CHAPTER XXXV.

DAVID.

"I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, who shall do all my will." Acts xiii, 22.

"Who lends mighty aid to His King,

Shows favor to His anointed,

To David and to his descendants forever."

Psalm xviii, 50 in Polychrome Bible.

It is not easy to bring ourselves to form in our minds a correct picture of the historical David. His reign and his personality appeared so glorious and strong to the succeeding generations of reverent Israelites, that an idealizing tradition gradually attributed to him much which should be credited, as we have now learned, to the noble and inspired men who came after him. The real David we have reflected, not in the psalter, but in the books of Samuel.1 He was a man of strong character, possessed of a personality wonderfully attractive and inspiring. True, it has some dark aspects, if

See the articles" David" in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible and the Encyclopedia Biblica, also "The Historical David" in the New World, September 1895, pp. 540-560.

we judge it by the standards of our own time, but these grew out of the rough age in which he lived. They prevent us from regarding him as the ideal saint which tradition has delighted to paint him, but, unless he had so transcended his time as to have been quite useless in it, he could not have escaped such faults. Apart from these he was a healthy, brave, generous and attractive character.

An Old Testament writer,' who is quoted in the book of Acts, described him as "a man after Jehovah's own heart," which meant, as the context shows, that he possessed the necessary qualities of warrior and organizer to bring Israel into a position where she could fulfill the destiny as a nation, which Jehovah designed for her. It was not the inner qualities of heart, such as we now conceive that man to possess whom we regard as most closely representative of the divine purpose, but the more external qualities of general and king of which this was said. At a time when Jehovah was considered the God of battles the man 11 Sam. xiii, 14.

"after His own heart" must naturally be a merciless warrior. Such a man could not be the author of the most spiritual psalms, but he could weld the disorganized Israelitish federation into a compact empire.

This was the real work of David, and it was this that made him the genuine type of Christ. It is an historical fact that David made the Messianic idea possible in Israel. "Messiah" is but the Hebrew word for "Anointed one." In the early time it meant king, for then kings only were annointed.1 David completed the work of making Israel a nation, which was begun by Saul. He united the tribes; he conquered and made tributary the enemies by which they had been surrounded; he established an empire which extended from Egypt to the Euphrates, and which became in all subsequent generations the ideal of the Hebrew dominion. In days of national disaster, when the dominion of Israel had been diminished or destroyed, prophetic and believing hearts turned longingly back to the figure and the

See 1 Sam. xti, 3, 5; etc., and the writer's article "Anointing," in the Jewish Encyclopedia, and above, ch. vii.

reign of David, and their imaginations were kindled by the memory. He became the ideal of the Messianic king, and his kingdom, of the Messianic kingdom. David the conqueror, the founder of an empire of the faithful, is thus the physical germ,-half. barbarous as his rule may now seem,-from which our conception of Christ, the Son of God, the king of the truth has been gradually made by God to grow.

As

This warrior, then, who subdued and united Israel is the type of Him who subdues and unites our hearts. As David made Israel free from her oppressors, so the Christ makes free from old, besetting sins. David made those oppressors tributary, so He makes tributary to the spiritual life of His followers those appetites and passions which inhere in the body, and those circumstances of environment which tend to destroy the spiritual life. The kingdom of David thus becomes the type of that kingdom to which we all look forward, and which will be established when the spirit of Christ has permeated all so that the "kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our lord and of His Christ."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

SOLOMON.

'Behold, the half was not told me." 1 Kings x, 7.

"Fell luxury! more perilous to youth

Than storm of quicksands, poverty or chains."
-Hannah More.

SOLOMON stands, as the Bible tells us the story of his life, for the enervating and demoralizing power of excessive luxury. He was a man possessed of rare natural powers, who in his youth felt the inspiration of high aspirations and noble impulses. The record of his choice of wisdom rather than wealth bespeaks for the young Solomon a rare spirit. Too often the glamor of wealth blinds the hearts of the young to the value of wisdom. The fame of the wisdom of Solomon, like David's fame as a warrior and poet, was such that in later generations it attracted to his name the work of many others; but notwithstanding all this the life of Solomon does not, on the whole, stand for wisdom, but for the deleterious effects of extravagance and luxury.