Editor In Chief Rossiter Johnson - "The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12"

St. George Stock - "Deductive Logic"

Unknown - "Pages for Laughing Eyes"

Various - "Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

True Words for Brave Men

C >> Charles Kingsley >> True Words for Brave Men







XV. DAVID'S DEATH SONG.


"And David spake unto the Lord the words of this song in the day that
the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out
of the hand of Saul: And he said, The Lord is my rock, and my fortress
and my deliverer; the God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my
shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my
saviour; thou savest me from violence."--2 SAM. xxii. 1-3.

This is the death song of David; the last words of the great man--warrior,
statesman, king, poet, prophet. A man of many joys and many sorrows,
many virtues, and many crimes; but through them all, every inch a man. A
man--heaped by God with every gift of body, and mind, and heart, and
especially with strong and deep intense feeling. Right or wrong, he is
never hard, never shallow, never light-minded. He is in earnest.
Whatever happens to him, for good or evil, goes to his heart, and fills
his whole soul, till it comes out again in song.

This it is which makes David the Psalmist. This it is which makes the
Psalter a text book still for every soldier or sailor, for all men who
have human hearts in them. This it is which will make his psalms live
for ever. Because they are full of humanity, of the spirit of man,
awakened and enlightened, and ennobled, by the Spirit of God.

Looking through these psalms of David, one is struck with astonishment at
their variety. At what is called the versatility of his mind, that is,
his ability to turn himself to every kind of subject, as it comes before
him, and to sing of it--as man has never sung since. And one is the more
astonished, when one remembers that many of the most beautiful of these
Psalms must have been written while David was still a very young man.
Though we have them, of course, only in a translation--though many of the
words and phrases in them are difficult, sometimes impossible to
understand, though they were written in a kind of verse which would give
our English ears no pleasure, and were set to a music so utterly
different from our own, that it would not sound like music to us. Yet,
with all these disadvantages, they are beautiful as they stand, they sink
into the ear, and into the heart, as what they are, the words of one
inspired by God, who found beauty in every sight which he beheld, in
every event which happened, even in every sorrow and every struggle in
his own soul, and could sing of each and all of them in words and
thoughts fresh from God, the fountain of all beauty and all truth.

But the peculiarity of David's psalms, after all, is from his intense
faith in God. God is in all his thoughts. God is near him, guiding him,
trying him, educating him, punishing him, sometimes he thinks for a
moment, deserting him. But even then his mind is still full of God. It
is God he wants, and the light of God's countenance, without which he
cannot live, and leaving him in misery, and shame, and darkness, and out
of the darkness he cries--My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And,
therefore, everything which happens to him shapes itself not into mere
poetry, but into a prayer, or a hymn.

It is this which has made David for Christians now, as well as for Jews
of old, the great master and teacher of heart religion. In the early
church, in the middle ages, as now, Catholic alike and Protestant,
whosoever has feared God and sought after righteousness; whosoever has
known and sorrowed over the sinfulness and weakness of his own heart;
whosoever has believed that the Lord God was dealing with him as with a
son, educating him, chastening him, purifying him and teaching him, by
the chances and changes of his mortal life; whosoever, I say, has had any
real taste of vital experimental religion--to David's Psalms he has gone,
as to a treasure house, to find there his own feelings, his own doubts,
his own joys, his own thoughts of God and His providence--reflected as in
a glass; everything which he would say, said for him already, in words
which will never be equalled on earth.

There are psalms among them of bitter agony, cries as of a lost child,
like that 6th psalm--"Oh Lord, rebuke me not in Thine anger, neither
chasten me in Thy hot displeasure," &c. And yet ending like that, with a
sudden flash of faith, and hope, and joy, which is a peculiar mark of
David's character, faith in God triumphing over all the chances and
changes of mortal life. "The Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping.
The Lord will receive my prayer, all mine enemies shall be confounded and
sore vexed. They shall be turned back and put to shame."

There are psalms again which are prayers for guidance and teaching like
the 5th Psalm--"Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness because of mine
enemies: make thy way plain before my face."

