01.35. The Chamber Over the Gate

Chapter 35 THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE. The battle that decided Absalom’s fate, and restored David to his throne, was fought in Gilead on the eastern side of Jordan.

David who had charged his three generals, Joab, Abishai and Ittai, "Deal gently with the young man Absalom for my sake," sat by the gate of the city of Mahanaim and waited with a burdened heart for news from the distant field of conflict. At last a watchman on the walls saw a man running towards him, and then another coming from the same direction. Both brought tidings of victory to the king, and both knew of the death of Absalom by the hands of Joab and his young men. But the first would not, perhaps could not get his consent to tell the father of the slaying of his son as he was caught by the boughs of a tree and could not defend himself or escape. Then the second was enjoined to speak, by David, with the words, "Is the young man Absalom safe?" And Cushi answered, "The enemies of my lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt be as that young man is." The Scripture says with its incomparable pathos, "And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, thus he said, ’O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom my son, my son!" The room over the gate in which David poured out his grief, detaches itself somehow from the other features of the Bible narrative and suggests certain facts to the mind.

One is, that a truly great sorrow must have its lonely hiding place away from, and above the crowd. The sight of David turning from citizen and soldier, from street and palace, from human voices and presences, to be alone with his crushing sorrow, not only moves the spirit in deepest sympathy, but is felt to be a kind of picture lesson of the heart’s wish and conduct under a grief that is truly great and overwhelming in its character. The desire of the soul is to get away to itself. It would hide from the gaze of the idly curious. Human pity and consolation are felt to be powerless at such a time, and the stricken life yearns for the boon of perfect loneliness. In other words, it craves the solitude of "the room over the gate." This is so truly a principle belonging to the wounded heart, that when we are confronted with glib and eloquent portrayers of private sorrows in mixed social circles and public occasions, we may know at once that a profound life-crushing woe has not visited the wordy, windy being before us. A truly great sorrow hides itself and craves privacy in the indulgence of its bitter load and affliction.

We have heard women air their marital griefs and household troubles in a company made up of mere acquaintances and strangers. We were told of a female who took a leading part in the singing at her husband’s funeral. We listened once with a sickened feeling to a woman evangelist while she told a nondescript audience how she preached to an assembly of people in a hall while her husband lay dead in his coffin up stairs.

Every such occurrence exhibited a violation not only of the decencies of life, the absence of a proper respect and regard for the dead, but is an exposure of the fact that a real crushing sorrow had not come to any one of them. In the first instance the reader can judge for himself both easily and correctly. In the second case there was no love lost on either side as numbers knew. And in the third occurrence the marriage had been made for money and not affection, and there was no actual grief in the voluble feminine as she was posing down stairs as a martyr at the stake, and getting credit for a Christian resignation when not a particle of that beautiful grace was in her soul. She was glad he was gone. A lifetime observation convinces us that genuine grief draws away from publicity, from cold, observing eyes, from the babel of human tongues and crouches down alone with its misery in the stillness of the room over the gate. A second thought is that such are the calls of life upon us, that we cannot remain in the chamber over the gate, but have to come back to the duties and responsibilities awaiting us in public.

David had not been long alone with his overwhelming bereavement, when the summons came that he was wanted, and that to stay aloof nursing his sorrow would mean disaster both to him and his kingdom. And so brushing away the tears and choking back the sobs, the king came and stood in the presence of the people to lead and rule them as of yore. This is certainly one of the most painful obligations of life, and yet one of the most pressing and essential. It looks to every one of us who have entered the room over the gate, that we can never leave it again. The very sunshine on the outside seems to mock us, and the murmur of tongues, and the sound of laughter on all sides is a torture. But there are grave faced, stern lipped Joabs that summon us back to the desk, counter, platform, pulpit, farm and store, and so exerting every fiber of strength we return to irksome duties, to weary hearted performances, and fill our places once more in the ranks of our fellow men. And we go back not to burden others with our life loads and wretchedness; but as David returned with a saddened but resolute mind to his offices as a king and without a word about Absalom, so we are to sink the individual grief and speak not of the personal sorrow for the sake of the many who need help, and for the good of the human race as a whole.

Self-contained and self-restrained we should be all the stronger and nobler for such spirit control, and go back into the walks of men to do all in the line of usefulness and blessing that is expected of us by God and man.

Here then is another proof that the noisy proclaimer of his wrongs, suffering and bereavements is not doing what he should do, and is not the man that God desires and plans him to be.

Truly this world would be sorely hurt, and robbed as well, of its greatest men and their achievements for humanity, if those who have been fearfully smitten in life should have remained in "the chamber over the gate." A mere glance at sacred and secular history will reveal what has been wrought in the best and highest lines for mankind by those who in some way have suffered most, and yet who still came and walked in the midst of the suffering children of men, and did all that could be done for them in body and mind and soul. A third truth we draw from this Scripture scene is that it is possible to be a blessing to men and yet bear about with us in the heart "The Room Over the Gate."

We do not have to lay bare our troubles to the gaze of men, but there is a chamber in the soul where one can retire and there in the presence of God let the tears drip unchallenged and unrebuked over the dead Absaloms of our life. When Robert E. Lee, looking through his field glass saw that he had lost Gettysburg through the failure of one of his lieutenant generals to carry out his orders, it is said that he lowered the glass and rode away without a single expression of impatience, pain, regret or anger. And yet a crushing disappointment and sorrow had befallen him.

There was no time for him to indulge his grief in some neighboring tent or house near the battlefield. He had to work now to bring his defeated army back to Virginia. And he did so. But no one could study his face then and thereafter when an Appomattox had been added to his sorrows and humiliations, but could see that he had "A Room Over the Gate" in his heart. Here in this strange apartment of the spirit we doubt not that he silently suffered and grieved; but that he kept his burden to himself, made him all the greater as a man, and all the more admirable in the eyes and judgment of the world.

We knew in earlier days a great church editor whose writings, full of strong, pure, lofty thought, and carrying with them a nameless pathetic power, moved, strengthened and blessed the minds and hearts of many thousands of readers. He had met his Absalom sorrow in his early manhood in the distressing death of his young bride. He never spoke of this past bereavement to the public, or even alluded to it in the social circle. And yet it was evident to the discerning eye that he bore about with him in his breast "A Room Over the Gate."

After his death a friend, looking over his private papers, found this written paragraph which was evidently penned not for publication, not for human eyes to rest upon, but as a kind of wail like David’s when he went up the steps to the chamber over the portal crying, "O Absalom, my son, my son." The paragraph of a few lines read as follows: "Twenty miles from this room as the crow flies, is a grave which has borrowed grace and beauty from the form of the lovely young woman who sleeps within. The shadows of the live oaks touch it kindly; the rose vine clambering near by drops its white and scarlet petals lovingly upon it. The mockingbird gives its tribute of song from a neighboring willow to one whose voice was sweeter than its own. We visit the spot each anniversary of the death of the beautiful sleeper. But all the duties and rush of life are not sufficient to keep us from holding vigil every day by the side of this last resting place of one, who when she went away into the skies took with her the charm of this world and left us desolate and stripped of all but duty to God and man, and waiting till life shall end, and we shall meet again in a country where death is unknown and parting never comes again."

All honor to the man who in sorrow can keep his grief to himself, and although the Room Over the Gate is in his heart and life, yet can come down like David did to help and bless others, and be a king among men in the best, truest and highest sense of the word.

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