Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/36

 14 STATESMEN AND SAGES that all great captains owe to those who surround their persons, further their plans, and aid their enterprises. In the Second Book of Chronicles the honor-roll of David's heroes is starred with undying lustre. Thirty captains are mentioned, among them three mightiest, and the record of these valiant men is like the record written of Thor and his followers in the legendry of the stormy Norsemen. There was one who slew an Egyptian, a giant five cubits high, with a spear like a weaver's beam, and the champion went down to the combat armed with a staff only, disarmed the Egyp- tian, and slew him with his own spear. Another slew "a lion in a pit in a snowy day." One sees the picture, the yellow-maned, fierce-eyed lion, the white drift of the blinding flakes, the hole of the pit, deep-walled and narrow, a fit lair for the wild beast. The incident of the well of Bethlehem belongs here. The king was spent and athirst, and he longed for a drink from the old well by the gate. But when three mighty men cut their way sword in hand through the enemy's host, and brought the precious water, the king would not drink it, bu^ poured it out before the Lord in libation. "God forbid," he exclaimed, "that I should drink the blood of these men, that have put their lives in jeopardy ! " If David had always been as noble ! But men have the defects of their quali- ties. These mighty men of earth have often, on one side or another, a special liability to temptation. In the seduction of Bathsheba and the cowardly murder of Uriah, her husband, David committed a sin for which he was punished not only in the denunciation of Nathan the prophet and the loss of Bathsheba's first child, but by the stings of a deep remorse, which expresses itself in a psalm which is a miserere. Yet Bathsheba became the mother of Solomon, and Solo- mon was the heir chosen by the Lord to preserve the kingly line of David, and to maintain the kingdom in great glory and splendor. In the quaint language of the sacred scribes, we find David's frequent battles graphically described. Rapid and pitiless as Attila or Napoleon, he " smote " the Amalekites, and the Ammonites, and the neighboring warlike peoples, and compelled them to pay tribute. He was not more rapacious than France has recently shown herself to Siam, or than England to India, and he was emphati- cally the " battle-axe of God." It was enlightenment against savagery, the true religion against the idolatries and witchcrafts of a false worship. In every way David displayed statesmanship, not carrying on war for the mere pleasure of it, but strengthening his national lines, and laying deep the foundations on which his successor was to carry forward a kingdom of peace. It was not until Hiram, king of Tyre, sent cedar from Lebanon, on floats down the Mediterranean, that David built him a house. The hardy soldier had often slept with the sky for his roof, and the grass for his bed, but as he grew rich and strong he needed a palace. With the pleasure and security of the pal- ace, the ceiled house, came the wish of the devout soul to erect a temple to God. Never was sacrifice greater nor pain more intense than that which the great king experienced when told that not for him was to be this crowning joy, this felicity which would have made his cup overflow. His hands had shed too much