There are psalms, again, of Natural Religion, such as the 8th and the
19th and the 29th, the words of a man who had watched and studied nature
by day and night, as he kept his sheep upon the mountains, and wandered
in the desert with his men. "I will consider thy heavens, the works of
thy hand, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained . . . the fowls
of the air and the fishes of the sea" . . . (Ps. viii. 3-8). "The
heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handi-
work" (Ps. xix. 1-6). "It is the Lord that commandeth the water: it is
the glorious God that maketh the thunder: it is the Lord that ruleth the
sea: the voice of the Lord breaketh the cedar trees: the voice of the
Lord divideth the flames of fire: the voice of the Lord shaketh the
wilderness: the Lord sitteth above the water flood," &c. (Ps. xxix.).

There are psalms of deep religious experience like the 32d.--"Blessed is
he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and whose sin is covered . . . Thou
art a place to hide me in. . . . Thy hand is heavy upon me day and night
. . . I will acknowledge my sin unto Thee."

There are psalms, and these are almost the most important of all, such as
the 9th, the 24th and 36th Psalms, which declare the providence and the
kingdom of the Living God, with that great and prophetic 2d Psalm (ver. 1-
5): "Why do the heathen so furiously rage together, and the people
imagine vain things. The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers
take counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed," &c.

There are psalms of deep repentance, of the broken and the contrite
heart, like that famous 51st Psalm, which is used in all Christian
churches to this day, as the expression of all true repentance, and
which, even in our translation, by its awful simplicity, its slow
sadness, expresses in its very sound the utterly crushed and broken
heart. "Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness, according
to the multitude of thy mercies do away mine offences. . . . Behold, I
was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive. . . . The
sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O
God, thou wilt not despise. . . ." Then there are psalms, like the 26th,
of a manful and stately confidence. The words of one who is determined
to do right, who feels that on the whole he is doing it, and is not
ashamed to say so. "Be thou my judge, for I have walked innocently. . . .
Examine and prove me: try out my reins and my heart. I have not dwelt
with vain persons, neither will I have fellowship with the deceitful. . . .
I have hated the congregation of the wicked. I have loved the
habitation of thy house." There are political psalms, full of weighty
advice, to his sons after him, like the 115th Psalm.

There are psalms of the most exquisite tenderness, like the 23d Psalm,
written perhaps while he himself was still a shepherd boy, and he looked
upon his flocks feeding on the downs of Bethlehem, and sang, "The Lord is
my shepherd, I shall not want," &c. And lastly, though I should not say
lastly, for the variety of this wonderful man's psalms is past counting,
there are psalms of triumph and thanksgiving, which are miracles of
beauty and grandeur. Take, for instance, the 34th, one of the earliest,
when David was not more than twenty-five years old, when Abimelech drove
him away, and he departed and sang, "I will bless the Lord at all times.
. . . My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. . . . I sought the Lord,
and he heard me, and delivered me out of all my fear. Lo the poor man
crieth and the Lord heareth him. . . . The angel of the Lord tarrieth
round about them that fear him, and delivereth them." And, as the
grandest of all, as, indeed, it was meant to be, that wonderful 18th
Psalm which David, the servant of the Lord, spake to the Lord in the day
when the Lord delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies. "I will
love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my strong rock and defence:
my Saviour, my God, and my might, in whom I will trust, my buckler, the
horn also of my salvation, and my refuge." This is, indeed, David's
masterpiece. The only one which comes near it is the 144th. The
loftiest piece of poetry, taken as mere poetry, though it is more, much
more, in the whole world. Even in our translation, it rushes on with a
force and a swiftness, which are indeed divine. Thought follows thought,
image image, verse verse, before the breath of the Spirit of God, as wave
leaps after wave before a mighty wind. Even now, to read that psalm
rightly, should stir the heart like a trumpet. What must it have been
like when sung by David himself? No wonder that those brave old Jews
hung upon the lips of their warrior-poet and felt that the man who could
sing to them of such thoughts, and not only sing them, but feel them
likewise, was indeed a king and a prophet sent to them by God. A
prophet, I say. They loved his songs not merely on account of the beauty
of their poetry. Indeed, one hardly likes to talk of David's psalms as
beautiful poetry. It seems unfair to them. For though they are
beautiful poetry, they are far more, they are prophecy and preaching
concerning God. They preach and declare to the Jews the Living God. They
are the speech of a man whose thoughts and works were begun, continued,
and ended in God. A man who knew that God was about his path, and about
his bed, and spying out all his ways. A man whose one fixed idea was,
that God was leading and guiding him through life. That idea, "The Lord
leads me," is the key-note of David's psalms, and makes them what they
are, an inspired revelation of Almighty God.

