XII. The Inner and Outer Conflicts

Samuel The Prophet

I. An Age of Transition

(1 Samuel 1)

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

—Tennyson.

“ON whom the ends of the ages are come”—i. e., the end of one age and the beginning of another. Such is our position to-day. In every direction the old order is giving place to the new. It was thus in the days of the Primitive Church, when the typical institutions of the Levitical system were being replaced by “the heavenly things themselves.” And it was also thus at the time when our narrative begins. The story of Samuel is a divine interlude between the days of the Judges and those of David the King.

Hitherto the High Priesthood had been the supreme authority recognised in the Hebrew Commonwealth. To Moses, its founder, there could be of course no successor; but Aaron was the first of an unbroken line of priests. No other office stood for the whole of Israel. The Mosaic era, however, was not destined to culminate in the rule of the Priest, who has seldom combined the sacerdotal functions with the special qualifications that constitute a great leader and ruler. Too often the reign of the Churchman has been warped by bigotry, tyranny, and the repression of the nobler aspirations of mankind. The Priest was to make way for the King.

A suggestion that a fresh development of the Hebrew polity was near occurs in the closing verses of the Book of Ruth, with which this book is connected by the conjunction now. The genealogy which is the evident climax of that sweet pastoral story closes, has no connection with Aaron or his line. It expressly deals with the tribe of Judah, of which nothing was spoken concerning the priesthood. Evidently the Divine purpose was moving forward—but whither? At the time its goal was not apparent; but as we look back on all the circumstances from the vantage-ground of accomplished fact, we can see that it was slowly moving towards the establishment of the kingdom under David; and veiled from all eyes there was the yet profounder movement towards the revelation of “that Proper Man,” as Luther calls Him, in whose nature, fitly known as Wonderful, the priestly, the prophetic, and the royal blend in perfect symmetry and beauty.

I. The Urgent Need for a Strong Man.—Every age takes up and urges the cry—Give us men; but if ever a strong man was needed, it was in the days of which the Book of Judges affords some startling glimpses.

Canaan had been conquered, but the ancient inhabitants were far from being subdued; they remained much as the Saxons under the early Norman kings. In the South, the Philistines held their five cities. The mountain fortress, which was afterwards known as Mount Zion, garrisoned by Jebusites, was proudly defiant so far forward as the days of David. Nearly all the seacoast, and all the strongholds in the rich plain of Esdraelon, were in the hands of the Canaanites. The little kingdom of Gezer remained independent till it was conquered by the King of Egypt, and given as a dowry to Solomon’s Queen. On the northern frontier were the remains of those mighty nations which Joshua had overthrown in the great battle of the Waters of Merom, but which probably only gave a nominal allegiance to the Israelite suzerainty. “So the Lord left those nations, without driving them out hastily, … to prove Israel by them, even as many as had not known the wars of Canaan, … to teach them war, at the least such as beforetime knew nothing thereof.” Had it not been for the presence of these warlike tribes, we should never have heard of Gideon, of Barak, of Jephthah, of Samson, or of David. Without this discipline, Israel might have become an effeminate and molluscous race, lacking backbone and muscle. They would have dwelt in security, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure in a large land, a place where there was no want of anything that is in the earth (Judges 3:1–3; 18:7, 10).

How often in our earthly discipline we come into experiences which are the counterpart of these. There are wars where we looked for peace; fret and chafe where we expected freedom from annoyance; pouring from vessel to vessel where we hoped to be allowed to settle on our lees. Are not these clearly permitted to try us, that we may learn war; that we may know ourselves and know God; that we and our children may grow up into a nobler and healthier style of character than had otherwise been possible?

In Israel this incessant exposure to attack was aggravated by the absence of a strong central government. The priesthood had evidently fallen into the hands of weaklings from the days of Phinehas. Of this there is striking confirmation in the fact that Eli sprang, not from the house of Eleazar, the eldest son of Aaron, in which the succession ought to have been continued, but from the family of the younger son, Ithamar. There is a strong probability that the representatives of the elder branch had proved themselves so unable to cope with the disorders of the time; that they had been set aside in favour of anyone who evinced faculty enough to take the field and marshal the forces of Israel. Perhaps Eli, in his young life, had done some stirring deed of prowess which raised him to the supreme position his fellow-countrymen could give; though, when we are introduced to him, he is pitiful in his senile decrepitude and weakness (1 Chron. 6:4–15; 24:4).

