the face of danger. There came a day when the Israelites and the
Philistines were lined up in battle array on the opposite sides of a
valley. The Philistines had their champion fighter in the person of a
huge fellow named Goliath. His armour weighed one hundred and fifty
pounds. His spear was like a weaver's beam. He stood roaring out his
defiance against the armies of Israel, "Choose you a man! Let him come
down to me and fight. If he kills me, we will be your servants. If I
prevail against him then ye shall be our servants."
After the manner of the Iliad he stood ready to let the issue of the
campaign turn upon the result of a solitary combat between himself and
any Israelite they might put up against him. Saul, the king of Israel,
had offered to enrich with great wealth the man who would fight that
huge Philistine. He had promised to give him the hand of his own
daughter, the fair young princess, in marriage, and to make his
father's house forever free in Israel. But no Israelite had dared to
fight the terrible Goliath.
Then David appeared upon the scene. He had been sent down by his
father with ten loaves of fresh bread, with ten cheeses and a supply of
parched corn for his brothers who were at the front. He saw this huge
Goliath stalking up and down the picket lines between the armies. He
cried out in his resentment at the apparent cowardice of his own
countrymen, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy
the armies of the living God!" David was informed that even the
promise of high reward offered by the king had not induced an Israelite
to face the Philistine.
Then spoke out the voice of faith from the heart of unstained youth!
"Let no man's heart fail because of him--thy servant will go and fight
this Philistine." The king remonstrated with him. He pointed out the
folly of sending an untrained youth to meet the disciplined man of war.
But David insisted that his rough experiences with the lions and the
bears which attacked his flock had furnished him the necessary
training. The king then offered him his own armour, which would
naturally be the best suit of armour in the camp, that the stripling
might in some measure be protected. But after trying on this suit of
mail David put it aside. "I cannot go with these," he said, "for I
have not proved them." He refused the conventional modes of defense,
relying upon those weapons which had been tested by experience. He
took his sling and five smooth stones from the brook and announced that
he was ready for the combat.
It seemed a contest most unequal when the principals were put forth
with the Israelites and the Philistines ranged up on either side of the
valley to watch the outcome. Goliath was enraged when he saw the boy
they had sent against him. "Am I a dog?" he said. And then he cursed
David by all his gods and threatened to feed his flesh to the beasts of
the field before an hour had passed. Like many a modern combatant
Goliath was mighty with his mouth. His tongue was like a weaver's beam.
The young man was not disturbed. His weapons were taken from the
armoury of experience, and his courage came from the same reliable
source. "The Lord who delivered me out of the paws of the lion and the
bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." The moral
triumphs of those early years when a boy keeps his life clean and
strong become the earnest of the larger victories he is set to win in
his mature manhood. The growing boy who disdains to lie or to cheat,
to stain his life with dirt or to show himself a coward, will know how
to bear himself when the harder tests of middle life assail him.
The young man's religious faith contributed to his courage. It was
moral strength pitted against brute force. It was the scornful
self-confidence which trusted in a coat of brass and a huge spear
measuring itself against the spirit of faith which became the source of
a finer form of valour. "Thou comest to me with sword and spear,"
David cried, as he saw his foe advancing. "I come to thee in the name
of the Lord of Hosts whom thou hast defied." His trust in God kept his
nerves steady so that he was still able in the presence of that roaring
giant to sling stones at a hair's breadth and not miss. His moral
passion as he went forth to lift that reproach from the banner of his
nation gave strength to his right arm.
The huge Philistine came on, brandishing his spear and roaring out his
wrath. David saw the unprotected spot below the visor of the man's
helmet. He took one of his five smooth stones and slung it with such
force and precision as to strike Goliath full in the forehead, knocking
him senseless. He then ran forward and took the huge sword of his
enemy and cut off his head holding it aloft as a trophy of his courage.
When the Philistines saw their champion fall they fled in terror and
the Israelites pursuing them won a notable victory.
How splendid is the quality of moral courage! How kingly is the man
who can face all manner of danger undaunted because he knows that his
heart is right and his cause is just! He deserves to be crowned. The
battle is the Lord's in the last analysis and He saveth not alone with
sword and spear.
There are sentiments and principles which become deep-rooted in a
nation's life mightier by far than the heaviest battalions. There are
habits of thought and long-cherished convictions which constitute a
more reliable form of defense than all the ramparts and battlements
devised by strategists. A nation of Davids will in the final outcome
outmatch any nation of Goliaths with all their swords and spears. And
in one's personal life the clear conscience and the heart of faith will
bring any man off from any field where he may be sent more than
conqueror through Him who loves us.
This young man showed also a fine capacity for friendship with men.
