Settle it in your hearts, young men, settle it in your hearts—or rather pray to God to settle it therein; and if you would love life and see good days, recollect daily and hourly that the only sane and safe human life is dependence on God himself, and that—
Unless above himself he can
Exalt himself, how poor a thing is man.
SERMON III. DAVID’S ANGER
Psalm cxliii. 11, 12. Quicken me, O Lord, for thy name’s sake: for thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble. And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant.
There are those who would say that I dealt unfairly last Sunday by the Psalms of David; that in order to prove them inspired, I ignored an element in them which is plainly uninspired, wrong, and offensive; namely, the curses which he invokes upon his enemies. I ignored it, they would say, because it was fatal to my theory! because it proved David to have the vindictive passions of other Easterns; to be speaking, not by the inspiration of God, but of his own private likes and dislikes; to be at least a fanatic who thinks that his cause must needs be God’s cause, and who invokes the lightnings of heaven on all who dare to differ from him. Others would say that such words were excusable in David, living under the Old Law; for it was said by them of old time, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy:’ but that our Lord has formally abrogated that permission; ‘But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, and do good to those who despitefully use you and persecute you.’ How unnecessary, and how wrong then, they would say, it is of the Church of England to retain these cursing Psalms in her public worship, and put them into the mouths of her congregations. Either they are merely painful, as well as unnecessary to Christians; or if they mean anything, they excuse and foster the habit too common among religious controversialists of invoking the wrath of heaven on their opponents.
I argue with neither of the objectors. But the question is a curious and an important one; and I am bound, I think, to examine it in a sermon which, like the present, treats of David’s chivalry.
What David meant by these curses can be best known from his own actions. What certain persons have meant by them since is patent enough from their actions. Mediæval monks considered but too often the enemies of their creed, of their ecclesiastical organisation, even of their particular monastery, to be ipso facto enemies of God; and applied to them the seeming curses of David’s Psalms, with fearful additions, of which David, to his honour, never dreamed. ‘May they feel with Dathan and Abiram the damnation of Gehenna,’ [{285}] is a fair sample of the formulæ which are found in the writings of men who, while they called themselves the servants of Jesus Christ our Lord, derived their notions of the next world principally from the sixth book of Virgil’s Æneid. And what they meant by their words their acts shewed. Whenever they had the power, they were but too apt to treat their supposed enemies in this life, as they expected God to treat them in the next. The history of the Inquisition on the continent, in America, and in the Portuguese Indies—of the Marian persecutions in England—of the Piedmontese massacres in the 17th century—are facts never to be forgotten. Their horrors have been described in too authentic documents; they remain for ever the most hideous pages in the history of sinful human nature. Do we find a hint of any similar conduct on the part of David? If not, it is surely probable that he did not mean by his imprecations what the mediæval clergy meant.
Certainly, whatsoever likeness there may have been in language, the contrast in conduct is most striking. It is a special mark of David’s character, as special as his faith in God, that he never avenges himself with his own hand. Twice he has Saul in his power: once in the cave at Engedi, once at the camp at Hachilah, and both times he refuses nobly to use his opportunity. He is his master, the Lord’s Anointed; and his person is sacred in the eyes of David his servant—his knight, as he would have been called in the Middle Age. The second time David’s temptation is a terrible one. He has softened Saul’s wild heart by his courtesy and pathos when he pleaded with him, after letting him escape from the cave; and he has sworn to Saul that when he becomes king he will never cut off his children, or destroy his name out of his father’s home. Yet we find Saul, immediately after, attacking him again out of mere caprice; and once more falling into his hands. Abishai says—and who can wonder?—‘Let me smite him with the spear to the earth this once, and I will not smite a second time.’ What wonder? The man is not to be trusted—truce with him is impossible; but David still keeps his chivalry, in the true meaning of that word: ‘Destroy him not, for who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord’s Anointed, and be guiltless? As the Lord liveth, the Lord shall smite him, or his day shall come to die; or he shall go down into battle, and perish. But the Lord forbid that I should stretch forth my hand against the Lord’s Anointed.’
And if it be argued, that David regarded the person of a king as legally sacred, there is a case more clear still, in which he abjures the right of revenge upon a private person.
Nabal, in addition to his ingratitude, has insulted him with the bitterest insult which could be offered to a free man in a slave-holding country. He has hinted that David is neither more nor less than a runaway slave. And David’s heart is stirred by a terrible and evil spirit. He dare not trust his men, even himself, with his black thoughts. ‘Gird on your swords,’ is all that he can say aloud. But he had said in his heart, ‘God do so and more to the enemies of David, if I leave a man alive by the morning light of all that pertain to him.’