The Young Man Who Became King
In some wise way when the door of opportunity opens upon a trying situation there comes forth a man of sufficient size to perform the task. When the time is ripe for the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther is ready and walks in. When the day arrives for Napoleon Bonaparte to be sent to St. Helena and the peace of Europe restored, the Duke of Wellington, representing British tenacity, is ready. When the hour has struck for American slavery to be destroyed by words and laws and grape-shot, William Lloyd Garrison and Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant are ready. Back of every emergency God waits. He has His great right hand full of men and when the fullness of time is come He brings upon the scene His own appointed man.
Here in a very old book is the story of the greatest king that Israel ever had! The House of Tudor in England, the House of Hohenzollern in Germany or the late House of the Romanoffs in Russia, never had such a hold upon the popular imagination and affection as did "the house and lineage of David" upon the hearts of the Hebrews. The One who was to be born "King of kings and Lord of lords" to reign forever and ever was to come from "the house and lineage of David."
But how was this country boy with rough hands and all the marks of toil upon him to become king? He was no Crown Prince—Jonathan was the eldest son of the reigning monarch. He was neither the eldest nor the favourite son of any man. He was the youngest son of a farmer named Jesse and because he seemed less promising than his older brothers he had been given the care of the sheep. Anybody with eyes in his head and feet to walk about can watch sheep. The boy did not seem at first glance to have his foot on the ladder nor to possess the elements of royalty.
He became king because he had these five qualities: First of all he showed fidelity in the ordinary duties of every-day life. Here is the summing up of his method—"And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways and the Lord was with him." If a bunch of sheep became his field of opportunity he would do his work in such fashion that no one could do it better. He would lead them in green pastures and by still waters so that they should not want. His rod and his staff would protect them. He would learn the use of sling and stone so that "he could sling," as the record says, "at a hair's breadth and not miss." If a wolf or a bear should attack his flock, he would be able to drive them off.
The simple ordinary duties which belong to keeping sheep or to getting one's lessons at school, to meeting one's obligations in some modest position in office or store, or in doing one's best in a factory or on a farm, become a kind of dress rehearsal for the larger duties which lie ahead. If a man knows his lines and can take his part effectively upon the narrower stage of action he is in line for promotion to a more important rôle. You will find whole regiments of young fellows who drag along, scamping their work and slighting those opportunities which are right at hand. They are saving up their energies to do something splendidly effective week after next. But week after next never comes to such men. It is always to-day, and to-day in their eyes seems ever small.
If those men were already on the quarterdeck as captains of great ocean liners; if they were already bank presidents sitting in handsome offices of their own; if they were already journalists of the first rank writing editorials for metropolitan dailies, they would do what their hands and their minds found to do with their might. But in this day of small things they feel that fidelity and skill would be thrown away. They have mixed up the words of the promise—they think it reads, "You have been unfaithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over everything." When a man is going up-stairs he must put his foot first on the step which is at the bottom and then take the other steps in order. The same rule holds in the great business of living a man's life and doing a man's work in the world.
The young man who was to become king showed courage and high resolve in 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.