"His soul was knit with the soul of Jonathan and he loved him as he
loved his own soul." The fine friendship of a man for a man, or the
gracious affection which a woman feels for a woman who is indeed her
friend, becomes a noble form of human relationship. Those ties where
the charm and power of the sex-impulse has no place have in them a
world of moral worth.
It is easy for any man to fall in love with some beautiful woman--it is
as easy as rolling off a log, and ever so much more delightful. It is
easy for any man to inhale the sweet incense which arises from the
devotion of some affectionate woman's heart. But where a man loves a
man in an unsullied, unselfish friendship until his soul is knit with
the soul of that man in an interlacing and interlocking of interest,
then you have that harder, rarer form of human relationship which is
rich with promise.
The young chap who is never quite happy with his fellows, who must
always have some adoring young woman present in order to be content, is
not quite all there. He is a "softy." He is lath and plaster where
there should be quartered oak. He has sentiment than principle; he has
less muscle and more fat than go to the make-up of a virile manhood.
The very absence of the glamour and mystery which enters into all
attachments between those of opposite sex clears the air for the
manifestation of some of those fine forms of fidelity and devotion
which belong to friendship at its best.
Here the friendship was the more notable when we recall how the two men
were placed. Jonathan was the eldest son of the king, the heir to the
throne, the natural successor of Saul. But David by his military
prowess had come to be highly esteemed. When he returned victorious
from his wars against the enemies of Israel the proud and happy women
had sung in the streets, "Saul has slain his thousands, but David has
slain his tens of thousands." And David had been privately anointed by
Samuel the prophet as a worthy candidate for the throne of Israel.
Jonathan, as the Crown Prince, had the least to gain and the most to
lose by protecting the life and ministering to the well-being of this
friend who might one day aspire to the throne. He made his affection a
thing resplendent by its sheer unselfishness. He saw that David might
increase while he would decrease, yet even so the sky of his affection
was unclouded by a single touch of jealousy. How great is that love
which envieth not.
And David in turn made his own adequate response to this magnanimous
interest. He showed himself in his whole bearing a man worthy of the
friendship of a prince of the blood. Heaven be praised for men who can
find joy and satisfaction in the friendship of their fellows.
The young man who was destined to become king was generous to his
enemies. Saul stood head and shoulders above his fellows, physically
speaking, but in his mental and moral stature he was less than
knee-high to the man who followed him upon the throne. When he heard
the women singing David's praises, "Saul was very wroth--the saying
displeased him and he eyed David from that day forward."
When the king saw the fine friendship between his own son Jonathan and
the rising David his heart became as bitter as gall. "Thou son of a
perverse, rebellious woman," he cried to the Crown Prince, "thou hast
chosen this son of Jesse to thine own confusion." And when David
increased year after year in stature, in wisdom, and in favour with God
and men, Saul tried repeatedly to kill him. His soul cried out, "Let
me feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him."
It is not easy for any man, especially a young man with hot, red blood
in his veins and the sense of injustice rankling in his heart, to stand
up in the face of hatred and malice and keep sweet about it. "Love
your enemies. Bless them who curse you. Do good to them that hate
you. Pray for those who despitefully use you." If you are struck upon
the cheek take a second blow upon the other cheek rather than strike
back in resentment. If a man compels you unjustly to go a mile with
him, go two miles rather than seek to be avenged. Take the rules of
action constantly from within, from the best instincts of your own
heart rather than have them furnished to you by the evil behaviour of
wrong-doers. Allow no man's meanness to master you--allow rather your
own nobility to overcome that evil with good.
How easy it is to say it, but to do it--aye, there is the rub! It is
so divinely hard to put these fine principles into practice. The soft
answer may turn away wrath, but the hot retort comes more readily to
the lips. The humane return of good for evil points the way of
spiritual advance, but the desire to pay every man back in his own coin
with a tip thrown in for good measure is often more natural. The more
honour then to the man who has learned that greater is he that ruleth
his own spirit than he that taketh a city.
When David had Saul within his power he refused to strike. There were
months when the young man was hunted through the hills of Judea by the
hirelings of the wicked king, as if he had been a mad dog. There came
a night when Saul was sleeping in his barricade of wagons. He had
around him the three thousand soldiers whom he had led into the
mountains in his mad effort to capture David. The young man had been
pursued until he had felt that there was only a step between him and
death.
That very night, accompanied only by his armour-bearer, David stole
under cover of the darkness into Saul's camp. He presently stood in
the tent of the sleeping giant. Here was his enemy lying helpless at
his feet! His armour-bearer, knowing the history of that enmity,
whispered, "Let me smite him with one blow to the earth! I will not
smite the second time." One blow in the dark would suffice to end that
murderous career.
And it ought to be remembered that this was in a day when "an eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth" was the law of the land. It was
esteemed the law of God. The atmosphere was not one of
forbearance--the popular heroes were men like Samson and Gideon, women
like Deborah and Jael, who did not hesitate to strike down their foes.