But is that idea true? Of course, you answer, it is true, because it is
in the Bible. But that is not the question. That is rather putting the
question aside, which is, Do _we_ believe it to be true, and find it to
be true? We believe that God was leading David because we read it in the
Bible. But do we believe that God is leading _us_? If not, what is the
use of our reading David's psalms, either in private or publicly in
church every Sunday? You all know how largely we use them, but why? If
we are not in the same case as David was, what right have we to take
David's words into our mouths? We do not fancy that there is any magical
virtue in repeating the same words, as foolish people used to repeat
charms and spells. Our only right, our only excuse for saying or singing
David's psalms in public or in private, must be, that as David was, so
are we in this world, under the continual guidance of God.

And therefore it is that the Church bids us to use these psalms in our
devotions, day by day, all the year round--that we may know that our God
is David's God, our temptations David's temptations, our fears David's
fears, our hopes David's hopes, our struggles and triumphs over what is
wrong in our hearts and in the world around us, are the same as David's.
That we are not to fancy, because David was an inspired prophet, that
therefore he was in a different case from us, of different passions from
ours, or that his words are too sacred and holy for us to use. Not so,
we are to believe the very contrary. We are to believe that no prophecy
of Scripture is of any private interpretation--that is--has not merely to
do with the man who spoke it first--but that because David spoke by the
Spirit of God, who is no respecter of persons, therefore his words apply
to you, and to me, and to every human being--that David is revealing to
us the everlasting laws of God's Spirit, and of God's providence, whereby
He works alike in every Christian soul, and then, therefore, whatever our
sin may be, whatever our sorrows may be, whatever our station in life may
be, we have a right to offer up to God our repentance, our doubts, our
fears, our hopes, our thanksgivings, in the very words which David used
two thousand years and more ago, certain that they are the right words,
better words than we can find for ourselves, exactly fitting our own
souls, and fitting too the mind and will of Almighty God, because they
are inspired by the same Spirit of God who descended on us, when we were
baptized unto Christ's Church.

And for that, my friends, we have an example--as we have for everything
else--in our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. For He, in the hour of His
darkest agony, when He hung upon the cross for our sins, and the sin of
all mankind, and when (worse than all other agony, or shame), there came
over Him the deepest horror of all--the feeling, but for a moment, that
God had forsaken Him--even then, He who spake as never man spake, did not
disdain to use the words of David, and cry, in the opening verse of that
22d psalm, every line of which applies so strangely to Him himself, "My
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" So did our Lord bequeath, as it
were, with His dying breath, to all Christians for ever, as the fit and
true expression of all that they should ever experience, the psalms of
His great earthly ancestor, David, the sweet singer of Israel.

My friends, neglect not that precious bequest of your dying Lord. Read
those psalms, study them, tune your hearts and minds to them more and
more; and you will find in them an inexhaustible treasury of wisdom, and
comfort, and of the knowledge of God, wherein standeth your eternal life.




XVI. AHAB AND MICAIAH--THE CHRISTIAN DEAD ALIVE FOE EVERMORE.


"And the King of Israel said to Jehosaphat, There is yet one man,
Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may enquire of the Lord: but I
hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil." . .
.--1 KINGS xxii. 8.

If you read the story of Micaiah the Prophet, and King Ahab in the 22d
chapter of the 1st Book of Kings, you will, I think, agree that Ahab
showed himself as foolish as he was wicked. He hated Micaiah for telling
him the truth. And when he heard the truth and was warned of his coming
end, he went stupidly to meet it, and died as the fool dies. Foolishness
and wickedness often go hand in hand. Certainly they did in that
miserable king's case.

