Sermons on National Subjects Part 9

We may say that St. Paul was an exceedingly benevolent man, and THAT made him do it; or that he had found out certain new truths and opinions which delighted him very much, and therefore he did it. But St. Paul gives no such account of himself: and we have no right to take anyone's account but his own. He knew his own heart best. He does not say that he came to preach a scheme of redemption, or opinions about Christ. He says he came to preach nothing but Christ Himself--Christ crucified--to tell people about the Lord he loved, about the Lord who loved him, certain that when they had heard the plain story of Him, their hearts, if they were simple, and true, and loving, would leap up in answer to his words, and find out, as by instinct, what Christ had done for them, what they were to do for Christ. Ay, I believe, my friends--indeed I am certain--from my own reading, that in every age and country, just in proportion as men have loved Christ personally as a man would love another man, just in that proportion have they loved their neighbours, worked for their neighbours, sacrificed their time, their pleasure, their money, to do good to all, for the sake of Him who commanded: "If ye love ME, keep my commandments; and my commandment is this, that ye should love one another as I have loved you." That is the only sure motive. All other motives for doing good or being good, will fail in one case or another case, because they do not take possession of a man's whole heart, but only of some part of his heart. Love--love to Christ, can alone sweep away a man's whole heart and soul with it, and renew it, and transfigure it, and make it strong instead of weak, pure instead of foul, gentle instead of fierce, brave instead of being vain and cowardly, and fearing what everyone will say of him. Only love for Christ, who loved all men unto the death, will make us love all men too: not only one here and there who may agree with us or help us; but those who hate us, those who misunderstand us, those who thwart us, ay, even those who disobey and slight not only us, but Jesus Christ Himself. THAT is the hardest lesson of all to learn; but thousands have learnt it; everyone ought to learn it. In proportion as a man loves Christ, he will learn to love those who do not love Christ. For Christ loves them whether they know it or not; Christ died for them whether they believe it or not; and we must love them because our Saviour loves them.

Oh! my friends, why do so few love Christ? Why do so few live as those who are not their own, but bought with the price of His precious blood and bound to devote themselves, body and soul, to His cause? Why do so many struggle against their sins, while yet they cannot break off those sins, but go struggling and sinning on, hating their sins and yet unable to break through their sins, like birds beating themselves to death against the wires of their cage? Why?

Because they do not know Christ. And how can they know Him, unless they read their Bibles with simple, childlike hearts, determined to let the Bible tell its own story: believing that those who walked with Christ on earth, must know best what He was like? Why? Because they will not ask Christ to come and show Himself to them, and make them see Him, and love Him, and admire Him, whether they will or not.

Oh! remember, if Christ be the Son of G.o.d, the Lord of heaven and earth, we cannot go to Him, poor, weak, ignorant creatures as we are.

We cannot ascend up into heaven to bring Christ down. He must come down out of His own great love and condescension, and dwell in our hearts as He has promised to do, if we do but love Him. He must come down and show Himself to us. Oh! read your Bibles--read the story of Christ, and if that does not stir up in you some love for Him, you must have hearts of stone, not flesh and blood. And then go to Him; pray to Him, whether you believe in Him altogether or not, upon the mere chance of His being able to hear you and help you. You would not throw away a chance on earth; will you throw away such a chance in heaven as having the Son of G.o.d to help you? Oh, cry to Him; say out of the depths of your heart: "Thou most blessed and glorious Being who ever walked this earth, who hast gone blameless through all sorrow and temptation that man can feel; if Thou dost love anyone, if Thou canst hear anyone, hear me! If thou canst not help me, no one can. I have a hundred puzzling questions which I cannot answer for myself, a hundred temptations which I cannot conquer for myself, a hundred bad habits which I cannot shake off of myself; and they tell me that Thou canst teach me, Thou canst guide me, Thou canst strengthen me, Thou canst take out of my heart this shame and gnawing of an evil conscience. If Thou be the Son of G.o.d, make me clean! If it be true that Thou lovest all men, show Thy love to me! If it be true that Thou canst teach all men, teach me! If it be true that Thou canst help all men, help my unbelief, for if Thou dost not, there is no help for me in heaven or earth!" You, who are sinful, distracted, puzzled, broken-hearted, cry to Christ in that way, if you have no better way, and see if He does not hear you. He is not one to break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax. He will hear you, for He has heard all who have ever called on Him. Cry to Him from the bottom of your hearts. Tell Him that you do NOT love Him, and that yet you LONG to love Him. And see if you do not find it true that those who come to Christ, He will in no wise cast out.

