David

David remember and his dire afflictions!

God will remember! Let not men forget

David the Greater, and the contradictions

Which in this world His weary way beset;

Malice unmitigated, maledictions,

Rude and unreasonable wrath, which met

Hard on His head devoted, undefended,
Not with a crumb of true compassion blended.

Never shall we, His blood-redeemed, forget Him,

Never shall ages from our hearts erase

Sacred impressions of the griefs that met Him,

Infinite wonders of His furrowed face,

Marvellous musings of what woes beset Him

Lone and abandoned in the sinner’s place;

When for our benefit His blood He proffered,
When for our souls His soul He freely offered.

Lord of the heavens and the earth for ever,

Lord of creation, Being Increate,

Come in the likeness of our flesh, but never

Stained by the evil of our fallen state,

Come to destroy the might of death, and sever

Men from its mastery, in mercy great.

Oh! let us kneel before Him, let us own Him
King of our hearts, and on that throne enthrone Him.

King! He is King of kings! His birth predicted

Early by prophet and by heavenly herald.

Glorious things are of His reign depicted

Peerless Possessor of this war-worn world:

Government absolute, and unrestricted

By the earth’s boundaries, where flags unfurled

Wave from the battlements of every nation,
Marking the limits of their proud location.

This, circumscribing in its vast embraces

And in the glory of its endless years,

Not only everything in earthly places

But, the ensphering of the heavenly spheres,

Beings angelic, hierarchs, and races

Flushed with felicity, or drunk with tears.

Come, let us worship, at His footstool falling,
Held in the greatness of His grace enthralling.

Gabriel, sent unto the virgin daughter,

David’s inheritress, foretells a Son;

True to the piety that grace had taught her

Answers submissive, let His will be done.

God, such a message as the angel brought her,

Sent to none other underneath the sun.

Blest among women was the virgin lowly!
Son of the Highest was her Firstborn holy.

Far from the sunrise come the Magi, bringing

Myrrh and frankincense and their gifts of gold,

Come to set every ear in Jewry ringing,

Racked or enraptured with the tale they told.

From the deep blue the royal star is flinging

Light over water, desert, waste, and wold:

Light to direct them to the Temple Holy,
Found with the carpenter in cottage lowly.

Wake up the echoes with your acclamations,

World of humanity, your God is near;

Shout it aloud among the living nations,

Make every man on earth the tidings hear;

Rend the blue welkin with your exultations,

Rouse the lone valleys and the deserts drear;

Let every corner of the wide creation
Hear of the Saviour, and of God’s salvation.

Bethlehem, house of living bread, confess Him,

Let the broad ways with hallelujahs ring;

Proud let thy ancient walls be to possess Him,

Wide thy glad gates before His presence fling;

Old men and young, your voices raise and bless Him,

Offspring of David hail as Christ the King.

Tell it abroad, Messiah has been born there.
Woe to the scoffer who is heard to scorn there.

Zion, acknowledge with a welcome glorious

Power that plucked thee from the Jebusite,

Making thy name with matchless grace notorious,

Clothing thy battlements with lustre bright,

Fair in prophetic vision, and victorious,

Splendour of royalty and kingly might:

Welcome that might in the Messiah vested,
Soon in its glory to be manifested.

Cold the reception that the world’s Creator

Met in His mission of immortal love,

When in God’s mercy as the Mediator

Sought He the heart of fallen man to move;

None on earth lower, none in heaven greater,

Not even He who fills the throne above:

Yet in a servant’s fashion we behold Him,
Wondrous the mysteries that thus enfold Him.

Wisdom incarnate, yet in wisdom growing,

Perfect in manger as in man’s estate,

Finite in knowledge, and yet all things knowing;

Maker of worlds, but here in weakness great,

Feeling what want was, and yet bread bestowing

Hunger of multitudes to satiate;

Highest, yet lowest in humiliation;
Master, yet servant: God in incarnation.

