David: Five Sermons

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
NOTE:—The first four of these Sermons were preached before the University of Cambridge.
Psalm lxxviii. 71, 72, 73. He chose David his servant, and took him away from the sheep-folds. As he was following the ewes great with young ones, he took him; that he might feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance. So he fed them with a faithful and true heart, and ruled them prudently with all his power.
I am about to preach to you four sermons on the character of David. His history, I take for granted, you all know.
I look on David as an all but ideal king, educated for his office by an all but ideal training. A shepherd first; a life—be it remembered—full of danger in those times and lands; then captain of a band of outlaws; and lastly a king, gradually and with difficulty fighting his way to a secure throne.
This was his course. But the most important stage of it was probably the first. Among the dumb animals he learnt experience which he afterwards put into practice among human beings. The shepherd of the sheep became the shepherd of men. He who had slain the lion and the bear became the champion of his native land. He who followed the ewes great with young, fed God’s oppressed and weary people with a faithful and true heart, till he raised them into a great and strong nation. So both sides of the true kingly character, the masculine and the feminine, are brought out in David. For the greedy and tyrannous, he has indignant defiance: for the weak and helpless, patient tenderness.
My motives for choosing this subject I will explain in a very few words.
We have heard much of late about ‘Muscular Christianity.’ A clever expression, spoken in jest by I know not whom, has been bandied about the world, and supposed by many to represent some new ideal of the Christian character.
For myself, I do not understand what it means. It may mean one of two things. If it mean the first, it is a term somewhat unnecessary, if not somewhat irreverent. If it mean the second, it means something untrue and immoral.