'... Renew a right spirit within me. 11. ... And take not Thy Holy
Spirit from me. 12. ... And uphold me with Thy free Spirit.'
--PSALM li. 10-12.
We ought to be very thankful that the Bible never conceals the faults of
its noblest men. David stands high among the highest of these. His words
have been for ages the chosen expression for the devotions of the
holiest souls; and whoever has wished to speak longings after purity,
lowly trust in God, the aspirations of love, or the raptures of
devotion, has found no words of his own more natural than those of the
poet-king of Israel. And this man sins, black, grievous sin.
Self-indulgent, he stays at home while his army is in the field. His
moral nature, relaxed by this shrinking from duty, is tempted, and
easily conquered. The sensitive poet nature, to which all delights of
eye and sense appeal so strongly, is for a time too strong for the
devout soul. One sin drags on another. As self-indulgence opened the
door for lust, so lust, which dwells hard by hate, draws after it
murder. The king is a traitor to his subjects, the soldier untrue to the
chivalry of arms, the friend the betrayer of the friend. Nothing can be
blacker than the whole story, and the Bible tells the shameful history
in all its naked ugliness.
Many a precious lesson is contained in it. For instance, It is not
innocence which makes men good. 'This is your man after God's own heart,
is it?' runs the common, shallow sneer. Yes; not that God thought little
of his foul sin, nor that 'saints' make up for adultery and murder by
making or singing psalms; not that 'righteousness' as a standard of
conduct is lower than 'morality'; but that, having fallen, he learned to
abhor his sin, and with deepened trust in God's mercy, and many tears,
struggled out of the mire, and with unconquered resolve and strength
drawn from a divine source, sought still to press towards the mark. It
is not the attainment of purity, not the absence of sin, but the
presence and operation, though it be partial, of an energy which is at
war with all impurity, that makes a man righteous. That is a lesson
worth learning.
Again, David was not a hypocrite because of this fall of his. All sin is
inconsistent with a religious character. But it is not for us to say
what sin is incompatible with a religious character.
Again, the worst sin is not some outburst of gross transgression,
forming an exception to the ordinary tenor of a life, bad and dismal as
such a sin is; but the worst and most fatal are the small continuous
vices, which root underground and honeycomb the soul. Many a man who
thinks himself a Christian, is in more danger from the daily commission,
for example, of small pieces of sharp practice in his business, than
ever was David at his worst. White ants pick a carcase clean sooner than
a lion will.
Most precious of all is the lesson as to the possibility of all sin
being effaced, and of the high hopes which even a man sunk in
transgression has a right to cherish, as to the purity and beauty of
character to which he may come. What a prayer these clauses contain to
be offered by one who has so sinned! What a marvellous faith in God's
pardoning love, and what a boldness of hope in his own future, they
disclose! They set forth a profound ideal of a noble character; they
make of that ideal a prayer; they are the prayer of a great
transgressor, who is also a true penitent. In all these aspects they are
very remarkable, and lead to valuable lessons. Let us look at them from
these points of view successively.