Angels with joy His advent celebrated,

Here as a creature saw the Increate,

Glad on the hitherto Unseen now sated,

Eager their eyes with admiration great,

Making their voices, as they contemplated

God everlasting, man’s associate,

Wake up the midnight with their marvellous story,
Peace upon earth, to God in Highest glory!

But as to man, to whom is thus attested

Favour so vast, to whom this Babe is born,

Is the sole creature all uninterested,

Blind to the bliss of that majestic morn.

Grace thus so marvellously manifested,

Welcomes he with indifference or scorn.

Only where Herod, Idumean plotter,
Feels his throne murderous beneath him totter.

Gainst Him both bolt and bar the princely palace,

Find Him no favour at the wayside Inn,

Cruelly press on Him, with conscience callous,

Poverty synonymic is with sin.

Press to His infant lips the bitter chalice

Brimmed with malevolence. Let Him begin

Gainst hosts infernal the terrific battle,
Cradled as outcast where they feed the cattle.

This shall make manifest this world’s remotion

From its Creator, spite of its veneer;

This but the spray of that tenebrous ocean

Wrath with the fury of the nether sphere.

Yet shall His piety and prime devotion

Guard Him immaculate through haunts of fear;

Faith shall not fail Him in the hour of trial,
Met by reproach, betrayal, and denial.

Strange never Cherub from the spheres supernal,

Roused into wrath at the disloyal sight,

Burst thro’ with thunders of the dread Eternal,

Earth and inhabitant with curse to smite.

Could not Omniscience from His place discern all

Creature antipathy and cruel spite?

Meted to Him in measure overflowing,
Who to our race the living God was showing.

Woeful the way we met the Holy Saviour,

Woeful the world He came in grace to save;

There the full ocean of our base behaviour

Hurled o’er His head the overwhelming wave.

Boundless the love that caused Him thus to brave your

Malice, O men, beset by cross and grave,

Meeting it all to righteously recover
Souls from destruction—What a faithful Lover!

Blind tho’ the eye be to His moral glory,

Hard tho’ the heart be set against such love,

Dull tho’ the ear be to His wondrous story,

Deaf to a message that the dead might move,

Hostile tho’ earth be in its hatred hoary,

Scorning the light from sacred courts above:

High in the heights is One whose approbation
Far over-balances such condemnation.

Not His own will but His who sent Him doing;

Not His own glory seeking here below,

Not a path chosen by Himself pursuing—

How to be subject monarchs first should know—

Never with murmurings His way bestrewing,

Never complaining, tho’ the end be woe:

Crown or cross, woes no creature mind can measure,
Right it is all, if but the Father’s pleasure.

There by the waters of the Jordan bending,

He, the Beloved, and forever blest,

Bows to the righteousness of wrath impending,

Ranks with the remnant who their sins confessed;

And from the dome above the Dove descending

Finds on His person pure a place to rest;

And there the Father owns the scorned and slighted
Son of His love, in whom His soul delighted.

Then, and then only from the world’s foundation,

First was the Trinity by voice declared:

Seen was the Spirit, and in incarnation

Seen was the Son, the Father’s voice was heard.

What, on the basis of propitiation,

Has such a Trinity for us prepared?

Things not made manifest since man’s creation,
Things never reached by man’s imagination.

Him ye knew not, but had ye wished to know Him,

Or had ye pondered the prophetic word,

Or had ye longed to see Him, and to show Him

How ye could welcome David’s Son and Lord,

Ye might have understood how much ye owe Him,

Ye might have welcomed Him with one accord;

But dominated by your notions carnal,
Cast ye the wheat away, and dined on darnel.

Had ye but known Him as my soul has known Him,

Earth ye had filled with everlasting song,

Ye would have owned Him as the heavens do own Him,

Glad to acknowledge ye to Him belong;

Lord in your heart of hearts ye had enthroned Him,

Hating their fellowship who work His wrong:

And had the world degraded and despised you,
What if the heavens above had praised and prized you.

