The Spirit of David and the Spirit of Christ.
In the “Free Parliament,” in the first number of the Golden Age, stands an article from the pen of the editor, Theodore Tilton, entitled “The Two Religions.” It would perhaps be unfair to regard it as a formal confession of faith—or unbelief—made by the editor as he takes his seat in the chair of public instruction, but it is, at least, a significant index of the character which his journal will bear, and of the direction in which its influence will be thrown. The writer congratulates us on the steady amelioration of the moral and religious nature of man. He does not believe with Jean Ingelow in one of her recent poems, that “Still this green world grows worse, the longer that she rolls;” and in this we fully agree with him, but we do not accept his illustrations of the fact. He finds proof of this moral betterment in the contrast which he imagines he has discovered between the “wrathful imprecations of the Hebrew psalmist and the mild maxims of the sermon on the mount—between David and the ‘Son of David.’” He speaks of the imprecatory passage in the book of Psalms as “fiery maledictions, lighted as by a brand from hell,” and declares that the Christian principle of the forgiveness of enemies had not then been discovered in morals. He is willing to admit that the golden rule is of greater antiquity than Christ, and dates back five hundred years before the Christian era, to Confucius, but “it nowhere blossomed,” he avers, “on the thorny stem of the Hebraistic faith.” In farther illustration of their contradictory spirit, he contrasts the death of David with the death of Christ. David in his dying hour remembered two of his enemies, Joab and Shimei, and the spirit of revenge leaped up within him, “like the flame of an expiring candle.” Though “dying in his own palace, lying in a peaceful chamber, surrounded by affectionate weepers, he could not pass out of life in a spirit of charity to all mankind; but heating his heart once more to its old hates, he decreed against two powerless men the pitiless sentence that they should be brought down in hoary age to bloody graves; while on the other hand, the Sufferer of Calvary, hanging on a cross, crowned with thorns, accompanied with malefactors, surrounded with torturing persecutors, looking from his enemies to Heaven, exclaimed, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’” Now, we admit a progressive revelation in morals as in truth. The rules of holy living are more fully revealed under the New Testament, even as we know more than Abraham, or David, or Daniel, knew of the character, the purposes, and the works, of God. The morality of the New Testament is more advanced than that of the Old, and the church is a purer and more spiritual body than she was before her Lord visited her on the earth. And as the mercy of God has been chiefly illustrated under the New Testament, so the grace of charity and forgiveness has attained a larger development in the breast of New Testament believers. The ages between the fall of man and the coming of man’s Saviour were mainly a dispensation of law, ruled by the idea of justice, and designed to prepare the world for the full revelation of mercy in the sacrificial death of Christ and the wide proclamation of the gospel. Thus the law was a school-master to bring the world to Christ. But to assert that the Christian idea of forgiveness was unknown to the Old Testament saints is to deny that God was then known to be a merciful God. The writer forgets the voice which Moses heard in Mount Sinai proclaiming the name of the Lord: “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth.” He forgets that the New Testament contains no more impressive exhibition of the fatherly character of God than David himself gives us in the 103d Psalm. “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. . . . He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. . . . Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” He forgets that the words of Christ, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” are a quotation from one of the earliest books of the Old Testament (Lev. 19:18, 34), and that the command, “Be ye holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy,” lifted the Jewish as well as the Christian conscience up not only toward the justice, but toward the clemency, of God. Lev. 19:2. He forgets that it is the New Testament which declares in words whose severity no Hebrew prophet surpassed, “Our God is a consuming fire;” “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God;” and that David uttered no maledictions more terrible than the words of Jesus: “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Perhaps he means to forestall this argument123when he says that not Christ himself was “a Christian, as he meant a Christian to be. He made the standard so high that his own excellence could not reach to the height of it;” and fortifies this declaration by the Saviour’s words: “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” His shallow study of the words does not enable him to see that the divine Teacher there addresses one who does not believe in him as God, but who imagines that human teachers can point out, and human hands can accomplish such good deeds as would merit eternal life. The Saviour answers him on the basis of his own assumption as to the mere humanity of Jesus, and with a word which denies the possibility of absolute goodness to any but God, but which neither asserts nor denies his own goodness or his own divinity. His answer does declare, however, that pure goodness is to be ascribed to none but God, and it lends a weighty significance to his other words: “I am the Good Shepherd.” The writer thus expressly denies the moral perfection and, therefore, the divinity of Jesus, and the inspiration of the book of Psalms. Of a very large portion of this book he declares that it is “lighted as with a brand from hell;” not by the Spirit which sat in flaming splendor on the heads of the disciples at Pentecost. It breathes the malice of an unforgiving, human heart; not the grace of a merciful God. And this sweeping conclusion is