"Let me smite him," came the whisper in the dark. "One blow will
suffice."
But peace hath her victories no less than war. Mercy has its trophies
no less than force. Here was a man who would not avenge himself--he
would give place unto wrath knowing that vengeance belongs to God. He
was ready to make the bold adventure of undertaking to overcome evil
with good.
David would not strike his enemy even though that enemy had been in hot
pursuit of him. "Destroy him not," he whispered to his
companion-in-arms as he felt him clutching the sword which hung at his
side. David's greatest victory was not over Goliath, the Philistine
giant--it was over himself, over that spirit of revenge which might so
easily have ruled his heart in that dark, hard hour.
He had in splendid measure the quality of mercy which the poet sings.
"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."
We are discovering those qualities which entitled this young man to be
crowned as king.
Finally, he was a man of genuine piety. We read in one place that he
was "a man after God's own heart." The statement has been a puzzle to
many an honest mind. This man who in his later years dipped his hands
in the blood of his foes and fell on one occasion into the grossest sin
with an attractive woman, this fellow a man after God's own heart!
He was not an angel. As we go up and down through history we find men
and not angels. We find men with mud on their boots, with blisters on
their hands, and with scars on their souls. George Washington owned
slaves. John Calvin burned Servetus at the stake. Peter the Apostle
denied his Lord three times in a single night--he denied with an oath.
If you are looking for moral perfection you will have to look somewhere
else than on this earth.
David was a man after God's own heart, not because he never did wrong,
but because when he fell down he got up again. He got up again faced
towards God and not away from Him, faced away from the evil which had
thrown him down and not towards a further advance in wrong-doing. "The
wise make of their moral failures ladders by which they climb towards
Heaven. The foolish make of their moral failures graves wherein they
bury all their highest hopes."
When Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in Reading gaol for his own wretched
wrongdoing he wrote that strangely human document, "De Profundis." It
was a message "out of the depths." In that book he used this striking
sentence which I have never forgotten since the first time I read it,
"The highest moment in a man's career may be the hour when he kneels in
the dust and beats upon his breast and tells all the sins of his life."
"God be merciful to me, a sinner." "Have mercy upon me, O God.
Against Thee have I sinned. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and
cleanse me from my sin." This is all that any honest man can say in
the presence of his Maker, and when he does say it honestly he is on
his way to the divine favour.
David was a man of faith and of prayer; he was a man of deep, sweet
feeling and of spiritual longing. In all his better moments when he
was truly himself his heart hungered after righteousness and his soul
was athirst for the living God. A man of that moral mood and build is
much more after God's own heart, even though he may upon occasion be
betrayed by the fervour of his nature into wrong-doing, than is the
coldly correct man who has never felt enough of warm-hearted devotion
to anything to raise the spiritual temperature a single degree.
I do not know how many of these Psalms came from the lips or the pen of
David. No one knows--not many in all probability. But I know that
these words represent experiences which were David's beyond a
peradventure. "The Lord is my rock and my fortress, my deliverer and
my saviour. In my distress I called upon Him and He heard me. He drew
me out of many waters and He brought me forth into a large place.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I
shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
He came to the throne at the age of thirty, and he reigned over Israel
for forty years. His name was handed down in human history as that of
the greatest king that Israel ever had. He never could have done it
but for the fact that he had in his heart faith and hope and love
towards God and towards his fellow men. He was a man of deep and
genuine piety.
When William IV of England passed away there was a young girl of
sixteen named Victoria who was spending the night in Kensington Palace.
Word was suddenly brought to her that the King was dead and that she
was Queen of England. She immediately fell upon her knees imploring
divine help and guidance in the discharge of the high duties which had
been thrust upon her. May it not be that this was one secret of her
beneficent reign which lasted for more than sixty years? The rulers
who begin the ascent of their thrones upon their knees rise high
because their eyes are upon that Great White Throne which is the final
seat of all authority and of all blessing.
Here then were the leading traits in that young man who became king!
In his early life when he was nothing but a shepherd boy he showed
fidelity in the ordinary duties of every-day life. He showed courage
and high resolve in the presence of danger. He had a fine capacity for
joyous and enduring friendship with his brother men. He was
great-hearted and magnanimous to his foes, even when he had them
utterly in his power. He was a man of simple, genuine faith in the
living God.
Whether you are living in Palestine or in Connecticut, in the tenth
century before Christ or in the twentieth century after, are not these
the qualities which are sure to be crowned? Are not these the traits
which make any man kingly in his bearing and in the whole content of
his inner life?
Set your hearts upon those traits and make them your own! Fight the
good fight! Keep your faith! Finish your course with honour and you
will find at the end of it laid up for you a crown of righteousness,
which God gives to every man who serves Him aright.