From time to time prophets had been raised up as a temporary expedient. “He gave them judges until Samuel the prophet.” “And when the Lord raised up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for it repented the Lord because of their groaning by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them” (Acts 13:20; Judges 2:18). The reign of a judge was, however, a very transient gleam of light in that dark and stormy age. At the furthest, his power was only recognised within his own and the adjacent tribes. Samson, for instance, was little else than the hero of the south country, whilst Jephthah was pre-eminently the captain of the trans-Jordanic tribes. In many cases the office ceased with the special crisis that called it into being. Only in the case of two or three, such as Deborah and Gideon, did conspicuous service lead to a lifelong primacy.

Thus the nation was in danger of desolation by internal anarchy and external attack. With no principle of cohesion, no rallying-point, no acknowledged leader, what was there to resist the pressure of the Canaanites from within, and of the hostile nations from without, its borders? “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes”; “The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord”; “The children of Israel cried unto the Lord.” These three sentences, repeated frequently and emphatically, are the keynotes of the whole book. The religious ties, moreover, were very weak. We find, for instance, the name of Baal, a Phœnician deity, occurring three times in the names of members of the family of Saul (1 Chron. 8:30, 33, 34). The stories of Micah, of Ruth, and of the extermination of the Danites, supply graphic pictures of the disunion, independence, and wildness of the time; of wild licence, and of exposure to attack.

It was necessary, therefore, to introduce a new order of things. To assert and achieve the national unity; to make the best aspects of the rule of the judges permanent in the office of kingship; to resuscitate and maintain the allegiance of Israel to the God of their fathers; to carry over the whole nation from the time of the last judge to that of the first king—was a task that demanded a pre-eminently strong man; and the want was superbly supplied, as we shall see, by the prophet Samuel, who conducted his people from one age to another, without a revolution, and almost without the excitement which naturally accompanies so great a change.

II. How the Need was Met.—God’s greatest gifts to man come through travail. Whether we look into the spiritual or the temporal sphere, can we discover anything, any great reform, any beneficent discovery, any soul-awakening revival, which did not come through the toils and tears, the vigils and blood-shedding of men and women, whose sufferings were the pangs of its birth? That which costs nothing is of small avail to the salvation and help of mankind. The souls that are set on saving themselves will never be the saviours of the race. If the temple is raised, David must bear sore afflictions; if the Gospel of the grace of God is to be disentangled from Jewish tradition, Paul’s life must be one long agony; if the Reformation is to be rendered possible for Europe, men like John Huss and Jerome must be burnt at the stake; if great scientific discoveries are to be established, men like Galileo, Galvani, Faraday, and Edison must spend sleepless nights and laborious days through long years; if great religious truths are to be enunciated, as the priceless heirloom of pilgrim souls, men like Baxter, Bunyan, or Charles Simeon must be willing to undergo ostracism, misrepresentation, and contempt. Before Samuel could be given to his people, Hannah must be a woman of a sorrowful spirit.

Some few miles to the north of Jerusalem, on the confines of the territories of Ephraim and Benjamin, was situated the town of Ramathaim-Zophim. It was also known as Ramah, and has passed into New Testament history as Arimathea, the town from which he came who begged of Pilate the body of the Lord. Ramathaim means the two Ramahs, as there were probably an upper and a lower city, to which reference is made in the after-story (1 Sam. 9:13). Zophim recalls the name of an ancestor of Elkanah, named Zuph, who appears to have been a man of considerable importance, and to have given his name to the whole district (1 Chron. 6:35; 1 Sam. 9:5). In this mountain city a child was to be born who was to give it interest and importance, not only during his lifetime, when it became the focus of the national life, but for centuries of years.

