1 Samuel 17:39 And David girded his sword on his armor, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved it. And David said to Saul, I cannot go with these… The armour was good armour. Sword, and helmet, and coat of mail, each was faultless — true metal, excellent temper, perfect workmanship. And it was a great honour to wear it: it was the king's own, the king lent it, and the king put it on. What was wanting? At first there is compliance. To refuse such honour seems ungracious or seems impossible. "Saul armed David with his armour — put a helmet of brass upon his head — armed him with a coat of mail: David girded the sword upon the armour, and assayed to go" — assayed, but went not. Why? "He had not proved it." "David said to Saul, I cannot go with these, for I have not proved them — and he put them off him." Anything better than the unproved. Better no armour than the awkward encumbrance of the unwonted and the untried. There is a warfare between all and each of us. It has two chief departments — but we need not stay to separate them very carefully — the faith, and the life. For each of these there is an equipment — call it preparation, call it education, or what you will: only remember that it is not all preliminary — it is lifelong, it is daily, it is new every morning. Most young men have someone who offers them his armour. In these days the schoolmaster is abroad even for the poorest. In all days the parent, for better or worse, is present in the homo. The Church is, or ought to be, at hand everywhere, with its instructing and educating influences. All these may be described as offering to arm the young mind and the young soul for the battle of that life which has death in front of it. It is scarcely a reflexion upon this offer to say that it largely resembles Saul's offer to David. We hardly see how it could be otherwise. Parents and teachers must educate out of their own stores of experience. They cannot and they ought not to ask the child or the pupil what he has, and advise him to make the best of it. To a large extent he must be "clothed upon" with faiths and principles to be taken at first on trust. Any attempt to lay down rules of conduct in circumstances necessarily future, or to warn against evils not yet developed, whether because the age for them is not yet, or because the opportunity is not yet, must more or less partake of the character of arming David with Saul's coat of mall: the person addressed cannot yet have proved it, and yet the instructor durst not take the responsibility of deferring into an indefinite future the counsel or the warning which may at any moment become vital to the hearer when the voice which now speaks will be silent. Yet all the time he knows that he is uttering that which can scarcely be impressive, because it necessarily lacks the personal proving. What pains ought to be taken to enable the receiver to prove everything — so to bring down and bring home the instruction as that it may be, at least in its germ, fruitful at once, operative, on the smallest scale, in the young life! But what shall we say when we pass from matters of conduct into matters of faith? Must there not here at least, be an offer of helmet and sword which cannot by the nature of the case have been yet proved by the receiver? Great indeed is the responsibility of arming others, young or old, in our armour. Well were it if those who have the charge of minds would think more of it. Have they proved their own armour? Can they give a reason, to themselves and to God, for the faith with which they thus preoccupy another? "Am I my brother's keeper?" — always a solemn question — has no graver or more momentous application than to this matter of the transmission of religion. Yet not to transmit it is to be worse than an infidel. There must be an arming of one by another with the Christian panoply if Christianity itself is not to die out of the earth which it has re-made. We must prove, but we must assert when we have proved, the mighty verity, without which good were it not to have been born, that "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." We pass to a later thought, and one more practical still. The helmet and the sword and the coat of mail of the Christian faith were first put upon us by others. We thank and we bless God for it. Never could we have forged them, never could we have found them, never could we have put them on, for ourselves. The armour put on must be proved afterwards. The faith of the childhood must be proved by the man. Risk not the battle of life — risk not the discharge from it — in unproved armour. "Prove all things," St. Paul said. "Prove the spirits," St. John wrote — meaning the professed inspirations of men who came saying, I have a message unto thee, O man, from God. "Prove your own selves," St. Paul said again — always the same word, though with seven various renderings in the English Bible. If I were on a platform, arguing with atheists, I should adopt one course. There I should be speaking to men not yet pledged, or pledged the other way. And upon them I should urge one argument, not always pressed as it ought to be — All questions must be argued in their appropriate region. I do not take the telescope to a leaf, nor the microscope to a star: I do not listen to a face, nor look at a voice: I do not taste a colour, nor smell a book. In the same way, if I am asked to believe that Christ died for me, or that God forgives me, or that prayer is heard, or that death is the gate of life, I do not consult Euclid or algebra about it; I know quite well that, true or false, that could not help the decision: no, I remind myself that I am a whole made up of many parts — conscience, feeling, affection, quite as really constituents of my whole being as memory, or intellect, or the critical faculty, cold and bald and naked; and that, if God has spoken, He is sure to have spoken not to one element but to the whole of me; and that therefore I must bring myself, the whole of me, to listen whether He has spoken; and if heart and soul find themselves powerfully affected by a professed revelation — if it seem to exercise an elevating and softening and sweetening influence upon the temper, and the conduct, and the intercourse with others, of those who believe and live it — if, in proportion as a man tries to live the Gospel, the life, the spirit, the man, is evidently ennobled and beautified — if he really finds the day, the separate day, made this or that, happy and bright and useful, or else heavy and slovenly and miserable, according as it is begun, continued and ended in communion with God through Christ, or the contrary — I see there a proof, real, if not by itself conclusive, that that revelation is from Him who made me. But now, speaking from a pulpit, and in a congregation of persons worshipping on the faith of Christ, the application of the call to prove all things takes a slightly different form. It bids us to bring to the proof the armour of Christian profession — which has been put upon us by education or tradition, by common consent or social propriety, or whatever else — by seeing whether it will or will not do for us what we have just now supposed it to do for those whose experience we have spoken of as evidence; whether it can make our lives pure and humble and noble; whether it will bear the strain put upon it by the particular trials which beset us in the course of daily life. O, if one half of the trouble were taken in proving ourselves that is bestowed upon challenging the legality of a dress or a posture, or making some preacher or writer an offender for a word, we should grow apace in that real Christianity which is first humility, and then patience, and then charity. The only, only question then is, Has the armour been proved? has it borne the brunt of trial? has it been kept buckled and kept burnished by a living heart-deep communion with the Author and the Finisher, with the Lord and Giver of Life? (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And David girded his sword upon his armour, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved it. And David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them. And David put them off him. |
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