The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Samuel — Section 423

Ing and heavy-laden. He had powerful attraction for all who were distressed. And from the day when he took op & position apart from the rulers of the Jews, though he headed no movement of resistance, it became more and more obvious that those rulers had lost the favour of Jehovah, and had nothing before them but thickening disaster and a final collapse of their power like that of Saul on Mount Gilboa. The only hope of Israel thenceforth was with and in the despised and rejected One who bad been born in David's city and of David's line. So it is still. It is Jesus Christ, &B rejected of men, humbled, crucified, who appeals to human hearts. Who will go out to him, "without the camp, bearing bis reproach "? ·who will repair to hi'm at the cave of Adullam? Not the proud, nor the thoughtless, nor the self-satisfied; but the distressed, the ruined, and the berea,ed will go; and over such he is willing to be Captain. Let them come to him, and his life is thenceforward bound up with theirs, and· theirs with his. With him they are "in safeguard" till the end of the tribulation ; and when the King appears in his great power these will appear with him in glory; the trials of Adullam more than recompensed by the joys of ~ew Jerusalem. II. THE POSITION OP' SEPARATION. When is it jnetified? David and his followers went apart from the common life of their conntrymen, and renounced all idea of rendering service or occupying any post of honour under Saul. Jesus Christ and his disciples broke with the course of the Jewish and Galilean world in which they lived, and took up a position quile aloof from the priests, elders, and scribes. What is the duty of modem Christians towards the society aronnd them? Are they to come out and be separate? Some persons have almost a craze for separation, and support it on this story of Adullam. They hold it to be the duty of Christians to stand aloof from all the existing order of things, and all the plans and occupations of society; to accept no office in the State, and be subject to the powers that be only in the sense in which David continued subject to Saul ; and to come out from all organi~ed historical Churches, on the gronnd that they contain worldly elements and principles, and are therefore impure and ready to perish. All this seems tons extra,agant in theory and uncharitable in spirit. Separation from e.il does not mean alienation from every place and e¥ery institution in which a fault can be found. For good men to hold aloof from public a1hirs is simply to play into the bands of evil-doers ; and to separate from every Church that has a faulty element in it is to disintegrate Christian society, and miserably embitter it in the process. But we must hold the balance true. It may be one's duty to separate himself from institutions of both Church and State nnder which he was born. As to ci.il-institutions, this is plain enough. As to ecclesiastical relations, there are critical times when, as it was right for Israelites to separate from Saul and go over to David, so it has been and is right for Christians to withdraw from positions which they could not correct or amend, and go over to some simpler and purer expression of their faith and hope. On this ground we justify without hesitation the erection of reformed Churches in the sixteenth century apart from the unreformed. The Papal system had a long trial, and was found wanting. Such men as Wickliffe, Savonarola, and Huss uied t•J correct its errors and rouse a new spirit within its pale, just as David played on hi,; harp to cure the mania of King Saul. It was labour lost. That which was e,·:I grew worse. The tyranny which hung over ,vestem Christendom became intoler- . able. Then they did wisely and well who threw off the yoke and beg:m afresh. with the word of God for their directory, and the Son of God, who became Sun of David, for their Captain. On the same ground we justify those who now-a-days break away from the same Papal infallible, and therefore incurable, system to j0in or to organise a reformed Church. And we add that those who do so in a Roman Catholic country, like Spain or Italy, to worship with some small evangelical congregation in a hall, mocked and despised, show a courage not at all inferior to that of the four hundred who defied the power of Saul, and flocked around David in the cave of Adnllam. Those men did not lift their swords against Saul. David did not desire them to do so. He saw something still to honour in that king, and knew that the throne would be vacated without any assistance from him. So, in that system of infatuation and spiritual tyranny which centres at Rome, there is something of that common Christianity which we must re¥erence, and ag:1inst which we may not fight.  THE FrnST BOOK OF SAMUEL. [en. XXII. 1-:-28.