Ye shall yet see Him, ye who have not seen Him,

Ye shall yet know Him, tho’ ye have not known,

Ye who have fancied ye could stand between Him

And the companionship of all His own,

Ye who imagined ye could so demean Him

He would be reaved of kingdom, crown, and throne,

What will ye say when ye at last behold Him,
When the dread terrors of His wrath enfold Him?

Say! Ye shall surely nothing say whatever,

What could ye say when every thought is known?

Then ye will understand how vain the endeavour

Wrong to defend before His righteous throne.

Dream not that innocence ye can assever,

Willing ye had been constantly to own

Lordship in Him, so highly venerated,
Had but the Word been well authenticated!

Once in God’s form, with Godhead glory vested,

Zoned with that light invisible to man,

Never approachable, unmanifested,

Being whose face no mortal eye could scan,

Thence on our woes His eye with mercy rested,

Thence He came forth according to the plan

Of our redemption, purposed ere the ages,
Yet undiscovered by the wisest sages.

Man among men in human form and weakness,

Slave to the Godhead in His life below,

Marked by His love, His mercy great, His meekness,

Taking a part in all our want and woe.

Praise we the grace, the goodness, the uniqueness

Told in a life no man can fully know:

Day on man’s darkness and despair awaking,
Light thro’ this gloom in living lustre breaking.

Dumb, demon-harassed, troubled, and tormented,

Sick folk sorrowful, lepers and the lame,

Debtors, diseased, distressed, and discontented,

Trespassers steeped in all their guilty shame,

Blind, bruised, beggar-poor, broken, and demented,

Weary souls burdened by the law’s dread claim,

Struck by the word from Sinai’s darkness spoken,
Cursed by the just demand so often broken:

Such in Him found a welcome and a healing,

Who in His mercy came the lost to save,

Love, love unfathomable love, revealing,

Grace bringing, wave in overwhelming wave.

Demons of darkness from His presence reeling

Whelming witness to His Godhead gave,

But as to man who was so well befriended
Hate with hypocrisy he basely blended.

Lone in Adullam or in desert hiding,

Knelt on the mount, or walking on the sea,

Treading the dark and liquid waves, or chiding

Storm-troubled waters of dark Galilee.

Or to the hungry multitudes dividing

Bread in abundance free, for grace is free.

Found still the path of patient love pursuing,
Way thus to hearts thro’ human hatred hewing.

On to the cross, for that must be the ending

Unto a life so utterly abhorred,

Life in which grace and truth divine were blending,

But with man’s thoughts in perfect disaccord.

Yet must He still be ceaselessly befriending

Men, tho’ He heap reviling as reward:

Yea, as a ransom for the vile offender
Hanged on a gibbet He will life surrender.

In the lone garden when the gloom was stealing

Up the deep valleys and athwart the skies,

Where the cold winter zephyrs were congealing

Dews which Judea’s bleeding land baptize;

And while thro’ sorrow sleep was softly sealing

From the last conflict the disciples’ eyes,

Witnessed the stars accomplishing their courses
Bellicose muster of infernal forces.

Heaven, the interested sole spectator,

Views thro’ the vapours cold the powers engaged;

Hell, in the person of her imperator,

War with the Lord of life and glory waged,

Who, with a might than creature prowess greater,

Struck the fell forces which against Him raged.

But who the battle to describe is able?
Fought in the bosom of the darkness sable.

Not for the first time had these met together,

Nor each at each their fiery forces hurled:

One from the upper world, one from the nether—

God of the universe, god of this world;

Nor was it now an open question whether

This one or that one had his cause imperilled;

One by His righteousness and faith was shielded,
One all the might of death and darkness wielded.

Once at Pas-dammim was rehearsed the battle,

When with his spear the son of Rapha strode—

Where the war chariots were heard to rattle—

Cursing the armies of the living God.

Heard the youth David the perpetual prattle,

Boasting and blasphemous, which greatly awed

All the great heroes of the Tribes assembled,
Who in the presence of the monster trembled.

