2 Samuel 12:4

CHRISTIAN CHARITY

‘And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him.’

2 Samuel 12:4

The mixture of gold and clay of which our nature is composed is nowhere so strikingly displayed as in the constant tendency of men to conceive lofty purposes, and then to attain them by mean and sordid methods. The high impulse and the low self-indulgent method are both real, and this confused and contradictory humanity of ours is able to attain them both. We are always building steps of straw to climb to heights of gold.

There is real charity in the impulse of the rich man in Samuel, there is essential meanness in his act. He really wanted to help the poor traveller who came to him, but he wanted to help him with another man’s property, to feed him on a neighbour’s sheep. A great deal of our official charity comes very near the pattern of this ancient benefactor.

I. One of the truths about the advancing culture of a human nature is, that it is always deepening the idea of possession and making it more intimate.—There are deepening degrees of ownership, and as each one of them becomes real to a man, the previous ownerships get a kind of unreality. With this deepening of the idea of property, the idea of charity must deepen also. No relief of need is satisfactory which stops short of at least the effort to inspire character, to make the poor man a sharer in what is at least the substance of the rich man’s wealth. And at the bottom of this profounder conception of charity there must lie a deeper and more spiritual conception of property. The rich man’s wealth, what is it? Not his money. It is something which came to him in the slow accumulation of his money. It is a character into which enter those qualities that make true and robust manliless in all the ages and throughout the world: independence, intelligence, and the love of struggle.

II. This makes charity a far more exacting thing than it could be without such an idea.—It clothes it in self-sacrifice. It requires the entrance into it of a high motive.

III. The deeper conception of benefaction which will not rest satisfied with anything short of the imparting of character still does not do away with the inferior and more superficial ideas.—It uses the lower forms of gift as means or types or pledges. The giving of money is ennobled by being made the type of a Diviner gift which lies beyond.

—Bishop Phillips Brooks.

Illustrations

(1) ‘Detestable as was the double guilt of this dark story, we must still remember that David was not an Alfred or a Saint Louis. He was an Eastern king, exposed to all the temptations of a king of Ammon or Damascus then, of a Sultan of Bagdad or Constantinople in modern times. What follows, however, could have been found nowhere in the ancient world but in the Jewish monarchy. A year had passed; the child of guilt was born in the royal house, and loved with all the passionate tenderness of David’s paternal heart. Suddenly the prophet Nathan appears before him. He comes as if to claim redress for a wrong in humble life. It was the true prophetic spirit that spoke through Nathan’s mouth. The apologue of the rich man and the ewe lamb has, besides its own intrinsic tenderness, a supernatural elevation, which is the best sign of true Revelation. It ventures to disregard all particulars, and is content to aim at awakening the general sense of outraged justice. It fastens on the essential guilt of David’s sin—not its sensuality or its impurity, so much as its meanness and selfishness. It rouses the king’s conscience by that teaching described as specially characteristic of prophecy, making manifest his own sin in the indignation which he has expressed at the sin of another. “ Thou art the man” is, or ought to be, the conclusion, expressed or unexpressed, of every practical sermon.’

(2) ‘Nathan puts his parable in such life-like form that the king has no suspicion of its real character. The rich robber that spared his own flocks and herds to feed the traveller, and stole the poor man’s ewe lamb, is a real flesh-and-blood criminal to him. And the deed is so dastardly, its heartlessness is so atrocious, that it is not enough to enforce against such a wretch the ordinary law of fourfold restitution; in the exercise of his high prerogative the king pronounces a sentence of death upon the ruffian, and confirms it with the solemnity of an oath—“The man that hath done this thing shall surely die.” The flash of indignation is yet in his eye, the flush of resentment is still on his brow, when the prophet, with calm voice and piercing eye, utters the solemn words, “Thou art the man!” Thou, great king of Israel, the robber, the ruffian, condemned by thine own voice to the death of the worst malefactor.’

(2) ‘The man who sneers at David does not know his own heart, nor does he dream how a fierce, hot breath might consume to ashes his own boastful superiority! The true man will profit by David’s example, and double the guard over his own conduct; while he will be profoundly grateful that even for David was there forgiveness with God. It is the parable of the prodigal in real life. It will send no man into the slums, but it will encourage many a man to come back or to call a halt in his course. There are scars upon your soul, perhaps; there are secrets that haunt and curse you; there are memories that torment you; but the gate of return is open, and He who pardoned David has mercy for thousands, and will make you whiter than snow if you come to Him with a broken heart.’