Somewhere at every hour The watchman on the tower Looks forth, and sees the fleet Approach of the hurrying feet Of messengers, that bear The tidings of despair. 0 Absalom, my son!
He goes forth from the door. Who shall return no more. With him our joy departs; The light goes out in our hearts; In the Chamber over the Gate We sit disconsolate.
0 Absalom, my son I
352 AN EXCEEDING BITTER CRY
That 'tis a common grief Bringeth but slight relief; Ours is the bitterest loss, Ours is the heaviest cross ; And for ever the cry will be "Would God I had died for thee, 0 Absalom, my son ! " ^
I.
David's Sorrow.
In David's cry of anguish there was the torture of self- accusation. The sting of death is sin. The sting of that death to David was Absalom's sin, and alas ! his own sin too. If we recall the things which had happened in David's life years before, we shall have no doubt that the remembrance of his own misdoings testified against him now, and that he saw in that tragedy, in part at least, the harvest for which he had done the sowing. Nathan the prophet had come to him in the hour of his trans- gression and predicted almost this very thing, that the sword would never depart from his house, and that out of his own household would come his torturing cross and shame. How could it be otherwise ? He had violated the domestic sanctities, taken another man's wife, and sent that man to his death. With the coming of Bathsheba there came into his home strife, hatred, and division. It is a terrible picture of family life; perpetual quarrels, and sometimes bloodshed. It is the old story of favouritism and jealousy. Bathsheba's child, Solomon, was the favoured one, and seemed likely to be chosen David's successor. Absalom plunged into rebellion, not merely through ambition, but because he feared that the succession was slipping away from him. We can see the whole plot working itself out. We can see the whole household rioting in sin, and David had no power to stop it. His hand was paralysed, for had not he himself been the first and chief transgressor? He had sowed the wind and now the whirlwind was upon him. And he knew and felt it when he cried, " 0 Absalom, my son ! would God I had died for thee ! "
* Longfellow.
2 SAMUEL XVIII. ^^ 353
"Good-bye," I said, to my conscience —
" Good-bye for aye and aye," And I put her hands off harshly,
And turned my face away; And conscience, smitten sorely,
Keturned not from that day.
But a time came when my spirit
Grew weary of its pace; And I cried : " Come back, my conscience,
I long to see thy face." But conscience cried, "I cannot,
Eemorse sits in my place." ^
^ " The inconceivable evil of sensuality " was surely never more awfully burned in upon any sinful house than it was upon David's house. David himself is a towering warning to all men, and especially to all godly men, against this master abomination. And he is so all the more that he sinned so terribly against such singular grace. David, to use his own words, was as white as snow as long as he was young, and poor, and struggling up, and oppressed and persecuted, and with Samuel's horn of oil still sanctifying all the thoughts and all the imaginations of his heart. But no sooner had David sat down on the throne of Israel than his life of sin and shame began. And all the woe upon woe of his after-life, almost every single deadly drop of it, came down out of that day when he first introduced open and imblushing sensuality into his palace in Jerusalem. There was military success, and extended empire, and great wealth, and great and far-sounding glory in David's day in Israel; but beneath it all the whole ground was mined and filled to the lip with gun- powder, and the Divine tinder all the time was surely burning its way to the Divine vengeance on David's house. Our doctors, our lawyers, our ministers, and many of ourselves, will all subscribe to Newman's strong words in one of his sermons — " The inconceivable evil of sensuality." ^
^ I cannot help recalling the life of James Stirling, well- known as the first temperance missionary in Scotland. James was a drunkard up to his sixtieth year; but then he was, through the abstinence movement, rescued from his danger and " plucked as a brand out of the fire." Out of gratitude for his deliverance, he gave himself for the next twenty years of his life to the advocacy of the temperance cause, travelling over the length and
' W. H. Birckhead. 2 Alexander Whyte.
DEUT.-ESTH. — 23
354 AN EXCEEDING BITTER CRY
breadth of Scotland, helping to save men from the curse of strong drink. On one of those journeys, when he arrived at Aberdeen, he met v^ith one of his sons, who, taking after his father's early example, had become a drunkard, and was at that time a soldier. The two had a long and interesting talk in the evening, and old James thought the youth was doing better. But in the morning he was sent for in great haste; and, hurrying to the place, wondering much what the message meant, he was shown the body of his son, who had committed suicide during the night. Who may describe the anguish of that father's heart as David's wail was wrung out of him, while he appended this of his own: "Had I been a sober man all my life, this might never have occurred." ^