He may not seem to answer you the first time, or the tenth time, or for years; for Christ has His own deep, loving, wise ways of teaching each man, and for each man a different way. But try to learn all you can of Him. Try to know Him. Pray to know, and understand Him, and love Him. And sooner or later you will find His words come true, "If a man love me, I and my Father will come to him, and take up our abode with him." And then you will feel arise in you a hungering and a thirsting after righteousness, a spirit of love, and a desire of doing good, which will carry you up and on, above all that man can say or do against you--above all the laziness, and wilfulness, and selfishness, and cowardice which dwells in the heart of everyone.

You will be able to trample it all under foot for the sake of being good and doing good, in the strength of that one glorious thought, "Christ lived and died for me, and, so help me G.o.d, I will live and die for Christ."

XXIV--DAVID'S VICTORY

Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a s.h.i.+eld: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of armies, the G.o.d of Israel, whom thou hast defied.--1 SAMUEL xvii. 45.

We have been reading to-day the story of David's victory over the Philistine giant, Goliath. Now I think the whole history of David may teach us more about the meaning of the Old Testament, and how it applies to us, than the history of any other single character. David was the great hero of the Jews; the greatest, in spite of great sins and follies, that has ever been among them; in every point the king after G.o.d's own heart. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself did not disdain to be called especially the Son of David. David was the author, too, of those wonderful psalms which are now in the mouths and the hearts of Christian people all over the world; and will last, as I believe, till the world's end, giving out fresh depths of meaning and spiritual experience.

But to understand David's history, we must go back a little through the lessons which have been read in church the last few Sundays. We find in the eighth and in the twelfth chapters of this same book of Samuel, that the Jews asked Samuel for a king--for a king like the nations round them. Samuel consulted G.o.d, and by G.o.d's command chose Saul to be their king; at the same time warning them that in asking for a king they had committed a great and fearful sin, for "the Lord their G.o.d was their king." And the Lord said unto Samuel, that in asking for a king they had rejected G.o.d from reigning over them. Now what was this sin which the Jews committed? for the mere having a king cannot be wrong in itself; else G.o.d would not have anointed Saul and David kings, and blessed David and Solomon; much less would He have allowed the greater number of Christian nations to remain governed by kings unto this day, if a king had been a wrong thing in itself. I think if we look carefully at the words of the story we shall see what this great sin of the Jews was. In the first place, they asked Samuel to give them a king--not G.o.d. This was a sin, I think; but it was only the fruit of a deeper sin--a wrong way of looking at the whole question of kings and government. And that deeper sin was this: they were a free people, and they wanted to become slaves. G.o.d had made them a free people; He had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery to Pharaoh. He had given them a free const.i.tution. He had given them laws to secure safety, and liberty, and equal justice to rich and poor, for themselves, their property, their children; to defend them from oppression, and over-taxation, and all the miseries of misgovernment. And now they were going to trample under foot G.o.d's inestimable gift of liberty.

They wanted a king like the nations round them, they said. They did not see that it was just their glory NOT to be like the nations round them in that. We who live in a free country do not see the vast and inestimable difference between the Jews and the other nations. The Jews were then, perhaps, so far as I can make out, the only free people on the face of the earth. The nations round them were like the nations in the East, now governed by tyrants, without law or parliament, at the mercy of the will, the fancy, the l.u.s.t, the ambition, and the cruelty of their despotic kings. In fact, they were as the Eastern people now are--slaves governed by tyrants.

Samuel warned the Jews that it would be just the same with them; that neither their property, their families, nor their liberty would be safe under the despots for whom they wished. And yet, in spite of that warning, they would have a king. And why? Because they did not like the trouble of being free. They did not like the responsibility and the labour of taking care of themselves, and asking counsel of G.o.d as to how they were to govern themselves. So they were ready to sell themselves to a tyrant, that he might fight for them, and judge for them, and take care of them, while they just ate and drank, and made money, and lived like slaves, careless of what happened to them or their country, provided they could get food, and clothes, and money enough. And as long as they got that, if you will remark, they were utterly careless as to what sort of king they had. They said not one word to Samuel about how much power their king was to have.

They made not the slightest inquiry as to whether Saul was wise or foolish, good or bad. They did not ask G.o.d's counsel, or trouble themselves about G.o.d; so they proved themselves unworthy of being free. They turned, like a dog to his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire, cowardly back again into slavery; and G.o.d gave them what they asked for. He gave them the sort of king they wanted; and bitterly they found out their mistake during several hundred years of continually increasing slavery and misery.

There is a deep lesson for us, my friends, in all this. And that is, that G.o.d's gifts are not fit for us, unless we are more or less fit for them. That to him that makes use of what he has, more shall be given; but from him who does not, will be taken away even what he has. And so even the inestimable gift of freedom is no use unless men have free hearts in them. G.o.d sets a man free from his sins by faith in Jesus Christ; but unless that man uses His grace, unless he desires to be free inwardly as well as outwardly--to be free not only from the punishment of his sins, but from the sins themselves; unless he is willing to accept G.o.d's offer of freedom, and go boldly to the throne of grace, and there plead his cause with his heavenly Father face to face, without looking to any priest, or saint, or other third person to plead for him; if, in short, a man has not a free spirit in him, the grace of G.o.d will become of no effect in him, and he will receive the spirit of bondage (of slavery, that is), again to fear.