Towards the close of Samson’s career in Southern Judah, a family resided at Ramah consisting of Elkanah, a Levite, and his two wives, Hannah (Grace) and Peninnah (Pearl or Margaret). He had formerly lived in Ephraim, and was therefore considered to belong to that tribe (Joshua 21:20). That he had two wives was not a violation of the Levitical law, which did not forbid polygamy, but carefully regulated the marriage-law, penetrating the home-life with such ideals as would gradually bring men and women back to the original institution of Paradise (Mark 10:4–9).

It is supposed that Elkanah brought a second wife into his home because of Hannah’s childlessness; but, whatever had been the cause, the step had been fraught with misery. The house at Ramah was filled with bickering and strife, which was augmented as child after child fell to the lot of Peninnah, whilst Hannah was still childless. Apart from all else, her desolate condition was an almost intolerable condition (Gen. 30:1); but that it should be made the subject of biting sarcasm and bitter taunts was the occasion of the most poignant grief. The pain was not confined to Ramah, but seems to have reached its climax when, according to the Hebrew custom, the household went up to offer unto the Lord the yearly sacrifice, and Hannah was compelled to witness the many portions which fell to the lot of her rival, for all her sons and daughters, at the sacrificial feast, when, after offering to Jehovah the victims they had brought, they retired to feast on the remainder. Then it was that the needy sat upon the dunghill, and the poor in the dust; then it was that her soul was pierced as by the sword of the Lord, and drew near unto the grave; then it was that the hunger of her soul could not be appeased even by the consciousness of Elkanah’s fond affection (1:5, 8; 2:5–8). But out of this soul-travail the joy of her life and the saviour of her country were to be born.

II. A Woman’s Anguish of Heart

(1 Samuel 1:15)

Unanswered yet? Faith cannot be unanswered,

Her feet were firmly planted on the Rock;

Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted,

Nor quails before the loudest thundershock.

She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer,

And cries “It shall be done” sometime, somewhere.

—Browning.

WE may infer that Hannah’s barrenness, and the provocation of her rival, were not the only reasons for Hannah’s sorrow. As her noble song proves, she was saturated with the most splendid traditions and hopes of her people; her soul was thrilling with the conceptions that inspired the songs of Moses. Stricken with an agony of grief for the anarchy and confusion around her, she longed with passionate desire to enshrine her noblest self in a child, who should resuscitate the ebbing prosperity of the nation, and set it on an enduring foundation. Frail woman that she was, she might not even hope to emulate a Jael or a Deborah, but she might save her people if she could only breathe her ardent nature into a child. What if she were to be deprived of his presence and support from his earliest years, would she not be compensated a thousandfold if only the Lord would accept him as his own, and use him to be the channel through which his redemptive schemes might be achieved? Levites ordinarily were consecrated to the Lord’s service between the ages of thirty and fifty, but her son, if only she might have a man-child, should be given to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor should ever come upon his flowing locks.

On one occasion, whilst the feast was proceeding at Shiloh, it seemed as though Hannah could restrain herself no longer, and after her people had eaten and drunk—she fasting, save from tears—she rose up and returned to the outer court of the Tabernacle. Most of its ancient glory had departed. Probably only a few curtains were draped around the Ark and the other sacred furniture, which had escaped the wreck of the previous two or three hundred years; and this simple structure was, if we may credit Rabbinical tradition, surrounded by a low stone wall, at the gate of which was a seat or throne for the High Priest. “And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore.” Others went with burnt-offerings, but she with the broken heart which God will not despise. She didn’t chide God, but she held out her cup of trial, that it might become a cup of salvation.

We are told that “she prayed,” and it becomes us to study her prayer and its issue.

It was heart-prayer. It is the custom of Orientals to pray audibly, but as she stood beside Eli’s seat (ver. 26) she spake in her heart; her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. This indicates that she had made many advances in the Divine life, and had come to know the secret of heart-fellowship with God. Hers were not vain repetitions, but such an interchange of spirit with spirit, of need with supply, of hunger with satisfaction, of the human with the Divine, as requires no speech, for speech could not convey those “groanings which cannot be uttered.”