But now, my friends, while we find fault with wretched Ahab, let us take
care that we are not finding fault with ourselves also. If we do what
Ahab did, we have no right to despise him for doing what we do. With
what judgment we judge we shall be judged, and the same measure which we
measure out to Ahab, God will measure out to us. All these things are
written for our example, that we may see our faults in other men, as in a
glass, and seeing how ugly sin and folly is, and to what misery it leads,
may learn to avoid it, and look at home, and see that we are not treading
the same path. Else what use in reading these stories of good men and
bad men of old times? The very use of them is to make us remember that
they were men of like passions with ourselves, and learn from their
example; as we may do easily enough from that of Ahab.

"There remaineth yet one prophet--but I hate him." How often have we
said that in our hearts! Do you think not? Let me show you then.

How often when we are in trouble or anxiety do we go everywhere to get
comfort, before we go to God's word? When a young lad falls into wild
ways, and gets into trouble by his own folly, then to whom does he go for
comfort? Too often, to other wild lads like himself, or to foolish and
wicked women, who will flatter him, and try to make him easy in his sins,
and say to him as the false prophets said to Ahab, "Go on and prosper--why
be afraid? Why should you not enjoy yourself? Never mind what your
father and mother say, never mind what the parson says. You will do well
enough. All will come right somehow. Come and drink, and drive away
sorrow."

And all the while the poor lad gets no comfort from these false friends.
He likes to listen to them, because they flatter him up in his sins; but
all the while his heart is heavy. Like Ahab, he has a secret fear that
all will _not_ come right; he feels that he will _not_ do well enough;
and he knows that there remaineth yet a prophet of the Lord, who will not
prophesy good of him but evil--and that is the Bible, and the
prayer-book, and the sermon he hears at church--and therefore he hates
them. And so, many a time he will not go to church for fear of hearing
there that he is wrong, perhaps something in the sermon, which hits him
hard, and makes him ashamed of himself, and angry with the preacher. So
for fear of hearing the truth, and having his sins set before his face,
he stays away from church, and passes his Sundays like a heathen, because
he has no mind to repent and mend, and be a good Christian.

Foolish fellow! As if he could escape God's judgment by shutting his
ears to it. As well try to stop the thunder from rolling in the sky, by
stopping his ears to that! The thunder is there, whether he choose to
hear it or not. And whether he comes to church or not, God's law stands
sure, that the wages of sin is death. Does the man fancy that God's law
is shut up within the church walls, and that so he can keep clear of it
by staying away from church? My friends, God's law is over the whole
country, and over every cottage and field in it--about our path and about
our bed, and spying out all our ways. The darkness is no darkness to
God. God's judgments are in all the earth; and whether or not we choose
to find them out, they will find us out just the same, as they found out
Ahab, when his cup was full, and his time was come.

How many a poor lad, too, who has got into trouble, thinks he shall
escape God's judgments by going across the sea; but he finds himself
mistaken! He finds that the wages of sin are misery and shame and ruin,
in Australia just as much as in England, and that all the gold in the
diggings cannot redeem his soul, or prevent his being an unhappy self-
condemned man if he does wrong.

How many a poor lad, too, who has got into trouble, has fancied that he
could escape God's judgments by going for a soldier, and has found out
that he too was mistaken! Perhaps God's judgment has found him out, as
it found out Ahab, on the field of battle, and a chance shot has taught
him, as it taught Ahab, that there is no hiding-place from the Lord who
made him. Or perhaps God's judgments have come in fever, and hunger, and
cold, and weariness, and miserable lonely labour; and with that hunger of
body has come a hunger of his soul--a hunger after the bread of life, and
the word of God! Ah! how many a poor fellow in his pain and misery has
longed for the crumbs which used to fall from God's table, when he was a
boy at home! for a word of good advice, though it were never so sharp and
plain spoken--or a lesson such as he used to hear at school, or a tract,
or a bit of a book, or anybody or anything which will put his poor
wandering soul in the right way. He used to hate such things when he was
at home, because they warned him of his bad ways; but now he feels a
strange longing for that very good talk which he hated once, and so like
David of old, out of the deep he cries unto the Lord. And when that cry
comes up out of a sinful conscience-stricken, self-condemned heart, be
sure it does not come up in vain. The Lord hears it, and the Lord
answers it. Yes, I know it for certain; for many a sad and yet pleasant
story I have heard, how brave men who went out from England, full of
strength and health, and full of sin and folly too,--and there in that
blood-stained Crimea, when their strength and their health had faded, and
there was nothing round them or before them but wounds, and misery, and
death; how there at last they found Christ, or rather were found by Him,
and opened their eyes at last to see God's judgments for their sins, and
confessed their own sin and God's justice, and received His precious
promises of pardon, even in the agonies of death; and found amid the rage
and noise of war, the peace of God, which this world's pleasures never
gave them, and which this world's wounds, and fever, and battle, and
sudden death cannot take away.

