2 SAMUEL XXIII. 15 365
alike in the city and in the wilderness. Then, it seems, in an hour when the heart of David was probably burdened with the sense of life's disillusionments, when "days were dark and friends were few," when experience had brought to him a feeling of the mystery that covers the ways of God, and of the sorrow that haunts the steps of man — then, we are told, the thoughts of David went back, with a great tenderness and yearning to the far-off days of youth and the scenes of childhood, and the cry broke from his lips — " Oh that one would give me water to drink of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate ! "
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Eise in the heart, and gather to the eyes. In looking on the happy Autimin-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.^
2. It is the longing of a successful man. David was not one of life's failures, who had run the race of life in vain aud now looked back sadly to the promising start. He had run the race well ; he had outstripped all his rivals, and he had risen higher than the most venturesome hopes of boyhood dared to soar. All of honour and wealth and power the world had to give, it had given to him, for he had been taken from following his father's sheep to sit upon the throne of Israel ; and no forsaken outcast, but a king, is he who in the cave or Adullam I'ongs for water from the well of Bethlehem, The world had given to this man all it has to give — given what it can give but seldom and only to a few — and he had longings still. For there in the cave of Adullam he thought not of the shouts of the army of Israel or of the rejoicing songs with which he was welcomed by Israel's daughters ; nor did he think there of the honour to which he had been raised, or of the house of cedar he had built for himself. His weary spirit fled away for rest back to the days when he drank of the well of Bethlehem ; and all of his life that the world would have thought worth livino- he would willingly have unlived, and all his honours, his rank, and his possessions he would willingly have laid aside for the light heart and the cloudless days of youth.
^ A friend told the writer of a visit he made one summer to the home of his childhood. He had not been back for many years.
^ Tennyson.
366 THE WELL BY THE GATE
The old place had passed into the hands of strangers. The present occupant took him from room to room until he had reached the attic. There, draped in cobwebs, stood an old spinning-wheel. At sight of it his heart went to his throat. " It is my mother's spin- ning-wheel," he said. " If you will look just there you will see a blood mark. One day, when a little boy, I cut my finger and the blood trickled down on the spot while my mother tied up the wound. You must let me have this old wheel to take to my home and to my children. It brings back to me my mother and my childhood as nothing else has done."
3. It is a longing we can all more or lees understand. David, like a true poet, felt and experienced the thoughts and feelings that stir in hundreds and thousands of minds, though only the one man has the gift of putting them into speech.
^ There is no man or woman who does not say occasionally or feel with Job, " Oh that I were as in months past ! " We have visions of happy wells of which we drank in the dear old days, and from which we are now inevitably separated. We think of the time when everything was new to us and the world crammed with glory, when perfect health was in our veins and our heart- beats were all music, and we had no heavy burden of care to carry, and sorrow had not brought the shadows, and we hardly knew what it was to be weary, and no day was ever too long, and we wanted no heaven beyond because it was all heaven below." ^
Four ducks on a pond, A grass bank beyond, A blue sky of spring, White clouds on the wing. What a little thing To remember for years, To remember with tears !
II.
What did He Long foe?
1. David thirsted, and he longed for water. But any water would not satisfy him. He longed for water from a particular yyell — <« from the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate." The traditional " David's Well " is half a mile N.N.E. of Bethlehem. Ritter speaks of its " deep shaft and clear cool water." A picture
' J. I. Vance, Royal Manhood, 159.
2 SAMUEL xxm. 15 367
of it rose before David now — the sweet, cold water which he used to drink when he was a boy — and he longed for it. But why did he long for it ? Was there no other fountain in all the neighbour- hood from which there might have been brought for the weary king a draught as pure and cool, no other fountain whose waters could have quenched his thirst ? What possible difference could it make to David whether he drank water from the well by the gate of Bethlehem, or from the spring by the cave where he lay ? Thirst is thirst, and water is water. If you drink the water you slake your thirst — and that is all there is in it. What difference is there ?