Saul, than his brethren taller, head and shoulder,

Choice of the people, every inch a king,

Met by this prodigy is now no bolder

Than is the feeblest of his following

David despised is the alone upholder

Of the Lord’s honour, with a stone and sling.

There the blest shadow of the great Redeemer
Crushes the insolent and bold blasphemer.

Faint this reflection of the battle fateful,

Foughten by David’s Son and Lord, and won,

When for a nation and a world ungrateful

Crushed He the cherub in the darkness dun;

Punished and paralysed the powers hateful,

Left, to perpetuate the conflict, none:

Now thro man only must the fight be foughten,
Led by his guilty leaders fiend-begotten.

Golgotha was of this the awful sequel,

Christ there the chalice dark was made to drink;

What in the history of worlds could equal

Depths into which His soul was doomed to sink?

Yet never this, nor e’en the godless clique will

Cause Him one moment from the shame to shrink,

Yea, let them gibbet Him as a transgressor,
Death He will dare that He may be their Blesser.

Drank He the cup in overflowing measure,

Drank, till its bitterness awoke despair,

Drank, that my soul as His eternal treasure,

He might have with Him in His glory there,

Drank, when as Azazel the fierce displeasure

Of the Omnipotent was His to bear,

When on that gibbet He made expiation
Freeing our souls from fear of condemnation.

Glorious in holiness, in praises fearful,

Glad we Thy victories, O Lord, rehearse,

Here Thou didst see us, tost and torn and tearful,

Crushed by our captor, crying under curse.

How hast Thou left us? Free, unchained, and cheerful.

Who is like Thee in all the universe?

Thine is the kingdom, and the might and glory—
Who would not eulogise Thy wondrous story?

Who gave the pliades their influences?

Who drew the stalwarts to Adullam’s cave?

Who on the lily’s lip the dew condenses?

Who took the terror from the gloomy grave?

Who overthrew the devil’s dread defences?

Who to the prisoner his freedom gave?

He, it is He who shed His blood to save us:
He, it is He who from our sins did lave us.

Who was it slew, to save the lamb, the lion,

Plucking the quarry from between its teeth?

Who slung the sword upon the great Orion—

Bright for the battle in its starry sheath?

Ere He was heard of in the halls of Zion

Who consternation caused in hell beneath?

He, it is He who is the Lord’s anointed:
He, it is He who is the King appointed.

Heard of in heaven and in earth and under,

Heard by the hierarchs in death’s domain,

Heard from the throat of the deep threatening thunder,

Heard in the moaning of the mighty main,

Heard in the rending of the rocks asunder,

Heard in the passion of the pouring rain,

Heard in Golgotha’s gloom and grief surprising,
Heard in the rouse of the Redeemer’s rising.

Witnessed in everything, the least and greatest,

Glorious in atom as in sun or star,

Wondrous activities, the first and latest,

Things long evanished, and the things that are,

Heard in the ordinance of king or statist,

Whisper of peace, or thunder-peal of war,

Heard from the solitude when God-forsaken,
Heard when the heavens and the earth are shaken.

Youngest of all the sons of Jesse, call Him,

Set Him among the men of might we see,

Right in the centre of the throng install Him—

Samuel anoint Him, for this is He!

Pour on His head the Holy Oil, extol Him,

Bend low before Him in the dust the knee.

Shepherd of Israel and God elected:
Saul is the people’s choice, but God-rejected.

God hath as Saviour and as Prince enthroned Him,

Sworn, and saluted Him as King and Priest,

Honour and majesty have crowned and zoned Him,

Lord of the highest and Lord of the least.

Soon shall have seen Him all the world, and owned Him,

Carping of critics then shall all have ceased:

When every knee at His great name has bended,
And the rebellion of the world has ended.

Name ever excellent in every nation!

His is the kingdom and the crown by right.

As Saul was fallen from his lofty station

Glittered Gilboa with Philistine might.