It was based on a new name for God. She appealed to Jehovah under a new title, “Jehovah of Hosts,” as though it were nothing to Him to summon into existence an infant spirit, whom she might call child. She asked Him to look down from the myriads of holy spirits who circled round his throne, and did his behests, to her dire affliction and anguish. She vowed in words which Elkanah by his silence or consent afterwards ratified (Num. 30:6–15), that she did not want this inestimable boon for herself merely, but for the kingdom and glory of God, and that her son should be a Nazarite from his birth, abstaining from intoxicating drink, his locks unshorn, his body undefiled by contact with the dead (Num. 30:6–15).

It was definite prayer. “Give unto thine handmaid a man-child.” “For this child I prayed.” So many of our prayers miscarry because they are aimed at no special goal. We launch them aimlessly in the air, and wonder that they achieve nothing. How many of God’s professing children would be nonplussed if, on leaving God’s audience chamber on any morning, they were questioned as to what precious gift they had gone thither to obtain? We are too often contented with asking generally that God would bless those with whom we are connected, without entering specifically into the case of any. Experienced saints who are versed in the art of intercessory prayer tell us of the marvellous results which have accrued, when they have set themselves to pray definitely for the salvation of individuals, or for some good and perfect gift on their behalf.

There is a notable instance of this in the life of Bishop Hannington of Uganda. It is recorded in the diary of a fellow-clergyman, who had known him at the University, that on a certain day he was led to pray definitely for his friend; and almost simultaneously Hannington notes in his diary that he was conscious of unusual drawings towards God.

It was prayer without reserve. “I have poured out my soul before the Lord.” Ah! how good it would be if we could more often follow Hannah’s example. We pour out our secrets to confidential friends, and in many instances have reason bitterly to repent; or, if we commit our cause to God, we tell Him one side of the case—our side—and hide from Him the other. Often the matter would be ended, if we dared to pour out all our soul; not defending ourselves, not apologising, not glossing over what demanded clear and unequivocal confession. When the heart is breaking, when its frail machinery seems unable to sustain the weight of its anxiety, when its cords are strained to the point of snapping, then, as you remember these things, pour out your soul in you (Psa. 42:4).

It was persevering prayer. “It came to pass, as she continued praying before the Lord.” Not that either she or we can claim to be heard for our much speaking, but when the Lord lays some burden on us we cannot do other than wait before Him.

It was prayer that received its coveted boon. Eli was seated in his place at the entrance to the sanctuary. His notice was attracted by Hannah, though she was indifferent to all around. At first his attention was probably arrested by the signs of her excessive sorrow, and he expected that she would pour out her prayers in an audible voice, as so many other burdened souls were wont to do. But since her lips moved, while her voice was not heard, the high priest thought she had been drunken, and rather rudely and coarsely broke in on her with the rebuke, “How long wilt thou be drunken? Put away thy wine from thee.” Therein another proof was given of the inability of the priesthood to understand and sympathise with the best spirit and temper of the time. Eli judged after the sight of his eyes, and clearly the mind of God had not been revealed to him. He had degenerated into the mere official, from whom the Divine purposes were concealed.

Hannah answered the unjust reproach with great meekness. “No,” she said, “it isn’t as you think. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my spirit unto the Lord.” She had already suffered so much that this last misapprehension could not seriously add to her burden. She was content to cast it, with all the rest, on God; and she realised, even before Eli replied, that the merciful Burden-bearer had heard and answered her prayer. She had entered into the spirit of the prayer, which not only asks, but takes. She anticipated those wonderful words, which, more than any others, disclose the secret of prevailing supplication, “All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye have received them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24). Before ever the words of Eli, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thy petition that thou hast asked of Him,” had fallen like a summer shower on a parched land, she knew that she had prevailed, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, filled and kept her mind and heart. And she said, “Let thy servant find grace in thy sight. So the woman went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.” Well may Anstice sing:

“Could we but kneel, and cast our load,

E’en while we pray, upon our God,

Then rise with lightened cheer.”

Too often we return from prayer with sad faces and burdened hearts. We have not cast our burden on the Lord, or if we have done so, we have taken it back again. There has been no interchange, and no exchange. We have failed to abandon our weights, anxieties, and sins, leaving them in the hands of our Almighty Friend, receiving instead beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

The next day was fixed for their return home. “And they rose up in the morning early, and worshipped before the Lord, and returned, and came to their house in Ramah.” But what an altered woman she was! How differently she has borne herself in that last brief visit to the holy shrine! And with what a glad face she entered the home which had been associated with such sorrow. Peninnah must have wondered what had happened to make so great a change; but Elkanah was the confidant of her secret, and his faith was made stronger by her unquestioning trust (ver. 23).

