III.
Self-Discoveky.
1. The story of Nathan's interview with David moves us with the pain and the pity of it. There is incomparable drama in the sudden turning of the tables, not the artificial drama of the stage, but the terrible drama of life, unmasking the feelings and motives of the heart, and touching the simple principles of justice that lie dormant in human nature. A year had passed since David's sin, and he had been able by some of the subtleties of self-excuse to dismiss it from his mind, till in this graphic way the prophet
^ Rudyard Kipling, Departmental Ditties,
2 SAMUEL XII. 7 323
wakens his sleeping conscience, touching the sore place till it throbs with pain.
2. How true and striking this aspect of our subject is our own experience testifies. Watch how angry David grows as Nathan's story is told. He is the very incarnation of indignant justice. He is absolutely eager to punish the selfish scoundrel who has injured the poor man. The spoiler eager to punish the spoliator ? The villain burning with a fine sense of angry justice against the lesser villain ? It is even so. We can pluck out the mote from our brother's eye, and be utterly regardless of the beam in our own. We can pass sentence and applaud judgment on the cruelty of another, but our own cruelty we do not even perceive. It is not imtil some prophet focuses the light of judgment on our act, and puts before us what such sins as ours work in other spheres and other lives ; it is not until we see our ungovernable temper reflected in the awful spectacle of the man upon the gallows, whose passion has carried him just a point beyond our own; till we see our self-indulgence vividly illustrated in some broken drunkard shambling down to his obscure and shameful grave ; till our solitary carnality takes a living, leprous shape and form in the corroding vice which poisons all the world with its reek of horror ; till our individual impurity stands typified in the wasted face of some wronged and shameful woman, lifted towards us in dumb reproach beneath the city gas-light ; — it is not until this happens that the real truth about ourselves flashes on us, and the cry of Nathan, " Thou art the man ! " terrifies us with its heart-searching accusation.
3. This self-discovery is made to a man's conscience. For in our own conscience there is still a Divine supremacy. What was it that made Nathan so fearless ? Why was it that the king quailed before his subject, whose life was altogether in his hand ? We know well why it was. It is the ancient spectacle, repeated in precise form when Elijah stops the chariot of Ahab, and John denounces Herod to his face, and John Knox thunders in the court of Mary Stuart. We know that "conscience doth make cowards of us all." We know that a man standing on the right is mightier than kings, and that kinghood is impotent before such
324 THOU ART THE MAN
a man when kinghood is defiled. It was a pure conscience that animated Nathan with dignity, and clothed him with a Divine royalty ; it was an evil conscience that made David cower and tremble before his servant like a beaten hound.
^ There is a Northern legend, told in the proem of one of Hall Oaine's books, of a man who thought he was pursued by a monster. His ricks were fired, his barns unroofed, his cattle destroyed, his lands blasted, his first-born slain. So he lay in wait for the monster where it lived in the chasms near his house, and in the darkness of night he saw it. With a cry he rushed upon it, and gripped it about the waist, and it turned upon him, and held him by the shoulder. Long he wrestled with it, reeling, staggering, falling and rising again; but at length a flood of strength came to him, and he overthrew it, and stood over it, covering it, conquering it, with its back against his thigh, and his hand set hard at its throat. Then he drew his knife to kill it ; and the moon shot through a wrack of cloud, opening an alley of light about it, and he saw its face, and lo, the face of the monster was his own.
4. The self -disco very is made by the hand of God. We need another than our own voice to lay down the law of conduct, and to accuse and condemn the breaches of it. Conscience is not a wholly reliable guide, and is neither an impartial nor an all- knowing judge. Unconsciousness of evil is not innocence. It is not the purest of women who " wipes her mouth and says, I have done no harm." My conscience says to me, " It is wrong to do wrong " ; but when I say to my conscience, " Yes, and pray what is wrong ? " a large variety of answers is possible. A man may sophisticate his conscience, or bribe his conscience, or throttle his conscience, or sear his conscience. And so the man who is worst, who, therefore, ought to be most chastised by his conscience, has most immunity from it ; and where, if it is to be of use, it ought to be most powerful, there it is weakest.