1. The story of Delilah, either Philistine maiden or Hebrew maiden, is one of the most graphic in the pages of the Old Testament. Bribed by the lords of the Philistines to discover the secret of the champion's strength, at first her wiles were unavailing. Three times Delilah tried to draw from him the secret of his strength. Three times Samson drugged his own conscience by telling a lie to her. Yet he was so helpless in the coils of the temptress that he failed to rouse himself in defence of his own manhood. The man who dallies with temptation as Samson did is doomed. With unholy persistence Delilah made a supreme attempt to accomplish her ends. Asked the fourth time for the secret of his strength, Samson replied that if his locks were shorn his strength would be gone. The secret gained by so much deceit was immediately sold to the enemy. When a fourth time the challenge, “Samson! the Philistines be upon thee,” fell on his heavy ears, he rose with a determination to display again his wonderful strength.
His virtue gone, his vow broken, he staggered out to grapple with his foes, and he put forth his hands to fight, “for he wist not that the Lord was departed from him”; but the unhappy man found that his great power had gone from him. He handled himself as in the times past, but nothing came of it. He was powerless. His foes did as they pleased with him. They put out his eyes! They bound his ponderous limbs with fetters of brass, thrust him into a prison-house, and forced him to grind at their machines! He was a God-deserted man.
It is one of the most pathetic pictures of the Bible. Job sitting on the ash-heap and cursing the day of his birth has less of tragedy in it. Jeremiah bemoaning the lost condition of his beloved land, sad as is the sight, almost reaches the sublime of pathos; but great Samson, fighting himself, putting his defunct forces into line only to find himself utterly beaten and wholly ruined, is a sight to stir the pity of God and men.
Burns, Sheridan, Béranger, and many another, are sad illustrations of the spirit of self-indulgence. Now and again we hear of a sudden judgment overtaking those whom nature has made very attractive by the gift of a sunny, bright disposition, and varied powers of the Spirit. They have used their popularity to press home the gospel of God-men like Samson, of wit and humour, faith and spiritual insight, and at times capable of great religious enthusiasm. For a time their name and what they accomplish is in everyone's mouth; and then there is an ugly rumour, a hurried flight, and the man is known no more. Religious people are perplexed. Was he not a consecrated man and under vows? Did he not at times sweep men off their feet by the exercise of his gifts? What then means this fall? It means that he never mastered himself, was never really under discipline. He controlled part of his nature, but not the whole; never really distinguished between liberty and licence; whilst rejoicing in the wonderful truths of the gospel which he taught with such power and abundance of illustration, yet in the meantime he allowed the enemy to creep in and take the citadel.1 [Note: G. H. S. Walpole, Personality and Power, 148.]
Thrice I deluded her, and turn'd to sport
Her importunity, each time perceiving
How openly, and with what impudence
She purpos'd to betray me; and (which was worse
Than undissembl'd hate) with what contempt
She sought to make me traitor to myself:
Yet the fourth time, when mustring all her wiles,
With blandisht parlies, feminine assaults,
Tongue-batteries, she surceas'd not day nor night
To storm me over-watch't, and wearied out,
At times when men seek most repose and rest,
I yielded, and unlock'd her all my heart;
Who with a grain of manhood well resolv'd,
Might easily have shook off all her snares:
But foul effeminacy held me yok't
Her bond-slave; O indignity, O blot
To honour and religion! servile mind,
Rewarded well with servile punishment!
The base degree to which I now am fall'n,
These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base
As was my former servitude, ignoble,
Unmanly, ignominious, infamous,
True slavery, and that blindness worse than this,
That saw not how degenerately I serv'd.1 [Note: Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 396 ff.]
2. Twenty years have passed since Samson, endowed with superhuman powers, began his judgeship. Yet by his strength and his courage, by his battles, his jokes, and his various activities, he has accomplished practically nothing of the task he had been appointed to perform, the task to which he had deliberately dedicated his life. Near the close of the twenty years Samson himself is lying supine upon the breast of the ablest, the most patriotic, and the most fascinating of Philistine women. Surely something must be wrong; something for which not Delilah alone is responsible; something which cannot be explained by the theory of a moment's amiable weakness in Samson himself.
When Samson yielded to an irrational impulse and revealed his secret, he only did once more what he had been doing all his life. He had been entrusted with an important mission. He had been furnished with abilities adequate to its demands. He was allowed twenty years to complete his work. Instead of setting himself to do it like a man, because it was given him to do, he worked only when the impulse seized him-when it was therefore easier for him to work than to play. Thus even the right things he did trained him steadily to be more and more the slave of his impulses; and when at last the impulse to do wrong came upon him, he obeyed it precisely as an untrained cat scratches, and an untrained horse kicks. That fact explains why the magnificent Samson was at last compelled to grind meal in the mills of his enemies, though the sordid and servile Jacob came in due time to be the prince of Israel.
There must be moral as well as physical strength. There must be the courage that stands to its convictions, whatever people may think or say. The hardest mouth to face is not the cannon's. It is rather that from whose throat comes the insistent roar of the fickle populace. The majestic strength of royal manhood treats this as an elephant does a fly. There are temptations to be resisted. Nothing short of moral strength suffices for this. Innumerable iniquities solicit tolerance or indulgence, and, if yielded to, they will damn here as well as hereafter. Strength means moral courage, and ability to stand against ridicule and popular clamour. Strength is not like the willow that bends low to every breeze, but rather like the oak that stands stiff in the tempest, or like the granite cliff against which the mad sea dashes itself to pieces, or like the mountains that lift their calm faces toward the silent stars defiant of all the bluff of storm. This is what it means to be strong, and before such a life the world makes way. Strong in purpose and strong in action; strong within and strong without; strong against foes that are seen and strong against foes that are unseen; all the way up and all the way down, all the way round and all the way through; first, last and always-strong! It needs neither title nor crown to argue the imperial majesty of such manhood.1 [Note: J. I. Vance, Royal Manhood, 34.]
Whom have I to complain of but myself?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodg'd, how easily bereft me,
Under the seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it,
O'ercome with importunity and tears.
O impotence of mind, in body strong!
But what is strength, without a double share
Of wisdom? vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest subtleties; not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
God, when He gave me strength, to show withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.2 [Note: Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 47 ff.]