Perhaps he will fall back more or less into popery and half-popish superst.i.tions; perhaps, as we see daily round us, he will fall back again into antinomianism, into the slavery of those very sins from which G.o.d once delivered him. And just the same is it with a nation.

When G.o.d has given a nation freedom, then, unless there be a free heart in the people and true independence, which is dependence on G.o.d and not on man; unless there be a spirit of justice, mercy, truth, trust of G.o.d in them, their freedom will be of no effect; they will only fall back into slavery, to be oppressed by fresh tyrants.

So it was with the great Spanish colonies in South America a few years ago. G.o.d gave them freedom from the tyranny of Spain; but what advantage was it to them? Because there was no righteousness in them; because they were a cowardly, profligate, false, and cruel people, therefore they only became the slaves of their own l.u.s.ts; they turned G.o.d's great grace of freedom into licentiousness, and have been ever since doing nothing but cutting each other's throats; every man's hand against his own brother; the slaves of tyrants far more cruel than those from whom they had escaped.

Look at the French people, too. Three times in the last sixty years has G.o.d delivered them from evil rulers, and given them a chance of freedom; and three times have they fallen back into fresh slavery.

And why? Because they will not be righteous; because they will be proud, boastful, l.u.s.tful, G.o.dless, cruel, making a lie and loving it.

G.o.d help them! We are not here to judge them, but to take warning ourselves. Now there is no use in boasting of our English freedom, unless we have free and righteous hearts in us; for it is not const.i.tutions, and parliaments, and charters which make a nation free; they are only the sh.e.l.l, the outside of freedom. True freedom is of the heart and spirit, and comes down from above, from the Spirit of G.o.d; for where the Spirit of G.o.d is, there is liberty, and there only. Oh, every one of you! high and low, rich and poor, pray and struggle to get your own hearts free; free from the sins which beset us Englishmen in these days; free from pride, prejudice, and envy; free from selfishness and covetousness; free from unchast.i.ty and drunkenness; free from the conceit that England is safe, while all the rest of the world is shaking. Be sure that the spirit of freedom, like every other good and perfect gift, is from above, and comes down from G.o.d, the Father of lights; and that to keep that spirit with us, we must keep ourselves worthy of it, and not expect to remain free if we indulge ourselves in mean and slavish sins.

So the Jews got the king they wanted--a king to look at and be proud of. Saul was, we read, a head taller than all the rest of the people, and very handsome to look at. And he was brave enough, too, in mere fighting, when he was awakened and stirred up to act now and then; but there was no wisdom in him; no real trust in G.o.d in him.

He took G.o.d for an idol, like the heathens' false G.o.ds, which had to be pleased and kept in good humour by the smell of burnt sacrifices; and not for a living, righteous Person, who had to be obeyed. We read of Saul's misconduct in these respects, in the thirteenth and fifteenth chapters of the First Book of Samuel. That was only the beginning of his wickedness. The worst points in his character, as I shall show in my next sermon, came out afterwards. But still, his disobedience was enough to make G.o.d cast him off, and leave him to go his own way to ruin.

But G.o.d was not going to cast off His people whom He loved. He deals not with mankind after their sins, neither rewards them according to their iniquities; and so he chose out for them a king after His own heart--a true king of G.o.d's making, not a mere sham one of man's making. You may think it strange why G.o.d should have given them a second king; why, as soon as Saul died, He did not let them return back to their old freedom. But that is not G.o.d's way. He brings good out of evil in His great mercy. But it is always by strange winding paths. His ways are not as our ways. First, G.o.d gives man what is perfectly proper for him at that time; sets man in his right place; and then when man falls from that, G.o.d brings him, not back to the place from which he fell, but on forward into something far higher and better than what he fell from. He put Adam into Paradise.

Adam fell from it, and G.o.d made use of the fall to bring him into a state far better than Paradise--into the kingdom of G.o.d--into everlasting life--into the likeness of Christ, the new Adam, who is a quickening, life-giving spirit, while the old Adam was, at best, only a living soul.

So with the church of Christian men. After the apostles' time, and even during the apostles' time, as we read from the Epistle to the Galatians, they fell away, step by step, from the liberty of the gospel, till they sunk entirely into popish superst.i.tion. And yet G.o.d brought good out of that evil. He made that very popery a means of bringing them back at the Reformation into clearer light than any of the first Christians ever had had. He is going on step by step still, bringing Christians into a clearer knowledge of the gospel than even the Reformers had.