The Workings of Sorrow.—In this prayer we can trace the harvest sown in years of suffering. Only one who had greatly suffered could have poured out such a prayer. The notes of resignation, of chastened submission to the will of God, of appeal as from the dust, of the abandonment of all hope save in God, of the simple desire for his kingdom and righteousness, are touched with infinite delicacy and tenderness by this sorrowful woman’s hand. Sorrow gives an indefinable beauty to the soul. The blue of heaven does not seem so beautiful in rainless Egypt as in countries where the atmosphere is saturated with moisture. “What do you think of her singing?” asked the trainer of a soprano vocalist. “She sings superbly,” was his friend’s reply, “but if I had to do with her, I would break her heart.” It may be that the long sharp pain, which has been your lot for these many years, the heart-hunger, the disappointed hopes, the silent waiting, the holding your peace, even from good, have been necessary, to teach you how to pray, to lead you into the secret of a childlike faith, and to fit you to be the parent of some priceless gift to the world.

It fell out to Hannah according to her faith. Blessed was she that had believed, for there was a performance unto her of the promises which God had made to her secret soul. “The Lord remembered her, and it came to pass, when the time had come about, that she bare a son, and she called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord.”

The good Elkanah had a new joy in his heart as he went up to offer unto the Lord his yearly sacrifice; and it would seem that he added to it some special expression of a vow that he had made—“the yearly sacrifice, and his vow.” But Hannah abode at Ramah until the child was weaned, which would probably be on his completion of his third year, for at that age Levite children were permitted to be enrolled and to enter the house of the Lord (2 Chron. 30:16).

At last the time arrived when the child should be openly presented to the Lord. The parents set out on their solemn journey with their child. The mother’s heart was now as full of praise as it had formerly been of sorrow. Her heart rejoiced in the Lord; her spirit was exalted in her God. The beggar was lifted from the dunghill to inherit the throne of glory. She had learned that there was no Rock like her God, and she rejoiced in his salvation. Her song, on which the Mother of our Lord modelled the Magnificat, is the outburst of a soul whose cup was simply overflowing with the loving-kindness of the Lord.

Presently the memorable journey from Ramah was finished. The sanctuary was again in sight, where she had suffered so poignantly and prayed so fervently. How it all rushed on her memory. “I am the woman that stood by thee here,” she said to Eli; “for this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition.”

Notice those words, “I stood by thee here.” How closely we associate certain experiences with certain spots. Here we suffered; here we resolved to live a new life; here we heard God speak. It was thus with Hannah. And was it not befitting that she should rejoice where she had sorrowed; that the harvest of joy should wave over the furrows where her tears had fallen so lavishly; that the blue skies should overarch the very spot where the dark cloud’s had lowered?

Take heart, thou man or woman of a sorrowful spirit! Only suffer according to the will of God, and for no wrong or sinful cause! Suffer for his Church, for a lost world, for dying men! Travail in birth for souls! Exercise thyself as thou wilt for the coming of his kingdom! Bear the weight of some other soul, dear to thee as life! And if thou dost abide thy Lord’s time, He will bring thee again to tread in garments of joy, where thou hast stood in the drapery of woe. Thou shalt come again from the land of the enemy. They that go forth and weep, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless, doubtless, doubtless come again, with rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them.

III. The Young Levite

(1 Samuel 2 and 3)

Be still! sad soul! lift thou no passionate cry,

But spread the desert of thy being bare

To the full searching of the All-seeing eye;

Wait!—and through dark misgiving, blank despair,

God will come down in pity, and fill the dry

Dead place with light, and life, and vernal air.

—J. C. Shairp.

DEAN STANLEY tells us that, in his gentler moments, Luther used to dwell on these early chapters of the Books of Samuel with the tenderness which formed the occasional counterpoise to the ruder passions and enterprises of his stormy life. Indeed, students of the Scriptures in every age have been arrested by the figure of this little child girded with his linen ephod, or in the little robe which his mother brought him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.

