keness of Christ. Instead of
believing David's own statement of the wrong doings of these men
about him, we may say cynically, and as it seems to me most
unfairly, 'Of course there were two sides to David's quarrels, as
there are to all such; and of course he took his own side; and
considered himself always in the right, and every one who differed
from him in the wrong;' and such a speech will sound sufficiently
worldly-wise to pass for philosophy with some critics; but,
unfortunately, he who says that of David, will be bound in all
fairness to say it of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For you must remember that there was a class of sinners in Judaea,
to whom our Lord speaks no word of pity or forgiveness: namely, the
very men who were his own personal enemies, who were persecuting
him, and going about to kill him; and that therefore, by any hard
words toward them, he must have laid himself open, just as much as
David laid himself open, to the imputation of personal spite. And
yet, what did he say to the scribes and Pharisees: 'Ye go about to
kill me, and therefore I am bound to say nothing harsh concerning
you'? What he did say was this: 'Ye serpents, ye generation of
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?'

Yes; in the Son of David, as in David's self, there was, and is, and
will be for ever and ever, no weak, and really cruel indulgence; but
a burning fire of indignation against all hypocrisy, tyranny, lust,
cruelty, and every other sin by which men oppress, torment, deceive,
degrade their fellow-men; and still more, still more, remember that,
all young men, their fellow-women. That fire burns for ever--the
Divine fire of God; the fire not of hatred, but of love to mankind,
which will therefore punish, and if need be, exterminate all who
shall dare to make mankind the worse, whether in body or soul or
mind.

But David prays God to kill his enemies. No doubt he does.
Probably they deserved to be killed. He does not ask, you will
always remember, if you be worthy of the name of critical students
of the Bible--he does not ask, as did the mediaeval monks, that his
enemies should go to endless torments after they died. True or
false, that is a more modern notion--and if it be applied to the
Psalms, an interpolation--of which David knew nothing. He asks
simply that the men may die. Probably he knew his own business
best, and the men deserved to die; to be killed either by God or by
man, as do too many in