And so with the Jews. They fell from their liberty and chose a king.

And yet G.o.d made use of those kings of theirs, of David, of Solomon, of Josiah, and Hezekiah, to teach them more and more about Himself and His law, and to teach all nations, by their example, what a nation should be, and how He deals with one.

But now let us see what this true king, David, was like, whom G.o.d chose, that He might raise, by his means, the Jews higher than they ever yet had been, even in their days of freedom. Now remark, in the first place, that David was not the son of any very great man. His father seems to have been only a yeoman. He was not bred up in courts. We find that when Samuel was sent to anoint David king, he was out keeping his father's sheep in the field. And though, no doubt, he had shown signs of being a very remarkable youth from the first, yet his father thought so little of him, that he was going to pa.s.s him over, and caused all his seven elder sons to pa.s.s before Samuel for his choice first, though there seems to have been nothing particular in them, except that some of them were fine men and brave soldiers. So David seems to have been overlooked, and thought but little of in his youth--and a very good thing for him. It is a good thing for a young man to bear the yoke in his youth, that he may be kept humble and low; that he may learn to trust in G.o.d, and not in his own wit. And even when Samuel anointed David, he anointed him privately. His brothers did not know what a great honour was in store for him; for we find, in the lesson which we have just read, that when David came down to the camp, his elder brother spoke contemptuously to him, and treated him as a child. "I know thy pride," he said, "and the naughtiness of thy heart. Thou art come down to see the battle." While David answers humbly enough: "What have I done? is there not a cause?" feeling that there was more in him than his brother gave him credit for; though he dare not tell his brother, hardly, perhaps, dare believe himself, what great things G.o.d had prepared for him. So it is yet--a prophet has no honour in his own country. How many a n.o.ble-hearted man there is, who is looked down upon by those round him! How many a one is despised for a dreamer, or for a Methodist, by shallow worldly people, who in G.o.d's sight is of very great price! But G.o.d sees not as man sees. He makes use of the weak people of this world to confound the strong.

He sends about His errands not many n.o.ble, not many mighty; but the poor man, rich in faith, like David. He puts down the mighty from their seat, and exalts the humble and meek. He takes the beggar from the dunghill, that He may set him among the princes of His people.

So He has been doing in all ages. So He will do even now, in some measure, with everyone like David, let him be as low as he will in the opinion of this foolish world, who yet puts his trust utterly in G.o.d, and goes about all his work, as David did, in the name of the Lord of hosts. Oh! if a poor man feels that G.o.d has given him wit and wisdom--feels in him the desire to rise and better himself in life, let him be sure that the only way to rise is David's plan--to keep humble and quiet till G.o.d shall lift him up, trusting in G.o.d's righteousness and love to raise him, and deliver him, and put him in that station, be it high or low, in which he will be best able to do G.o.d's work, or serve G.o.d's glory.

And now for the chapter from which the text is taken, which relates to us David's first great public triumph--his victory over Goliath the giant. I will not repeat it to you, because everyone here who has ears to hear or a heart to feel ought to have been struck with every word in that glorious story. All I will try to do is, to show you how the working of G.o.d's Spirit comes out in David in every action of his on that glorious day. We saw just now David's humbleness and gentleness, the fruits of G.o.d's Spirit in him, in his answer to his proud and harsh brother. Look next at David's spirit of trust in G.o.d, which, indeed, is the key to his whole life; that is the reason why he was the man after G.o.d's own heart--not for any virtues of his own, but for his unshaken continual faith in G.o.d.

David saw in an instant why the Israelites were so afraid of the giant; because they had no faith in G.o.d. They forgot that they were the armies of the living G.o.d. David did not: "Who is this uncirc.u.mcised, that he shall defy the armies of the living G.o.d?" And therefore, when Saul tried to dissuade him from attacking the Philistine, his answer is still the same--full of faith in G.o.d. He knew well enough what a fearful undertaking it was to fight with this giant, nearly ten feet high, armed from head to foot with mail, which perhaps no sword or spear which he could use could pierce. It was no wonder, humanly speaking, that all the Jews fled from him--that his being there stopped the whole battle. In these days, fifty such men would make no difference in a battle; bullets and cannon-shot would mow down them like other men: but in those old times, before firearms were invented, when all battles were hand-to-hand fights, and depended so much on each man's strength and courage, that one champion would often decide the victory for a whole army, the amount of courage which was required in David is past our understanding; at least we may say, David would not have had it but for his trust in G.o.d, but for his feeling that he was on G.o.d's side, and Goliath on the devil's side, unjustly invading his country in self-conceit, and cruelty, and lawlessness. Therefore he tells Saul of his victory over the lion and the bear. You see again, here, the Spirit of G.o.d showing in his MODESTY. He does not boast or talk of his strength and courage in killing the lion and the bear; for he knew that that strength and courage came from G.o.d, not from himself; therefore he says that the Lord DELIVERED HIM from them. He knew that he had been only doing his duty in facing them when they attacked his father's sheep, and that it was G.o.d's mercy which had protected him in doing his duty. He felt now, that if no one else would face this brutal giant, it was HIS duty, poor, simple, weak youth as he was, and therefore he trusted in G.o.d to bring him safe through this danger also. But look again how the Spirit of G.o.d shows in his prudence.

