We too often all is that we would fain get to the end too fast. forget, what a vast work has to be done in us, and how long it is to last, and we want to get to the end of our labour far sooner than the divine mercy and wisdom of the Lord can permit it to be done. Hence we have in our spiritual progress many failures. We have premature births and deaths before the time. Our children are not born strong enough; we have been in too great a hurry. We hasten to be rich in spiritual things as we do in natural affairs. We do not work and wait as all great artists do for perfection, but we labour for quantity. Hence we often do what Scripture calls to conceive chaff (Isa. xxxiii. 11). Our goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away (Hosea v. 4). This mistake of our nature is often referred to in the Word, and often represented. Jacob's wish to have Rachel before Leah was an instance of this latter kind. David's taking Bathsheba before the time, and the unhealthy result of this feeble dying child, are representative of the same unsound result. It represents sentimentality and morbid piety, not steady growth by obedience to the truth. A sickly spirit of religion, piety without justice, and a true regard to right is sure sooner or later to die. Bathsheba was to be the mother of Solomon, but all in order and due time. Celestial states cannot be forced, any more than good earthly fruit can. In earthly things we know a child should be a child, a boy should be a boy: a boy that is a premature old man lacks the good qualities of both. It is so in religion: if a person affects states and feelings that are not the genuine growth of real knowledge, real learning, real virtuous struggles in the trials of life, real piety and real love to the Lord, affecting to be more pious and celestial than they really are, his religion is sentimentality, and ere long it will sicken and die. We should not seek to be high-flown in our feelings, and celestial before the time, but very sensible of our deficiencies and humbly good. Peter was very demonstrative. He was ever ready to declare for His Master, to follow Him and die for Him he said. But, we know how miserably he failed when he was really tried. His faith was then an imaginative dream, it had not yet grown into principle. So David's taking the beautiful Bathsheba, whose name signifies the seventh daughter, before the time, represents the endeavour to become celestial before the state has really been attained. The result will be a sickly child, and it will die. How often such premature states of imaginative piety are let down in the realities of life abundant experience shews. The mercy of the Lord is so good to us, that we often suppose the states of peace which we enjoy are the fruits of our advanced states in regeneration. Often, however, a change comes. We are let into ourselves. Clouds gather round, feelings we had supposed to be entirely subdued rise up again, and we are astonished at ourselves. Our bright thoughts, our states of innocence and joy, have all passed away, and we doubt whether we really have advanced at all in the heavenly life. Such self-revealings are often most distressing. We weep, we fast, we humble ourselves, but all that is not based in steady truth must die. Much of the early bloom on many a fruit-tree is inherently weak, and must fall off when the bitter winds of spring come. So is it with the bloom of the soul. It is mixed up with weaknesses and impurities which destroy its strength and taint its beauty. Troubles will come. Our sky will be covered with gloom. We shall see our sins, and feel condemned. Our hopes and comforts for a season at least will all die, and we shall take up the pathetic sentiments of the poet "Where is the blessedness I knew O for a closer walk with God, A calm and heavenly frame That leads me to the Lamb. Such is the spiritual state that is represented by David's sorrow over his dying child. It will not however avert the calamity. The cup of sorrow must be drunk after sin. If our religion has failed in sober earnestness; and been imaginative and sentimental, its hollowness will appear in due season, and like an untimely birth it will pass away. soon. But, when we see its weak and frail nature, and humble ourselves before the Lord, when we examine ourselves, and confess our faults and follies, we may rest assured of a happier season This state will die, but it will not perish; it will only go before. It will be preserved in our interiors, our inner heaven. And in due season, if we are faithful and true to the Lord Jesus, our souls will become celestial. We shall go to Him; but He will not return to us. SERMON XXIV. DAVID DRIVEN OUT OF JERUSALEM, BY THE REBELLION OF ABSALOM. "And the king, and all the people that were with him, came weary, and refreshed themselves. And Absalom, and all the people, the men of Israel, came to Jerusalem, and Ahithophel with him."