ruling his fellow-men. So thoroughly human a personage is he, that
God speaks of him as the man after his own heart; that our blessed
Lord condescends to call himself especially the Son of David.

For there is in this man (as there is said to be in all great
geniuses) a feminine, as well as a masculine vein; a passionate
tenderness; a keen sensibility; a vast capacity of sympathy,
sadness, and suffering, which makes him truly the type of Christ,
the Man of sorrows; which makes his Psalms to this day the text-book
of the afflicted, of tens of thousands who have not a particle of
his beauty, courage, genius; but yet can feel, in mean hovels and
workhouse sick-beds, that the warrior-poet speaks to their human
hearts, and for their human hearts, as none other can speak, save
Christ himself, the Son of David and the Son of man.

A man, I say, of intense sensibilities; and therefore capable, as is
but too notorious, of great crimes, as well as of great virtues.

And when I mention this last fact, I must ask you to pause, and
consider with me very solemnly what it means.

We may pervert, or rather misstate the fact in more than one way, to
our own hurt. We may say cynically, David had his good points and
his bad ones, as all your great saints have. Look at them closely,
and in spite of all their pretensions you will find them no better
than their neighbours. And so we may comfort ourselves, in our own
mediocrity and laziness, by denying the existence of all greatness
and goodness.

Nathan the prophet said that David's conduct would be open to this