He would not use Saul's armour, good as it might be, because he was not accustomed to it. He would use his own experience, and fight with the weapons to which he had been accustomed--a sling and stone.

You see he was none of those presumptuous and fanatical dreamers who tempt G.o.d by fancying that He is to go out of His way to work miracles for them. He used all the proper and prudent means to kill the giant, and trusted to G.o.d to bless them. If he had been presumptuous, he might have taken the first stone that came to hand, or taken only one, or taken none at all, and expected the giant to fall down dead by a miracle. But no; he CHOOSES FIVE SMOOTH stones out of the brook. He tried to get the best that he could, and have more ready if his first shot failed. He showed no distrust of G.o.d in that; for he trusted in G.o.d to keep him cool, and steady, and courageous in the fight, and that, he knew, G.o.d alone could do. The only place, perhaps, where he could strike Goliath to hurt him was on the face, because every other part of him was covered in metal armour. And he knew that, in such danger as he was, G.o.d's Spirit only could keep his eye clear and his hand steady for such a desperate chance as. .h.i.tting that one place.

So he went; and as he went his courage rose higher and higher; for unto him that hath shall more be given; and so he began to boast too-- but not of himself, like the giant. He boasted of the living G.o.d, who was with him. He ran boldly up to the Philistine, and at the first throw, struck on the forehead, and felled him dead.

So it is; many a time the very blessing which we expect to get only with great difficulty, G.o.d gives us at our first trial, to show that He is the Giver, to cheer up our poor doubting hearts, and show us that He is able, and willing too, to give exceeding abundantly more than we can ask or think.

So David triumphed: and yet that triumph was only the beginning of his troubles. Sad and weary years had he to struggle on before he gained the kingdom which G.o.d had promised him. So it is often with G.o.d's elect. He gives them blessings at first, to show them that He is really with them; and then He lets them be evil-entreated by tyrants, and suffer persecution, and wander out of the way in the wilderness, that they may be made perfect by suffering, and purified, as gold is in the refiner's fire, from all selfishness, conceit, ambition, cowardliness, till they learn to trust G.o.d utterly, to know their own weakness, and His strength, and to work only for Him, careless what becomes of their own poor worthless selves, provided they can help His kingdom to come, and get His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And now, my friends, surely there is a lesson in all this for you.

Do you wish to rise like David? Of course not one in ten thousand can rise as high, but we may all rise somewhat, if not in rank, yet still, what is far better, in spirit, in wisdom, in usefulness, in manfulness. Do you wish to rise so? then follow David's example. Be truly brave, be truly modest, and in order to be truly brave and truly modest, that is, be truly manly, be truly G.o.dly. Trust in G.o.d; trust in G.o.d; that is the key to all greatness. Courage, modesty, truth, honesty, and gentleness; all things, which are n.o.ble, lovely, and of good report; all things, in short, which will make you men after G.o.d's own heart, are all only the different fruits of that one blessed life-giving root--FAITH IN G.o.d.

XXV--DAVID'S EDUCATION

Made perfect through sufferings.--HEBREWS ii. 10.

That is my text; and a very fit one for another sermon about David, the king after G.o.d's own heart. And a very fit one too, for any sermon preached to people living in this world now or at any time.

"A melancholy text," you will say. But what if it be melancholy?

That is not the fault of me, the preacher. The preacher did not make suffering, did not make disappointment, doubt, ignorance, mistakes, oppression, poverty, sickness. There they are, whether we like it or not. You have only to go on to the common here, or any other common or town in England, to see too much of them--enough to break one's heart if--, but I will not hurry on too fast in what I have to say.

What I want to make you recollect is, that misery is here round us, IN us. A great deal which we bring on ourselves; and a great deal more misery which we do not, as far as we can see, bring on ourselves; but which comes, nevertheless, and lets us know plainly enough that it is close to us. Every man and woman of us have their sorrows. There is no use shutting our eyes just when we ourselves happen to feel tolerably easy, and saying, as too many do, "I don't see so very much sorrow; I am happy enough!" Are you, friend, happy enough? So much the worse for you, perhaps. But at all events your neighbours are not happy enough; most of them are only too miserable.