And after that, it matters little for a man what happens to him. For if
he lives, he lives unto the Lord; and if he dies, he dies unto the Lord.
He may come home, well and strong, once more to do his duty, where God
has put him, a sadder man perhaps, but at least a soberer and a wiser
man, who has learnt to endure hardship, not merely as a soldier of the
Queen, but as a good soldier of Jesus Christ too, ready to fight against
sin and wrong-doing in himself and in his neighbours.

Or he may come home a cripple, to be honoured and to be kept too (as he
deserves to be) at his country's expense. But if he be a wise man he
will not regret even the loss of a limb. That is a cheap price to pay
for having gained what is worth all the limbs in a man's body, a clear
conscience and a right life. "If thy hand offend thee cut it off."
Better to enter into life halt and maimed, as many a gallant man has done
in war time, than having two hands and two feet to be cast out.

Or perhaps his grave is left behind there, upon those lonely Crimean
downs, and his comrades are returning without him, and all whom he knew,
and all whom he loved, are looking for him at home. There his grave is,
and must be; and "the foe and the stranger will tread on his head, and
they far away on the billow."

But at least he has not died like Ahab--a shameful and pitiable death. He
has done his work and conquered. He has died like a man, whom men
honour. Even so it is well. And if he have died in the Lord, a penitent
Christian man, _he_ is not dead at all. _He_ does not lie in that grave
in a foreign land. All of him that strangers' feet can tread upon is but
what we called his body; and yet which was not even his body, but the
mere husk and shell of him, the flesh and bones with which his body was
clothed in this life; while he, he himself, is nearer God than ever, and
nearer, too, than ever to his comrades who seem to have left him, and to
the parents and the friends who are weeping for him at home. Ay, nearer
to them, more able, I firmly believe, to help and comfort them, now that
he is alive for ever, in the heaven of God, than he would if he were only
alive here on the earth of God--more able perhaps to help them now by his
prayers than he ever would have been by the labour of his hands. Be that
as it may, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from
their labours, and their works do follow them. A fearful labour is the
soldier's, and an ugly work; and he has done it; and doubt not it has
followed him, and is recorded for him in the book of God for ever!




XVII. WHAT IS CHANCE?


"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death
passed upon all men, because all have sinned."--ROMANS v. 12.

All death is a solemn and fearful thing. When it comes to an old person,
one cannot help feeling it often a release, and saying, "He has done his
work--he has sorrowed out his sorrows, he has struggled his last
struggle, and wept his last tear: let him go to his rest and be peaceful
at last."

But when death comes suddenly to people in the prime of life, who but
yesterday were as busy and as lively as any of us, and we are face to
face with death, and see the same face we knew in life--not wasted, not
worn, young and lusty as ever, seemingly asleep,--something at our heart
as well as in our eyes, tells us that there is more than sleep in that
strange, sharp, quiet smile--and we know in spite of ourselves that the
man is dead. And then strange questions rise in us, "Is that he whom we
knew? that still piece of clay, waiting only a few days before it returns
to its dust? It is the face of him, the shape of him, it is what we knew
him by. It is the very same body of which when we met it on the road we
said, "He is coming." And yet is it _he_? Where is _he_ himself? Can
_he_ hear us? Can _he_ see us? Does _he_ remember us as we remember
_him_? Surely he must. He cannot be gone away--there he lies still on
that bed before us!"

And then we are ready to say to ourselves, "It must be a mistake, a
dream. He cannot be dead. He will wake. We shall meet him to-morrow in
his old place, about his old work. _He_ dead? Impossible! Impossible
to believe that we shall never see him again--never any more till we too
die!"

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