Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 299. His Attractiveness
Subjects in this Topic:
His Attractiveness
Speaking of Dr. Chalmers, Dr. John Brown says: He was like Agamemnon, a native ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν, and there was about him “that divinity that doth hedge a king.” You felt a power, in him, and going from him, drawing you to him in spite of yourself. He was in this respect a solar man, he drew after him his own firmament of planets. They, like all free agents, had their centrifugal forces acting ever towards an independent, solitary course, but the centripetal also was there, and they moved with and around their imperial sun,-gracefully or not, willingly or not, as the case might be, but there was no breaking loose: they again, in their own spheres of power, might have their attendant moons, but all were bound to the great massive luminary in the midst. There is to us a continual mystery in this power of one man over another. We find it acting everywhere, with the simplicity, the ceaselessness, the energy of gravitation; and we may be permitted to speak of this influence as obeying similar conditions; it is proportioned to bulk-for we hold to the notion of a bigness in souls as well as bodies-one soul differing from another in quantity and momentum as well as in quality and force, and its intensity increases by nearness.1 [Note: Dr. John Brawn, Horœ Subsecivœ, ii. 117.]
2. Nor was this devotion and admiration undeserved. A brave and successful warrior, who had fought many a campaign against his country's foes, he safely led and ruled the rough men who gathered round him as an outlaw. His justice was experienced alike by Nabal's shepherds and by his own followers; his concern for his followers' lives was seen when he would not drink the water from the well of Bethlehem. Hasty and passionate he could be, even in his zeal for justice; but far more marked is his signal generosity. He was possessed of what may be termed a chivalrous sense of honour, and it is that which gives such a romantic colouring to his life and especially to his earlier years. Again and again it was in his power to put Saul out of the way and set the crown on his own head. He had but to lift his hand, to give a sign to one of his followers; indeed, he had but to turn away his eyes and for a moment to intermit his watchfulness of his followers, and Saul would have been no longer an obstacle. Saul, too, had been repudiated as God's king, and he himself had been anointed. It was by his own fierce spirit of hatred that Saul had put himself in David's power. Was this not a clear suggestion of Providence that David should make away with his enemy? But as King Arthur's knight Pelleas could not slay the sleeping friend who had so grossly betrayed him, but thought it sufficient rebuke to lay his naked sword across his throat, so David could not lift his spear against the Lord's anointed, but judged it enough to rebuke his enmity by showing him that he had been in his power.
Wide open were the gates,
And no watch kept; and in thro' these he past,
And heard but his own steps, and his own heart
Beating, for nothing moved but his own self,
And his own shadow. Then he crost the court,
And spied not any light in hall or bower,
But saw the postern portal also wide …
Then was he ware of three pavilions rear'd …
And in the third were Gawain and Ettarre …
Back, as a coward slinks from what he fears
To cope with, or a traitor proven, or hound
Beaten, did Pelleas in an utter shame
Creep with his shadow thro' the court again,
Fingering at his sword-handle until he stood
There on the castle-bridge once more, and thought,
“I will go back, and slay them where they lie.”
And so went back, and seeing them yet in sleep
Said, “Ye, that so dishallow the holy sleep,
Your sleep is death,” and drew the sword, and thought,
“What! slay a sleeping knight? the King hath bound
And sworn me to this brotherhood”; again
“Alas that ever a knight should be so false.”
Then turn'd, and so return'd, and groaning laid
The naked sword athwart their naked throats,
There left it, and them sleeping.1 [Note: Tennyson, Idylls of the King-Pelleas and Ettarre.]
3. This romantic aspect of the character of David was due to the markedly affectionate side of his disposition. No words ever described the intensity of friendship so well as David's lament over Jonathan. His passionate grief over the sickness of Bathsheba's firstborn child and his sorrow at the death of Absalom, reveal the deep tenderness of his nature. As long as the Bible is read, the words, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” will be typical of the fullest expression of paternal love and affliction. Even in the story of his sin the same warm and impulsive character is displayed. Nothing, not even the circumstances of a wild and lawless age, can condone David's crime; but in the completeness of his repentance the character of a tenderhearted and generous man is revealed.
Catherine saw in human beings not their achievements, but their possibilities. Therefore she quickened repentance by a positive method, not by morbid analysis of evil, not by lurid pictures of the consequences of sin, but by filling the soul with glowing visions of that holiness which to see is to long for. She never despaired of quickening in even the most degraded that flame of “holy desire” which is the earnest of true holiness to be. We find her impatient of mint and cummin, of over-anxious self-scrutiny. “Strive that your holy desires increase,” she writes to a correspondent; “and let all these other things alone.” “I, Catherine-write to you-with desire,” so open all her letters. Holy Desire! It is not only the watchword of her teaching: it is also the true key to her personality.2 [Note: V. D. Scudder, Saint Catherine of Siena, as Seen in Her Letters. 7.]