It is a sad world. A sad world, and full of tears. It is. And you must not be angry with the preacher for reminding you of what is.

True; you would have a right to quarrel with the preacher or anyone else who made you sorrowful with the thoughts of the sorrow round you, and then gave you no explanation of it--told you of no use, no blessing in it, no deliverance from it. That would be enough to break any man's heart, if all the preacher could say was: "This wretchedness, and sickness, and death, must go on as long as the world lasts, and yet it does no good, for G.o.d or man." That thought would drive any feeling man to despair, tempt him to lie down and die, tempt him to fancy that G.o.d was not G.o.d at all, not the G.o.d whose name is Love, not the G.o.d who is our Father, but only a cruel taskmaster, and Lord of a miserable h.e.l.l on earth, where men and women, and worst of all, little children, were tortured daily by tens of thousands without reason, or use, or hope of deliverance, except in a future world, where not one in ten of them will be saved and happy. That is many people's notion of the world--religious people's even. How they can believe, in the face of such notions, "that G.o.d is love;" how they can help going mad with pity, if that is all the hope they have for poor human beings, is more than I can tell. Not that I judge them--to their own master they stand or fall: but this I do say, that if the preacher has no better hope to give you about this poor earth, then I cannot tell what right he has to call himself a preacher of the gospel--that is, a preacher of good news; then I do not know what Jesus Christ's dying to take away the sins of the world means; then I do not know what the kingdom of G.o.d means; then I do not know why the Lord taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven," if the only way in which that can be brought about is by His sending ninety-nine hundredths of mankind to endless torture, over and above all the lesser misery which they have suffered in this life. What will be the end of the greater part of mankind we do not know; we were not intended to know.

G.o.d is love, and G.o.d is justice, and His justice is utterly loving, as well as His love utterly just; so we may very safely leave the world in the hands of Him who made the world, and be sure that the Judge of all the earth will do right, and that what is right is certain never to be cruel, but rather merciful. But to every one of you who are here now, a preacher has a right, ay, and a bounden duty, to say much more than that. He is bound to tell you good news, because G.o.d has called you into His church, and sent you here this day, to hear good news. He has a right to tell you, as I tell you now, that, strange as it may seem, whatsoever sufferings you endure are sent to make you perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect; even as the blessed Lord, whom may you all love, and trust, and wors.h.i.+p, for ever and ever, was made perfect by sufferings, even though He was the sinless Son of G.o.d. Consider that. "It behoved Him," says St. Paul, "the Captain of our salvation, to be made perfect through sufferings." And why? "Because," answers St. Paul, "it was proper for Him to be made in all things like His brothers"-- like us, the children of G.o.d--"that He might be a faithful and merciful high priest;" for, just "because He has suffered being tempted, He is able to succour us who are tempted." A strange text, but one which, I think, this very history of David's troubles will help us to understand. For it was by suffering, long and bitter, that G.o.d trained up David to be a true king, a king over the Jews, "after G.o.d's own heart."

You all know, I hope, something at least of David's psalms. Many of them, seven of them at least, were written during David's wanderings in the mountains, when Saul was persecuting him to kill him, day after day, month after month, as you may read in the First Book of Samuel, from chapters xix. to xxviii. Bitter enough these troubles of David would have been to any man, but what must have made them especially bitter and confusing to him was, that they all arose out of his righteousness. Because he had conquered the giant, Saul envied him--broke his promise of giving David his daughter Merab--put his life into extreme danger from the Philistines, before he would give him his second daughter Michal; the more he saw that the Lord was with David, and that the young man won respect and admiration by behaving himself wisely, the more afraid of him Saul was; again and again he tried to kill him; as David was sitting harmless in Saul's house, soothing the poor madman by the music of his harp, Saul tries to stab him unawares; and not content with that proceeds deliberately to hunt him down, from town to town, and wilderness to wilderness; sends soldiers after him to murder him; at last goes out after him himself with his guards. Was not all this enough to try David's faith? Hardly any man, I suppose, since the world was made, had found righteousness pay him less; no man was ever more tempted to turn round and do evil, since doing good only brought him deeper and deeper into the mire. But no, we know that he did not lose his trust in G.o.d; for we have seven psalms, at least, which he wrote during these very wanderings of his; the fifty-second, when Doeg had betrayed him to Saul; the fifty-fourth, when Ziphim betrayed him; the fifty-sixth, when the Philistines took him in Gath; the fifty- seventh, "when he fled from Saul in the cave;" the fifty-ninth, "when they watched the house to kill him;" the sixty-third, "when he was in the wilderness of Judah;" the thirty-fourth, "when he was driven away by Abimelech;" and several more which appear to have been written about the same time.