With what passionate and almost irrepressible desire the mother must have anticipated that annual visit, all too transient to satisfy her natural longings. It must have been hard enough to leave him at all at so tender an age as three; and specially with the women who seem to have been regularly occupied in the service of the Tabernacle, and to whose care he was probably entrusted. Probably not all of them were infected with the shameful sin into which several seem to have been seduced (1 Sam. 2:22, r.v.). There may have been amongst them some like Anna, the prophetess, who departed not from the sacred shrine, worshipping, with fastings and supplications, night and day (Luke 2:37). These would attend to the physical needs of the child; whilst his training in the law, and the elements of such education as was possible, would be under the direct supervision of the high priest.

But Hannah was solaced for her deprivation. There was the precious memory of those early years, when he had filled the house with his childish prattle, and she had been able to sow in the receptive soil of his tender heart the seeds of manhood’s harvest. Other children, also, were born to her; and, as three sons and two daughters grew up at her knees, surely the thought of their little brother, in his sacred office a continual inspiration, must have been a subject of lively and perennial interest? We need not accept the Jewish legend, which narrates that, as one of Hannah’s children was born, one of Peninnah’s died. Such an infliction would have given no satisfaction to Hannah, and have been unkind to Elkanah. It was enough that Jehovah had vindicated the woman’s wrongs, as He will assuredly vindicate all those who, when they are reviled revile not again, when they suffer threaten not, but commit themselves and their complaint to Him who judgeth righteously. Peaceful, reverent, and loving thoughts filled the mother’s heart as she wrought at the little robe, which in shape was of the pattern which, probably, Mary made for her Son, “woven from the top without and without seam,” which the soldiers would not tear.

The Influence of a Mother.—Mothers still make garments for their children—not on the loom or with their busy needles merely, but by their holy and ennobling characters displayed from day to day before young and quickly observant eyes, by their words and conversation, and by the habits of their daily devotion. What the children see they imitate, and unconsciously array themselves in the gentleness or rudeness, the reverence for religion or indifference, the refinement or coarseness of manner, which are daily presented to their gaze. As fish take on the mottled colour of the ground on which they lie, and as the plovers change their plumage to match the winter or the spring, so children wear the robes which their mother’s character and behaviour, temper and tones, weave for them.

“And so the child did minister unto the Lord before Eli the priest”; slept his innocent sleep unconscious of the sins around him, attracted the growing attachment of the old man by his reverent affection and endearing ways, and gave many evidences that he was being prepared to become a link between God and his people, a mediator between the old and the new—between the turbulent days of Samson and the splendid peace of the reign of Solomon.

Notice the sacrilege and sins of Eli’s sons. “Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial (worthlessness); they knew not the Lord, nor the due of the priests from the people” (2:12, r. v.). The law of Moses authorised the priest to take as his portion, and instead of fees in coin, the whole of the sin-offerings, and the breast and right shoulder of the peace-offerings; the fat only of the latter being burned on the altar, whilst the remainder of the animal was handed back to the offerer, to be consumed by himself, his sons, and his daughters, his men-servants and his maid-servants, and the Levite that was within his gates (Deut. 12:12). It was befitting, as the apostle states it, that they which ministered about sacred things should eat of the things of the Temple, and that they which waited upon the altar should have their portion with the altar (1 Cor. 9:13).

The first act of every peace-offering was the sprinkling of blood upon the altar round about; the second was the burning of the internal fat. It was never eaten, but always consumed by fire. The flame fed on it, as the food of God, who, so to speak, ate with the accepted worshipper (Lev. 3:16, 17). After this solemn rite was performed, the priest’s portion was waved and presented to God, and the group of worshippers made way for others, carrying away with them their portion for the joyful sacrificial feast.

Here Eli’s sons stepped in with their rapacious greed. Not satisfied with their legally allotted portion, they sent their servant after the retiring group, with a flesh-hook of three teeth in his hand, and while the meat was boiling for the sacred meal, he thrust his trident into the cauldron, and claimed as the priest’s perquisite whatever was brought up. “So they did in Shiloh unto all the Israelites that came thither.”

