Symonds (A. R.), Sermons, 360.
Wilson (J. M.), Sermons preached in Clifton College Chapel, 2nd Ser., 6G.
Christian World Pulpit, ix. 155 (Bull) ; xxii. 332 (Coster) ; Ixxi. 107
(Scott-Holland). Chivrch Pulpit Year Boole, 1904, 181 (Currie). Churchman's Pidpit : Sixth Sunday after Trinity, x. 353 (Jones), 354
(Symonds), 356 (Sterne). Treasury (New York), xx. 799 (Hallock).
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Thou art the Man.
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.— 2 Sam. xii. 7.
1. The literature of the world probably contains no more pitiably human story than the story of David's great sin. The man who can gloat over it with heated passion is an animal ; the man who can laugh at it with malicious cynicism is a fiend. It is one of those sad and lamentable stories which make us ashamed of our passions, which make us feel a sort of degradation in the posses- sion of powers which can be potent with such infernal mischief, and can lead to such foul and tragic consequences. As we read the story we are ashamed of human nature, and it is not difficult to despair of it. " If," we say, " the sweet singer of Israel, a man so true, so valiant, so heroically manly, could fall so deeply, who is safe in the presence of temptation ? " One can readily under- stand how such a story as this might fascinate and terrify a sensitive nature, till the only way of escape seemed celibacy, and the only true method of life a monastic isolation from temptation.^
2. It is in the previous chapter that we read, in the stern,
pure, outspokenness of the Bible, how David fell. Here was the
man who had been so wonderfully blest by God, who had done so
much for God, who had come to know so much of God. Only
four chapters before we find this same man "sitting before the
Lord " in calm, deep, enraptured thanksgiving ; he has just heard
through Nathan that, though he is not to build the Temple, he is
to be the forefather of the Lord's Christ. The Hope of Israel,
when at last He comes, is to be David's Son. He to whom,
according to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, David could look up,
" in the Spirit," and call Him " my Lord," was yet to be his actual
^ W. J. Dawson. 311
312 THOU ART THE MAN
Descendant and Successor "according to the flesh." There, in 2 Sam. vii., we find David telling over to his God all his wonder and all his joy, basking in the sunshine of the great Promise, reposing in the mighty Hope. Here, in 2 Sam. xi., we find David, on a sudden, fallen, fallen. Satan has him in the snare. He has lusted with his eyes. He has committed a base adultery. In the sequel, in a course of flagrant treachery to a devoted retainer, the husband so awfully injured, David has compassed a brave man's death. He is a murderer. And for many months after the first great act of sin — yes, even till the child of his guilt has been born — we gather that he has hardened his heart against conviction. For not till Nathan spoke to his conscience does he appear to have said one word of penitence to God.
3. The Bible is very frank. It conceals, it extenuates nothing. It shows us the defects as well as the virtues in the noblest characters. It depicts none moving on heights of impossible perfection; and by that very fact, by the manifest humanness of its purest, grandest heroes ; by the calm, terrible truthfulness of their falls into sin, as here recorded, the divineness of this Book is brought home to our consciousness, and it lays a larger, firmer, and more salutary hold upon universal man. Abraham by his faith, Moses by his meekness, Job by his patience, seem to rise above us in superhuman excellence. But when we read of Abraham's falsehoods, Moses' petulance, Job's impatience, they each come nearer to us, and say, as did Peter to Cornelius in a later day, " Stand up ; I myself also am a man."
^ If King David had lived in a period of what is called " secular " history, and in a time and country upon which modern religious or political prejudices could have been brought to bear, we may form some idea how his life would have been treated by historians. Books would have been written to extol him to the skies: books would also have been written to prove him a consistent hypocrite. On the one hand, his crimes would have been ignored, or palliated by the alleged necessities of policy; on the other, they would have formed the chief topic of the writer's eloquence, and we should have been asked to withhold common respect from the man who could deal as David dealt by Uriah the Hittite. Partisans would rise on both sides of the question, and men who had not the means or the power of forming an opinion would ask, " What is truth ? " Nay, they
2 SAMUEL XII. 7 313
might even ask the question — more dangerous still to leave unanswered — "What are right and wrong?" He would have fared as Mary Stuart or Cromwell have fared. If David had had his Lingard, he would also have had his Froude.^