David

Extract

David was a man after God's own heart. The saying is founded on certain qualities in the psalmist, prophet, king, conqueror, which mark him out as distinct from all the other saints and heroes of either Testament. Among these qualities was this: that he was, if not an ‘ordinary’ man, a norm among men. He was extraordinary only by not being in the striking mode of most holy men, extraordinary. He worked no miracle like Moses, suffered no crushing humiliation like Job, saw no vision like Isaias, had not to hope against hope like Abranam. He was, to ordinary men, an ordinary man, and his greatness lies therein. He had strong human desires and enjoyments, but did not permit anything human to interfere with his service to his God; and that he sometimes lapsed, and once lapsed gravely, adds to his normality and even, in the long run, to his sanctity. He was intensely alive and intensely human in his desires, his ambitions, and his affections, yet free from base self-love and the sophistication which corrupts the purity of a man's character.