But even this did not long satisfy them. They went on to insist that after the breast and shoulder had been handed them, but before the remainder had been put to boil, they should be supplied with raw meat from the offerer’s portion; nor would they burn the fat, which was the essential part of the whole sacrifice, and one for which the worshippers must needs wait, until their demands were satisfied. This final touch seems to have aroused the long-suffering people to exasperation. “At least,” they said, “wait till the Lord’s portion has been presented before you proceed to your lawless depredations. Burn the fat, and then take as much as you will.” “Nay,” was the ruthless answer of the priest, “but you shall give it me now, or I will take what I choose by force.” “And the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord.”

It becomes us to inquire with much anxiety and heart-searching whether we, as the servants of Christ, are doing or abetting things which cause men to abhor that holy Name by which we are called. We may begin with our own characters and habits, and thence proceed to our doctrinal statements and ecclesiastical arrangements. Rightly or wrongly, I have heard of men forswearing the Christian religion, to which they were once attached, because professing Christians were so dilatory in paying their debts, so evasive in their excuses, so profuse in promises that were never kept, so difficult to please, so thoughtless and careless in their demands on work-people and servants, so touchy and fretful, so liable to do things in business which high-minded men of the world would not permit. I have heard of men, rightly or wrongly, turning from misstatements of Christian doctrine which revolted their moral sense and made God our Father as cruel as Chemosh or Molech. I have heard of men, rightly or wrongly, refusing to enter places of worship because of the class distinctions which were maintained, and the strong dislike with which a stranger’s admission into the family pew was resented. For these things too many excuse their refusal of the Gospel and their absence from the house of prayer.

Not content with their extortionate greed, Hophni and Phinehas perpetrated the vilest excesses of heathenism amid the woods and vineyards of Shiloh. Licentious rites had from time immemorial been associated with heathen festivals, but never before had they sullied the sacred vestures of the priests of Aaron’s line. So abandoned were these young men, though they had wives of their own, that they did not scruple to lead astray the women who were appointed to perform the various offices about the sanctuary that demanded female labour.

Remonstrances were addressed to the aged priest; he heard of their evil doings from all the people (2:23), but instead of strong disapproval and stringent threats, he contented himself with a mild rebuke, “He said unto them, Why do ye these things? Nay, my sons, for it is no good report that I hear; ye make the Lord’s people to transgress.” On this the Divine Judge makes the terrible comment that his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not. He had reproved, but not restrained them. Even supposing they had disregarded the reproof of their father, they could hardly have defied their deposition insisted on by him as High Priest, embodying as he did the highest authority in the realm. And for this weak laxity he was condemned and deposed. “Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, saith, I said indeed that thy house and the house of thy father should walk before Me for ever; but now the Lord saith, Be it far from Me, for them that honour Me I will honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.”

The Need of Family Training.—This suggests a very serious inquiry for those who take a prominent position in the Church and before the World, but who neglect their own families. We are held responsible for our children. Our weakness in restraining them is sin, which will be inevitably followed, not only by their punishment, but by our own. Better do less in the Church and the world than allow your children to grow up a misery to themselves and a reproach to you. Remember that one essential qualification for office in the Primitive Church was the wise and wholesome rule of house and children. If a man could not keep his children in subjection, with all gravity, and rule his house well, he surely could not know how to take care of the house of God (1 Tim. 3:4, 12). Probably Eli had not begun early enough. The wise parent will begin training children from their earliest months, to say nothing of years; and the early strain of careful observation and chastisement may well be lightened and eased by remembering that the child who from the earliest is trained in God’s way will not depart from it when he is old.

Above all, let us seek the conversion of our young children to God. The apostle distinctly affirms that God will give us life for those who sin not unto death; and this description is, above all, applicable to little children. Surely He will not be unrighteous to forget the tears and prayers, or to overlook the faith, of those who travail a second time till Christ is formed in the hearts of their offspring. As the child of godly parents, who cannot date the hour of my conversion, because the love of God stole over my heart in early boyhood like the dawn of a summer sky, I put my seal to that word of God as true: “My Spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, from henceforth and for ever” (Isa. 59:21, and 1 John 5:16).