IV
The Young Man Who Was Born to the Purple
"In the year that King Uzziah died"--it was more than a date, it was an
experience! The king had been a wise and good ruler. He had served
his country well for fifty-two long years. He showed an interest in
the welfare of his people--"He loved husbandry and dug wells for them
in the desert." He caused vineyards to be planted on the slopes of
Carmel and he increased the herds of cattle which grazed in the
lowlands. He fortified his capital by building towers at the valley
gate and at the turning of the wall in Jerusalem.
His reign was beneficent, but now he was dead, and this warm-hearted
young patriot felt that his heart was overwhelmed. He and his fellow
citizens must now plan for the future of their county without the
guidance and inspiration of this great king.
But "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord." There came
something more than a personal experience of disappointment. There
came the emergence of a new and higher form of faith. This young man
saw the earthly majesty of this wise and good king go down in utter
defeat. In some strange way the king contracted leprosy. During all
the closing years of his reign he suffered from the crawling inroads of
that loathsome disease. By the stern requirements of the Jewish law he
was banished from his own capital. He was compelled to live outside
the city and to reign by deputy. He finally died a lingering and
horrible death.
And in that dread hour the young man saw the heavenly majesty of the
King of kings resplendent and enduring. "In the year that King Uzziah
died I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, sitting upon His throne and
His glory filled the temple." The spirit of hero-worship was passing
over into religious faith.
Let me study with you the effect of this crisis in the life of his
nation upon this young man who was born to the purple. He possessed
all those advantages which go with wealth, social position, and
education. We have here no rough man of the hills like Elijah, the
Tishbite, rudely dressed and rude in speech. We have here no man with
the smell of the fields in his garments like Amos, the herdsman of
Tekoa.
Isaiah belonged to the fortunate class. He lived on Fifth Avenue. He
had an assured social position which gave him ready access to the court
and to the presence of the king. He was familiar with the customs and
the costumes of fashionable society, as we find in that chapter where
he openly rebukes the showy extravagance of the idle rich. He was well
educated--he had that literary skill which comes only to those who are
well trained. In all the Old Testament you will find nothing finer
than the sweep and finish of some of this young prophet's public
utterances. He was one to whom five talents had been given where other
men were struggling along with one apiece. He therefore owed to
society what might be called the debt of privilege. It is a fixed
charge upon the lives of those who sit above the salt. It has a right
to insist upon full payment. "To whom much is given, of him will much
be required."
It is for every man to ask himself: "How much do I eat up in my
generous mode of life? How much in food and dress, in housing and
furnishing, in motor cars and yachts, in travel and in recreation? How
much do I consume in those provisions which I make for a wider culture
through books, pictures, music and the like?" What is your average
intake of this world's good things? That measure of consumption will
indicate the measure of your responsibility. If you are born to the
purple and fare sumptuously in all these ways then the world has a
right to demand that you shall render back in corresponding measure
that useful service which is your plain duty.
In that effective cartoon which Jesus drew of the Rich Man and Lazarus,
it was the unpaid debt of privilege which brought about the loss of a
soul. Jesus showed the two men in this world, one of them living in a
palace, clothed with purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every
day; the other in rags dying at the Rich Man's gate, hungry and full of
sores. Then Jesus showed the two men in the next world, Lazarus the
beggar now in Abraham's bosom, and the son of good fortune enduring
torment.
There is no hint that the Rich Man had gained a penny of his wealth
wrongfully; no charge of lying or theft, of murder or adultery is laid
at his door. He was damned not by the wicked things he had done, but
for the lack of that generous and humane service which he had left
undone. His sin was that of selfish indifference. The way to
perdition is paved with moral neglect. The debt of privilege can no
more be escaped than death or taxes. To whom much is given, of him
will much be required. And a full sense of that responsibility was
brought home to this well-endowed young man in the year the great king
died.
The fortunate young man stood out in the open confessing his sense of
moral need. There in the place of worship in that high and serious
mood which followed upon the death of the king, he caught a fresh
vision of God. "I saw the Lord high and lifted up, sitting upon His
throne. I saw Him surrounded with the winged seraphs. And one of them
cried to another, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts! The whole
earth is full of His glory."
The very sight of the unstained purity of Him "unto whom all hearts are
open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid," brought
this young man to his knees. He knelt in the dust and beat upon his
breast and told the sins of his life. "Woe is me, I am undone. I am a
man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
And mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."
The man who has no sense of sin has little sense of any sort. If we
say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves or else we lie. Where is the
man who can stand up in the presence of those who know him and say,
"Every deed that I have done was done in honour and integrity. Every
word that has fallen from my lips has been spoken in truth and in
kindliness. Every desire which I have harboured in my soul has been
one upon which the eye of my Maker might rest with approval."