How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses, for ever in joy!^
(2) David was thinking of his lost ideals. In life, with its failures and disappointments, its cruel blows, its dread sufferings, we are all too apt to become flat and weary, stale, unprofitable, quenched in our enthusiasm, blinded in our hopes, blunted in our enterprises. We want, like David, draughts from the water
^ H. Black, " Browning, SavZ.
DEUT.-ESTH. — 24
370 THE WELL BY THE GATE
of the well at Bethlehem, where we can renew our youth, and forget the darkness of the cave, the heartlessness of the foes, and the dull weight of defeats, which lie between us and the past.
^ A boy at school has not yet become, thank God, a bankrupt in spent pleasures. He is not that miserable creature whom you see lounging round the amphitheatre of life, languidly wondering whether the prizes which it offers are after all worth the trouble of contesting them. He is not that pitiable being who has lost all beauty out of nature, all refinement from art, all the subtler joys of simple life, in the frantic plunge after pleasure, followed by a brutal incapacity for enjoyment, and who "sees a blight in every flower, a canker in every fruit, and a baldness on the head of every prophet." ^
3. There are some persons, no doubt, who tell us that all this is mere sentimentality, that it is all a mistake, that people regard the days of youth with affection only because they are far off and out of reach ; or that, at any rate, it is very foolish and very unprofitable to cry over what is past recall, and to indulge in feelings which are weak and enervating, and which may unfit them for the practical business of the present hour. Well, no doubt it is possible to be mawkish and feebly sentimental about the past, and to waste to-day in useless regrets for that which is beyond recovery. But we pity the man or woman who cannot feel, at moments, as David felt, when he turned from the heat and burden of a busy, harassed life, and thought of the quiet fields of Bethlehem and the sheepfolds, and of the sweet cool water of the well by the gate, and the dear memories of childhood, youth, and home. Do you suppose David was unnerved and enfeebled and rendered less capable of facing the rough, hard cares and troubles and difficulties of life because his mind was carried back, with a great rush of love, to the days that were no more — the golden days of the morning of life ?
Far from that. It is well now and then to go back in thought, and drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem that is by the gate. It is well to go back to the unstained memories and associations of the dawn of life ; to recall the glowing dreams and visions of boyhood and girlhood ; to think of the time when the mind first awoke, and the mystery and splendour of life lay
^ Cauon Newbolt.
2 SAMUEL XXIII. 15 371
unfolded before us ; to rebuild in fancy the world where we lirst began to know and understand the high lessons of duty and obedience, and received on our souls the first impress of those Divine truths which " wake to perish never," and remain
The fountain-light of all our day, The master-light of all our seeing.
To think of these things when the cares and troubles of life press heavily on us, and when the heart is sore, and the feet are weary, and the world grows cold and grey, is often to find new strength and hope and courage for the necessary work of life.
^ " Forty years after Dr. Kidd's death, my father was stopped by an elderly woman as he was walking in the neighbom-hood of Eose Street, Dundee. She wore an apron, under which she seemed to carry a parcel. This she took from its hiding-place just as my father and she met each other. It was a little portrait in a paltry frame, the same likeness of Dr. Kidd that does duty as a frontispiece of some of his books. 'You'll mind wha that is,' said she. My father looked at the engraving, and replied that he well remembered the Doctor. ' I'm but a puir body,' continued the woman, ' I get aff the Buird ' (the Parochial Board), ' but I saw the pictur' a while syne in a broker's shop — it was ninepence, and I saved up till I was able to buy it.' And then she told how the Doctor used to preach in the Chapelshade Kirk on fast-days or communion Sabbaths when she was a lassie, and how much spiritual good she had got from his ministrations there, few and far between as his appearances must have been. ' I sometimes think,' added she, •' that I can hear his voice reading in the Revelations yet.'"^
We leave the simple master-words of life
Behind us with the toys of childhood's years, Whilst in the book-bound wisdom of the seers
We seek some scant equipment for the strife.
All nature's lore and tenderness we spurn, Alone fare forth in search of gold or fame, And then look backward through the dust and shame,