—2 SAM. xvi. 14, 15. To those who do not think much and deeply on divine things, it is not easy to conceive that lessons of heavenly wisdom, equally varied in their character and applying to the human mind, arise from the numerous particulars that are given in the sacred narratives. They could readily apprehend the spiritual meaning of a battle. They know good and evil, truth and falsehood are antagonistic, and strive against each other. But, when they go beyond that general idea, for want of deep reflection and steady observation they fail to perceive clearly the diversities of mind and life which nevertheless are in full play around them. The varieties of character and principle are innumerable. Were the condition of human life so that on one side you saw the purely good, and on the other side the altogether bad, there would not be much difficulty in understanding the state of things, or in taking a side. But human life, and human souls are things far too varied, multiform, and complex for such easy observation and decision. And how varied is human society! In what curious and ever changing proportions do you find human feelings, principles and sentiments blended together. Some persons are truly conscientious and upright; but with notions so narrowed by prejudice, that in their demeanour they are exclusive and unamiable. Others are very good, but very weak. Others again are very good, but very stern. Some are rigid in precept, but in practice loose, others in doctrine less precise, but in conduct unimpeachable. Some are very imperfect indeed in their views, but their lives are resplendent with every virtue, others most correct in their sentiments, but with weaknesses over which the angels weep. Innumerable shades and grades of thought, principle, and practice meet us everywhere. Life is an immense kaleidescope presenting change perpetually. There are not only great virtues and small faults; and great faults redeemed by some excellencies; great mental powers allied to strange follies; but there are curious inconsistencies on all sides. There are happy inconsistencies, where persons are far more liberal than their professed sentiments; and unhappy inconsistencies, where justice, charity, order, piety are constantly in the mouth and the dogma, but very little of them to be seen in the daily actions. To represent these wonderful and countless varieties of character and life, then, we need not be astonished that the Word contains narratives and incidents very numerous, and very interesting in the letter of the sacred page, and exhibiting to man, for the instruction of all ages the mirrored reflections of himself. As the persons move in the history, so the principles they represent move in him. "The proper study of mankind is man." We have David in the divine narrative before us, opposed and for the time driven from his capital and his throne by his own, his eldest son. That spiritual things may be thus represented we may be convinced by the instances the apostle Paul gives of Abraham and Sarah, Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael, which things he said are an allegory (Gal. iv. 24). Abraham, in that case, he shews represented the Lord. Hagar the bond-woman and her son represented the Jewish Church and her members,—her children which were in the bondage of a merely external and burdensome religion. The free-woman Sarah and her son represented the Christian religion with its freedom, because of its illumination by higher, broader, more spiritual principles, which would purify the heart and mind, and thus rectify the life, and make the practice of virtue a constant joy: the glorious liberty of the children of light. The counterpart of this is given in this history of David and Absalom, and the latter's rebellion against his father. we may say, "These things are an allegory." Again, David represented the Lord, Absalom, his eldest son by a Syrian woman, the Jewish church with all its rituals, ceremonies, and ordinances, heaven directed and ordained in beautiful order; like Absalom's beautiful person and hair, but rebelling against Him, and driving Him out of His own Church, by making His commandments of love of none effect by their traditions. "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider" (Isa. iv. 2, 3). David had several wives and concubines, and several sons. And just as Abraham's two wives represented churches, and his sons their members: so David's wives, concubines and children were also in like manner representative of the Lord's connections and conjunctions with His people, and the different characters thus formed. The mother of Absalom was Maacha, the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur. The small kingdom of Geshur was in Syria (2 Sam. xv. 8). And Syria, when the Jewish Church was founded, from having been the former seat of the church, as was manifest from the names of its cities and prominent parts, had sunk down so as to be the depository only of more knowledge of heavenly things than others had. Balaam was a son of the East, -a Syrian. The wise men of the East who came to worship the infant Saviour, and brought gold and frankincense and myrrh, were also Syrians, and their journey and their offerings prove that much heavenly knowledge still existed among that people. All these circumstances manifest the sort of character represented by Absalom. Maacha, the name of his mother, means CONSTRAINT. She was the daughter of Talmai, whose name means an OBSTRUCTOR OF WATERS. Geshur, the kingdom he ruled over, signifies THE SIGHT OF THE VALLEY. Absalom then represents such as are born of the Lord the divine David, but in the minds of those who are very external look too much to the valley, and whose religion is one of constraint, not of affection. In such minds there is a distaste for truth there is the influence of an obstructor of the waters there. Purifying and refreshing truths are not wanted there. : The young man was very beautiful, and his hair was very abundant, and very fine. "In all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. And when he polled his head, for it was at every year's end that he polled it; because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels, after the king's weight" (2 Sam. xiv. 25, 26). |