112. The Philistines Understand Me Not.

CXII ‘The Philistines Understand Me Not.’ THE Philistines were the aboriginal inhabitants of Palestine. Philistia was the original name of Palestine, and the original inhabitants of Philistia were known by the name of Philistines. As far back as we are able to trace the Philistines their chief cities were Gaza, and Ashdod, and Ashkelon, and Gath, and Ekron. And their chief gods were Ashtoreth, and Baal, and Beelzebub; three of the most cruel and most obscene of all the cruel and obscene gods of the Gentiles, The Philistines were of a gigantic size and of herculean strength, while in their moral character they were exactly like the gods they made and worshipped. Brutish size and brutish strength of body; brutish grossness and brutish stupidity of mind and heart, with great cruelty and great obscenity, these were the outstanding characteristics of the Philistines among all the heathen peoples of those days. And these are the broad and deep footprints that the Philistines have left to this day on the pages of the Old Testament.

One of the first things that drew the young tinker of Bedford to open the Bible and to return to it was the story of Samson’s victorious encounters with the Philistines of Timnath. But the Philistine that young Bunyan liked best to read about was that gigantic Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span; the weight of his coat was five thousand shekels of brass; the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron, and one bearing a shield went before him. And he stood and cried to the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Am not I a Philistine? I defy all the armies of Israel this day! And when Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and were greatly afraid. By the time that John Bunyan had finished his classical preface to Grace Abounding, the opprobrious epithet of ‘Philistine’ had already entered the vocabulary of English literature never again to leave it. The contemptuous students of the German universities were not the first to make the modern application of that ignominious term. Neither was Thomas Carlyle nor Matthew Arnold the first to transfer that ignominious term to our English tongue. The tinker of Bedford was beforehand with the students of the fatherland when he already penned these so expressive and so plainspoken words: ‘The Philistines understand me not.’ It was not their want of a university education that drew down upon so many of Bunyan’s contemporaries this severe description that he here gives them. Had the want of a university education been the sure mark of a Philistine there would have been no greater Philistine in the whole of England in that day than just John Bunyan himself. But the author of the preface to Grace Abounding is far deeper in his insight, and he is far more masterly in his use of such words, than are those home and foreign critics who use the word philistine with such studied contempt of their unlettered neighbours. The students of Germany, and our own Matthew Arnold after them, apply the nickname of philistine to those of their fellow-countrymen who do not possess the openness of mind and the intellectual refinement that a classical education is assumed to give. But our author employs this condemnatory term in a far deeper way and in a far truer way than that. For he finds the true and the genuine philistines of his day fully as much among the ‘priests and doctors’ of the University of Cambridge as among the tradesmen and shopkeepers of the town of Bedford. With John Bunyan it is not the lack of a university education that makes and keeps a man a philistine; it is the lack of personal religion. It is the fatal lack of a personal experience of spiritual and divine things. To John Bunyan there is no ignorance and no narrow-mindedness like the ignorance and narrowmindedness of the man who does not know his own heart and consequently does not know his overwhelming need of Jesus Christ and His redemption. To John Bunyan there is no stupidity like the stupidity of an unconverted and an ungodly man. And if that man is a member of a famous university his spiritual stupidity is only all that the more notorious and is only all that the more mischievous. Read the preface to Grace Abounding — a piece of English writing of the first order both intellectually and spiritually considered — and unless you are a philistine yourself you will at once feel how deep that preface cuts into yourself. For if you are a man of an enlightened and a spiritual mind, it will cut to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and will be a discerner of the thoughts and intents of your heart.

Now, are there any philistines left in our day? And if so, who are they and where are they to be found? How shall we know them? And how shall we behave ourselves towards them? Well, a proud heart, and a scornful and a blustering tongue, were the sure marks of the original and indigenous dwellers in Philistia. Now if pride and scorn are the indubitable and universal marks of a philistine, how beset and how possessed is the very Church of Jesus Christ with that spirit and that temper in our own day. Our Church parties, our Church divisions, our hostility to one another, our hatred and con-tempt and scorn of one another, is all due at bottom to our philistine pride, self-conceit, and insolence. The Greek Church in her ancient ecclesiastical pride and insolence despises and excommunicates the Latin Church, and the Latin Church in her turn despises and excommunicates the English Church. And then the English Church, not yet having learned wisdom by all that example and experience, makes herself very unlovely sometimes by her behaviour to the Churches that she thinks are beneath her. Three-quarters of a century ago there was a great outbreak of ecclesiastical philistinism in the Tracts for the Times and in the so-called Lyra Apostolica. The pride and insolence of those productions are a painful study to any man with a spark of brotherly love and Christian humility in his heart. But two can play at that philistine game. And thus it was that when the Tractarians turned away from their evangelical brethren in England to seek an alliance with the Holy Synod this was the proud reply that they got:

