It was Phillips Brooks who said once to an audience of Harvard men, "Here is the last great certainty, be sure of God! By simple, loving worship, by continual obedience, by keeping yourself pure even as He is pure, creep close to Him, keep close to Him, and in the end nothing can overthrow you."
III
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.