Now, what strikes us first, or ought to strike us, in these psalms, is David's utter faith in G.o.d. I do not mean to say that David had not his sad days, when he gave himself up for lost, and when G.o.d seemed to have forsaken him, and forgotten his promise. He was a man of like pa.s.sions with ourselves; and therefore he was, as we should have been, terrified and faint-hearted at times. But exactly what G.o.d was teaching and training him to be, was not to be fainthearted-- not to be terrified. He began in his youth by trusting G.o.d. That made him the man after G.o.d's own heart, just as it was the want of trust in G.o.d which made Saul not the man after G.o.d's own heart, and lost him his kingdom. In all those wanderings and dangers of David's in the wilderness, G.o.d was training, and educating, and strengthening David's faith according to His great law: To whomsoever hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he seems to have. And the first great fruit of David's firm trust in G.o.d was his patience.

He learned to wait G.o.d's time, and take G.o.d's way, and be sure that the same G.o.d who had promised that he should be king, would make him king when he saw fit. He knew, as he says himself, that the Strength of Israel could not lie or repent. He had sworn that He would not fail David. And he learned that G.o.d had sworn by His holiness. He was a holy, just, righteous G.o.d; and David and David's country now were safe in His hands. It was his firm trust in G.o.d which gave him strength of mind to use no unfair means to right himself. Twice Saul, his enemy, was in his power. What a temptation to him to kill Saul, rid himself of his tormentor, and perhaps get the kingdom at once! But no. He felt: "This Saul is a wicked, devil-tormented murderer, a cruel tyrant and oppressor; but the same G.o.d who chose me to be king next, chose him to be king now. He is the Lord's anointed. G.o.d put him where he is, and leaves him there for some good purpose; and when G.o.d has done with him, G.o.d will take him away, and free this poor oppressed people; and in the meantime, I, as a private man, have no right to touch him. I must not do evil that good may come. If I am to be a true king, a true man at all hereafter, I must keep true now; if I am to be a righteous lawgiver hereafter, I must respect and obey law myself now. The Lord be judge between me and Saul; for He is Judge, and He will right me better than I can ever right myself." And thus did trust in G.o.d bring out in David that true respect for law, without which a king, let him be as kind-hearted as he will, is but too likely to become at last a tyrant and an oppressor.

But another thing which strikes any thinking man in David's psalms, is his strong feeling for the poor, and the afflicted, and the oppressed. That is what makes the Psalms, above all, the poor man's book, the afflicted man's book. But how did he get that fellow- feeling for the fallen? By having fallen himself, and tasted affliction and oppression. That was how he was educated to be a true king. That was how he became a picture and pattern--a "type," as some call it, of Jesus Christ, the man of sorrows. That is why so many of David's psalms apply so well to the Lord; why the Lord fulfilled those psalms when He was on earth. David was truly a man of sorrows; for he had not only the burden of his own sorrows to bear, but that of many others. His parents had to escape, and to be placed in safety at the court of a heathen prince. His friend Abimelech the priest, because he gave David bread when he was starving, and Goliath's sword--which, after all, was David's own--was murdered by Saul's hired ruffians, at Saul's command, and with him his whole family, and all the priests of the town, with their wives and children, even to the baby at the breast. And when David was in the mountains, everyone who was distressed, and in debt, and discontented, gathered themselves to him, and he became their captain; so that he had on him all the responsibility, care, and anxiety of managing all those wild, starving men, many of them, perhaps, reckless and wicked men, ready every day to quarrel among themselves, or to break out in open riot and robbery against the people who had oppressed them; for--(and this, too, we may see from David's psalms, was not the smallest part of his anxiety)--the nation of the Jews seems to have been in a very wretched state in David's time. The poor seem in general to have lost their land, and to have become all but slaves to rich n.o.bles, who were grinding them down, not only by luxury and covetousness, but often by open robbery and bloodshed. The sight of the misrule and misery, as well as of the b.l.o.o.d.y and ruinous border inroads which were kept up by the Philistines and other neighbouring tribes, seems for years to have been the uppermost, as well as the deepest thought in David's mind, if we may judge from those psalms of his, of which this is the key- note; and it was not likely to make him care and feel less about all that misery when he remembered (as we see from his psalms he remembered daily) that G.o.d had set him, the wandering outlaw, no less a task than to mend it all; to put down all that oppression, to raise up that degradation, to train all that cowardice into self-respect and valour, to knit into one united nation, bound together by fellow- feeling and common faith in G.o.d, that mob of fierce, and greedy, and (hardest task of all, as he himself felt) utterly deceitful men. No wonder that his psalms begin often enough with sadness, even though they may end in hope and trust. He had a work around him and before him which ought to have made his heart sad, which was a great part of his appointed education, and helped to make him perfect by sufferings.

