and even philanthropists who strike
in now and again in a Christian way and with unquestionably Christian
purpose against the bad institutions and social evils of our time, but
have no proper basis or aim of action and maintain towards Christian
organizations and churches a constant attitude of criticism. Samson-like
they make showy random attacks on "bigotry," "inconsistency" and the
like. It is not they who will deliver man from hardness and worldliness
of soul; not they who will bring in the reign of love and truth.