‘You English separated from the Latin Church three hundred years ago, just as the Latins had separated from the Greeks. We orthodox Greeks think even the Latin Church heretical, but you are an apostasy from an apostasy. You are a descent from bad to worse.’

There speaks a very Goliath of Gath. Now how are we to behave ourselves toward the Churchmen of this spirit who are so plentiful among ourselves in our day? Well, our best way is to track the same spirit down to its universal root in our own half-regenerate and half-sanctified hearts. Let us put its proper name upon that so unchristian mind when we discover it in ourselves. And that will work patience in us and even pity toward our brethren who so much allow themselves in this so unchristian temper and attitude toward those for whom Christ died, quite as much as He died for them. Let us put on strength even to love and to pray for the proudest of such men. And let us more and more be clothed with humility and contrition that such a spirit should obtain at this time of day in that body of Christ, which they and we equally are, and which we and they taken together wholly constitute.

Then again, you may be the most polished and the most urbane of men in the world of letters, and yet you may behave yourself toward the far better world of religion so as to prove yourself to be at heart little better than a philistine yourself. You may be the universally recognised scourge of all stupidity and all dullness and all narrow-mindedness in your own world of things, and yet you may go on to act the part of the uncircumcised in a far better world of things with which you have too little sympathy. To be plain, you may be Matthew Arnold himself in your intellectual insight, and in your matchless criticism of ancient and modern literature, and yet you may act the part of a philistine scoffer toward certain religious men and toward certain religious and social movements of your own day. Every lover of English literature, who is also a lover of evangelical religion, must have often been sorely vexed at the way Matthew Arnold gibes and jests at such men as Lord Shaftesbury, and Mr. Bright, and Mr. Moody, and Mr. Spurgeon; and at such centres of religious activity and social redemption as Exeter Hall and the Salvation Army. Poor gibes and jests at the best, that every true admirer of Arnold could so much wish to see blotted out of his beautiful books. For, not to care how much you pain and even injure good men in their work for God and man, if only you can make a point and raise a laugh at their expense — that, surely, is to act the part of the true philistine. That surely comes down from Gath and Ekron even when it comes to us by the way of Oxford and Cambridge. Another writer of much the same literary rank as Arnold some time ago published a Life of John Bunyan. And he so patronised and so belittled and so philosophised over and so explained away John Bunyan’s religious experiences and his apostolic doctrines as to make his book, practically and eventually, a powerful plea for unbelief. I know what I am saying. For I knew in those days a divinity student who was so dazzled and sophisticated and bewildered by that brilliant book that he went aside altogether from the study of divine truth and has landed by this time I do not know where. For all the strength and all the high interests and all the high motives went out of his life with that book. Now if that is not to do the work of a genuine philistine — literary insight and English style and all — then I do not know what the work of a modern philistine is. But the most practical and the most profitable point of all this study of the philistines, past and present, is this: it is to carry the inquiry home to ourselves: first to myself, and then to you. For I would be an archphilistine myself if after all this I let myself go free. Well then, I must understand and must accept this, and you must all understand and accept this along with me: that the bitter dregs of the true philistine are still in us all; aye, and more than the dregs in many of us. There is pride to begin with, if we know what pride really is, and how it shows itself. All selfimportance also, and all self-assertiveness, and all self-opinion-ativeness. All talkativeness, and all boastfulness. All indifference to other men’s feelings and sufferings and necessities. All injustice, all injury, and all cruelty. All neglect of the poor, and the oppressed, and the friendless; and so on all through our sinful hearts and lives. All that and everything of that kind is the dominion, or at best it is the deep dregs and the inward remains of the philistine still in us all. In short, it is the old story: it is sin. It is all the deep dregs and all the inward remains of indwelling and unconquered and unexpelled sin. But in all this the true and genuine philistine will not understand one syllable of what I am saying. Only, beloved, says the Apostle, I am persuaded better things of you, and things accompanying salvation, though I thus speak.