And so, upon the bare hill-side, in woods and caves of the earth, in cold and hunger, in weariness and dread of death, did David learn to be the poor man's king, the poor man's poet, the singer of those psalms which shall endure as long as the world endures, and be the comfort and the utterance of all sad hearts for evermore. Agony it was, deep and bitter, and for the moment more hopeless than the grave itself, which crushed out of the very depths of his heart that most awful and yet most blessed psalm, the twenty-second, which we read in church every Good Friday. The "Hind of the Morning" is its t.i.tle; some mournful air to which David sang it, giving, perhaps, the notion of a timorous deer roused in the morning by the hunters and the hounds. We read that psalm on Good Friday, and all say that our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled it. What do we mean hereby?

We mean hereby, that we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled all sorrows which man can taste. He filled the cup of misery to the brim, and drained it to the dregs. He was afflicted in all David's afflictions, in the afflictions of all mankind. He bare all their sicknesses, and carried all their infirmities; and therefore we read this psalm upon Good Friday, upon the day in which He tasted death for every man, and went down into the lowest depths of terror, and shame, and agony, and death; and, worst of all, into the feeling that G.o.d had forsaken Him, that there was no help or hope for Him in heaven, as well as earth--no care or love in the great G.o.d, whose Son He was--went down, in a word, into h.e.l.l; that h.e.l.l whereof David and Heman, and Hezekiah after them, had said, "Shall the dust give thanks unto thee? and shall it declare thy truth?"--"Thou wilt not leave my soul in h.e.l.l; neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption."--"My life draweth nigh unto h.e.l.l... I am like one stript among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more; and they are cut off from thy hand... .

Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? and shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of destruction?"--"For the grave cannot praise thee; death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down to the pit cannot hope for thy truth."

Even into that lowest darkness, where man feels, even for one moment, that G.o.d is nothing to him, and he is nothing to G.o.d--even into that Jesus condescended to go down for us. That worst of all temptations, of which David only tasted a drop when he cried out, "My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?" Jesus drained to the very dregs for us.-- He went down into h.e.l.l for us, and conquered h.e.l.l and death, and the darkness of the unknown world, and rose again glorious from them, that He might teach us not to fear death and h.e.l.l; that He might know how to comfort us in the hour of death: and in the day of judgment, when on our sick bed, or in some bitter shame and trouble, the lying devil is telling us that we are d.a.m.ned and lost, and forsaken by G.o.d, and every sin we ever did rises up and stares us in the face.

Truly He is a king!--a king for rich and poor, young and old, Englishmen and negro; all alike He knows them, He feels for them, He has tasted sorrow for them, far more than David did for those poor, oppressed, sinful Jews of his. Read those Psalms of David; for they speak not only of David, now long since dead and gone, but of the blessed Jesus, who lives and reigns over us now at this very moment.

Read them, for they are inspired; the honest words of a servant of G.o.d crying out to the same G.o.d, the same Saviour and Deliverer as we have. And His love has not changed. His arm is not shortened that He cannot save. Your words need not change. The words of those psalms in which David prayed, in them you and I may pray. Right out of the depths of his poor distracted heart they came. Let them come out of our hearts too. They belong to us more than even they did to the Jews, for whom David wrote them--more than even they did to David himself; for Jesus has fulfilled them--filled them full--given them boundlessly more meaning than ever they had before, and given us more hope in using them than ever David had: for now that love and righteousness of G.o.d, in which David only trusted beforehand, has come down and walked on this earth in the shape of a poor man, Jesus Christ, the Son of the maiden of Bethlehem.

Oh, you who are afflicted, pray to G.o.d in those psalms; not merely in the words of them, but in the spirit of them. And to do that, you must get from G.o.d the spirit in which David wrote them--the Spirit of G.o.d. Pray for that Spirit; for the spirit of patience, which made David wait G.o.d's good time to right him, instead of trying, as too many do, to right himself by wrong means; for the spirit of love, which taught David to return good for evil; for the spirit of fellow- feeling, which taught David to care for others as well as himself; and in that spirit of love, do you pray for others while you are praying for yourself. Pray for that Spirit which taught David to help and comfort those who were weaker than himself, that you in your time may be able and willing to comfort and help those who are weaker than yourselves. And above all, pray for the Spirit of faith, which made David certain that oppression and wrong-doing could not stand; that the day must surely come when G.o.d would judge the world righteously, and hear the cry of the afflicted, and deliver the outcast and poor, that the man of the world might be no more exalted against them. Pray, in short, for the Spirit of Christ; and then be sure He will hear your prayers, and answer them, and show Himself a better friend, and a truer King to you, than ever David showed himself to those poor Jews of old. He will deliver you out of all your troubles--if not in this life, yet surely in the life to come; and though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet the peace of G.o.d shall keep your hearts and minds in Him who loved you, and gave Himself for you, that you might inherit all heaven and earth in Him.