based on the most superficial view of the passages in question. It is characteristic of nearly all rationalistic criticism that it treats the Scriptures with a haste and shallowness born of its preconceived contempt for them. Compare Renan and Strauss, for painstaking, and thorough investigation with Stier and Hengstenberg, and Tholuck and Alfred! Two knights met at a point where a monumental shield had been set up in commemoration of some former victory. Halting at a proper distance from each other, allusion was made by one to the brazen shield, which was corrected by the other, who saw it to be a shield of iron. When the difference had grown into a dispute, and the dispute had provoked a challenge, and the two knights lay unhorsed and wounded at the foot of the monument, they discovered that the shield was of brass on one side and of iron on the other. With equal rashness the rationalist looks on the Psalms of David and the sermon on the mount, and says, “They contradict each other.” A closer and more sober view perceives that there is an element of justice in the divine character as well as an element of love; that God is a father, and also a judge, and that these aspects of his character, though different, are not contradictory. The one predominates in the Old Testament, the other in the New, but neither to the exclusion of the other. David was a king, a magistrate. In this office he was set to maintain law, to dispense justice, to detect, arraign, and punish, the guilty. Was it wrong for him to pray for success in this work? Yet his success involved the punishment, even by death, of the incorrigible enemies of society. He was the leader of the armies of Israel. Might he not pray for success in battle? Yet victory means death and bereavement to multitudes. These words of David speak of no private quarrel. They breathe no personal hatred. They plead for the cause of Israel and of God, against its violent and implacable assailants. Thus these words pass over into the lips of Christ, earth’s present Ruler, of whom David was a type and who illustrates these prayers by his punishment of sin in men and nations. The spirit of David and the Spirit of Christ are identical. These are the words of Christ. He used these psalms in his devotions. His apostles declare that the Holy Ghost spoke before, in these imprecations, concerning Judas. Acts 1:16–20. Whoever is unable to reconcile these utterances with the sermon on the mount should first eliminate such facts as the recent humiliation of France or the overthrow of American slavery from the same Redeemer’s government of the world. “But why pray against the innocent and helpless wives and children of transgressors? Why say, ‘Let his wife be a widow and his children fatherless?’” There are ever some who speak too lightly and flippantly of God’s judgments, who forget how terrible and how far-reaching are their effects. In these words the Spirit of God instructs us that, under the existing structure of society, judgment on the fathers involves the suffering of their households. The punishment of national sins involves the misery of unborn generations. Not as an intemperate utterance of malice, but in the interest of mercy and compassion, these words are placed in the psalm. They are designed to remind us how fearful are the judgments for which we are warranted to pray, and to act as a restraint on the light and heedless invocation of judicial dispensations. “Let there be none to extend mercy unto him, neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.” These words do not mean, “Let his children famish for lack of bread which no man will give,” but “let there be none to favor them for their father’s sake or for the sake of the cause in which their fathers perished.” The citizen who does not desire the time when the children of Jefferson Davis and Robt. E. Lee will be ashamed to tell their ancestry, is not loyal to his country. Mr. Tilton desires it as fervently as any one, and shares to the full the spirit of the psalm which he maligns. The State of Pennsylvania has gathered 5,053 soldiers’ orphans into homes and schools which she has provided for them. The expenses of these schools last year were 514,000 dollars. These children are not actually more needy than thousands of others in our State, but we show them favor for the sake of the cause in which their fathers died. We do not care thus for children orphaned in the cause of the rebellion, and no Southern State would be allowed to tax its citizens to show special favor to these representatives of a lost cause. Yet that is not inconsistent with a charity which would gladly gather these and all other orphans into homes established either by private munificence or public bounty. As to Joab and Shimei, they had been guilty of the highest crimes against God and society. Justice, not personal revenge, had ever since demanded their punishment, but David lacked the moral courage, or was scarcely secure enough in his royal seat, to inflict it. “I am weak though anointed king, and these sons of Zeruiah be too hard for me. The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to his wickedness.” Yet David remembered that there was a God who “makes inquisition for blood,” and who holds “the land” guilty for blood, shed and unavenged. He knew there was guilt on his throne and his kingdom for the unpunished crimes of these men, and that though vengeance might slumber till he was gone, it would not sleep forever. For the safety of Solomon’s throne, and because Solomon, coming to the kingdom under happier auspices, was well able to do that from which he had shrunk, he charged him not to evade this righteous responsibility. No gleam of personal bitterness lights up these solemn passages. They recognize a plain and most certain principle of the divine government, a principle which is in full force and receives abundant illustration at the present day. The presumptuous spirit which condemns the Bible so bitterly on such superficial study of its meaning, deserves to be rebuked by every painstaking scholar, and by every lover of thoroughness and honesty, as mental as well as moral obliquity.—Christian Statesman.