These three rough soldiers, lawless and fierce as they were, had been
so mastered by their chief that they were ready to dare anything to
pleasure him. Who would have looked for such delicacy of feeling and
such enthusiastic self-surrender in such men?
They stand as grand instances of the height of devotion of which the
rudest nature is capable, when once its love and loyalty to the Beloved
are evoked.
How such deeds ennoble the lowest types of character, and make us think
better of men, and more sadly of the contrast between their habitual
characteristics and the possibilities that lie slumbering in their
ignoble lives! There are sparks in the hard cold flint, if only they
could be struck out. There is water in the rock, if only the right
hand, armed with the wonder-working rod, smites it.
Let us not judge men too harshly by what they do and are, but let us
try to bring their sleeping possibilities into conscious exercise.
Let us remember that love and self-sacrifice, which is the very outcome
and natural voice of love, ennoble the most degraded.
But these heroic three may suggest to us a sadder thought. They were
ready to die for David; would they have been as ready to die for God?
These noble emotions of love, leading to glad flinging away of life to
pleasure the beloved, are freely given to men, but too often withheld
from God, We lavish on our beloveds or on our chosen leaders, a
devotion that ought to shame us, when contrasted with the scantiness of
our grudging devotion and self-surrender to Him. If we loved God a
tenth part as ardently as we love our wives or husbands or parents or
children, and were willing to do and bear as much for Him as we are
willing to bear for them, how different our lives would be! We can love
utterly, enthusiastically, self-forget-tingly, absorbed in the beloved,
and counting all surrender of self to, and the sacrifice of life itself
for, him or her a delight. Many of us do love men so. Do we love God so?
But these heroic three may suggest another thought. Their
self-sacrificing love was illustrious; but there is a nobler, more
wonderful, more soul-subduing instance of such love. They broke through
the ranks of the Philistines to bring David a draught from the well of
Bethlehem. Jesus has broken through the ranks of our enemies to bring
us the water of which 'if a man drink, he shall live for ever.' If we
would see the highest example of self-sacrificing love, we must turn to
look, not on the instances of it that shine through the ages on the
page of history, and make men thrill as they gaze, and think better of
the human nature that can do such things, but on the Christ hanging on
the Cross because He loved those who did not love Him, and giving His
life a ransom for sinners.