06 - David
VI. DAVID. This is the widest character on record. Of course there are other famous men who fill more pages.
But, remember, three lives of David, written in his own time, are lost; and the books that survive give only the man’s cream. Had his chroniclers pursued the modem method, our shelves would have groaned under their tomes. But in their age, if pure discourse was sometimes di£ [use, narrative was always severely concise, they sank a thousand minor details that would be sure to interest us now, and kept strictly to those great deeds and words which seemed peculiar to David, and indeed remain so to this hour.
History thus compressed is a crucible of character: in it mediocrity evaporates, and even celebrity shrivels. In Holy Writ, Moses, Elijah, and Paul: in profane history, Solon, Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, and others, excelled David greatly in one quality or another.
David presents a greater number of distinct and striking features than any one of those great men; and that is why I style him the widest character on record — a shepherd, a soldier, a courtier, a famous friend, a fugitive, an actor, a marauder, a general, a king, a statesman, an exile, a priest, a prophet, a saint, a criminal, a penitent: and nothing by halves. This boy killed a lion hand to hand, and knocked down a mail-clad giant like a sparrow. This man was hunted for his Ufe like a wolf, and spared his pursuer like a lamb. This warrior conquered armies, and even his own passions, yet one day unruly desire laid him low. He became the heartless assassin of a husband he had abused. This hero invented chivalry two thousand years before the knights who have gained the credit for it. This bard versified the sorrows of his soul, and sang them to boot, long before we were told of poets that "They learn in suffering what they teach in song." This magnanimous minstrel lauded and bewailed his dead foe in deathless lines; this tuneful preacher, in an Eastern province and a bygone age, has comforted bleeding hearts throughout the globe, and will while earth shall last. Merciful in an age of blood; yet sometimes extremely hard and cruel. Brave, generous, meek, irritable, forgiving, vindictive, pious, sensual, criminal, contrite — greatest of all in penitence, man’s most redeeming quality; for his repentance had no limit but his light. He never saw a sin in himself that he did not mourn and weep for it heart, soul, and body.
And, to conclude the chapter of his anomalies, he foretold the Saviour of the world, and lived, upon the whole, as if he knew Him. Yet when he came to die, far from forgiving his enemies, he drew back his pardon from those he had forgiven, and left his own son a legacy of blood — a sad heathen act for a dying saint, to whom the Great Forgiver had pardoned worse crimes than Shimei’s; yet as profitable to the upright reader as anything in all his strange, eventful history, since here he left mankind an exemplary proof how much Christ’s personal teaching was needed, and how great a boon it was, and is, to mortal man.