Fallen has he before the foe’s invasion,

Fallen tho’ panoplied in armour bright:

Fallen, for justice has not slept nor slumbered
Fallen, as one who long the ground had cumbered.

Name above every other name, God-given!

Name that eclipses every name on earth!

Name that is mentioned in the courts of heaven

As the one Name of everlasting worth.

Name that has demons into darkness driven:

Name that is sweet to all of heavenly birth.

Name that the sorrows of the soul assuages,
Name that endureth to eternal ages.

Name that the Father hears with gladness spoken;

Name all intelligences must revere;

Name that to weary souls conveys the token

That to the creature is brought mercy near,

Name that the melody of love unbroken

Wafts to the sons of men in every sphere,

Name that unfolds to us redemption’s story,
Name now almighty in the courts of glory.

Shout ye aloud, ye wastes of earth, glad-hearted,

Let from the wildernesses songs be heard,

Fields from which fruitfulness has long departed

Drenched by the rains which were in wrath deferred,

Valleys and hills which thro’ the curse have smarted

Drink as ye listen to the Gospel Word:

Once like the barren rod of mitred Aaron,
Now bloom and fructify like fruitful Sharon.

Praise Him, ye heavens and ye hosts eternal,

Sun, moon, and stars, and all ye sons of light,

Land, by the favour of the Highest, vernal,

Praise and extol Him, morning, noon and night;

Vapours of darkness and of clouds nocturnal

Fire, hail, and stormy winds, with all your might,

Worship Him, oceans, rivers, brooks and fountains,
Fields, forests, valleys, heights and deeps and mountains.

Kings, princes, welcome give the King eternal,

Bend low the knee before Him, kiss the Son,

Nightly your voices raise, your praise diurnal,

Bless Him for everything that He has done.

Tremble, ye rebels, and ye powers infernal

Broken in battle by Messiah won.

Fiercely your fortresses have ye defended,
Howl in your helplessness, your day is ended.

Earth and her deeps exult, the heaven’s loud thunder,

Flames the artillery from ramparts high,

Cleave the red lightnings the expanse asunder

Far fly their flashings thro’ the central sky.

Weltering ocean joyously thereunder

Leaps to the welkin with its praises high,

And all the lilies of the field are kissing
Gladly His feet who comes the curse dismissing.

From the four corners of the wide creation

Kings, principalities and powers appear,

Gracing the triumph of His coronation

Seat of the mighty King of kings ensphere.

Legions of angels in their adornation

Gleam like the lightning, holding sword and spear,

Princes and potentates and powers supernal
Flame in the phalanx round the King eternal.

Lift up your heads, ye ancient gates and hoary,

Lift up your heads, ye doors that last for aye,

Fling wide your portals, that the King of glory

Who has the right to enter, enter may.

Who is this King of glory, famed in story?

Lord of Hosts decked with universal sway.

Lift up your heads, ye gates, and welcome glorious,
Give to your King who comes from war victorious.

Lift up your heads, ye gates, that He may enter,

Lord of all lords, and King of those that reign.

Lift up your heads before the sacred Centre

Make with your songs the echoes ring again.

Lift up your heads, ye gates, let Zion vent her

Pleasure supreme in rapturous refrain.

Who is this King of glory? Matchless story?
Jesus—Jehovah—is the King of glory!

Lift up your heads, ye gates, in deep devotion

Bend low, ye hills, about Jerusalem.

Shout fruitful vineyards, which with sweet emotion

Dews from the heavens your purple fruit begem.

Lebanon, wave in reverent commotion

Welcome to Him who wears the diadem.

Who is this King of glory? Great His story!
Jesus—Jehovah—is the King of Glory!

Lift up your heads, ye gates, let all creation

Join in ascribing blessing to the King,

Worship Him, all ye angels, adoration

Be unto Him from every living thing.

Joyful with banners blue and acclamation

Giving Him glory loyally enring.

Who is this King of glory? This His story—
Jesus—Jehovah—He is King of Glory!