IV. The Vision of God

(1 Samuel 3)

Oh! give me Samuel’s mind,

A sweet, unmurmuring faith,

Obedient and resigned

To Thee in life and death;

That I may read with child-like eyes

Truths that are hidden from the wise.

—J. D. Burns.

IT is very touching to notice the various references to the child Samuel as they recur during the progress of the narrative, especially those in which an evident contrast is intended between his gentle innocence and the wild licence of Eli’s sons—it is like a peal of sweet bells ringing on amid the crash of a storm.

Hannah said, “… I will bring him, that he may appear before the Lord, and there abide for ever.” “And she … brought him unto the house of the Lord in Shiloh; and the child was young.” “As long as he liveth he is lent to the Lord. And he worshipped the Lord there.” “And the child did minister unto the Lord before Eli the Priest.” “Now the sons of Eli were wicked men; they knew not the Lord: … and the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord; but Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child.” “Now Eli was very old, and he heard all that his sons did unto all Israel … Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them. And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour with the Lord, and also with men.” “And there came a man of God unto Eli, and said unto him, … Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at mine offering?… And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli.” “And the Lord said, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle … And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground; and all Israel from Dan even to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord.” “The Lord revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh, by the word of the Lord, and the word of Samuel came to all Israel.”

His life seems to have been one unbroken record of blameless purity, integrity, and righteousness. One purpose ran through all his years, threading them together in an unbroken series. There were no gaps nor breaks; no lapses into sensuality or selfishness; no lawless deeds in that wild, lawless age. Towards the end of a long life he was able to appeal to the verdict of the people in memorable words, which attested his consciousness of unsullied rectitude: “I am old and gray-headed, … and I have walked before you from my youth unto this day. Here I am; witness against me before the Lord and before his anointed: whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe?” And they said, “Thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us, neither hast thou taken aught of any man’s hand.”

It was a beautiful life—strong in its faculty of administration, wise in steering the nation from the rule of the judges into the royal state of the kings, unimpeachably just, but blamelessly pure, towering above his contemporaries like a peak of glistening chrysolite, on which the sunlight plays, while all the valleys beneath are wrapped in scudding clouds and sweeping rain.

Samuel was not a prophet in the sense of foretelling the long future, and was not possessed of Isaiah’s genius and eloquence; his only contribution to his age was a saintly character, which reminds us of that of James, the brother of our Lord, whose pure white robe was emblematic of his spotless character. Samuel was the James of the Old Testament; and it was by the saintliness, the moral grandeur of his character, that he arrested the ruin of his people.

We too may be called to face an era of change; our eyes may have to witness the passing of the old and the coming of the new; it may be that in our time also the Lord will shake once more, not earth only, but heaven, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain; in our time also ancient landmarks may be removed, as familiar and sacred as the tabernacle of Shiloh, and the Ark of the Covenant to Israel; but there is one property within our reach which need never pass away, which shall remain unimpaired and radiant through the years—and that is an unblemished character, a soul stainlessly arrayed, and the holy life in which these shall be embodied. “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children, and let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands, establish Thou it.”

The noblest gift that any of us can make to our fatherland or age is an undefiled character and a stainless life. Let us live our best in the power of the Spirit of God, and prove that the God of Pentecost is living still.

I. The Transition of a Young Soul.—For Samuel, however, a great change was necessary and imminent. Up to this moment he had lived largely in the energy and motive-power of his mother’s intense, religious life. It was needful that he should exchange the traditional for the experimental. His faith must rest, not on the assertions of another’s testimony, but because for himself he had seen, and tasted, and handled the Word of Life. Not at second-hand, but at first, the Word of the Lord must come to him, and be passed on to all Israel. Probably this change comes to everyone who desires and seeks after the best and richest life. You may be the child of a pious home, where from boyhood or girlhood you were trained in the traditions of Evangelical religion, you were expected to pray and to serve God, you have been borne along by a blessed momentum; but suppose for a minute that that momentum should fail you, have you come to apprehend Christ as a living Reality for yourself? It may be that God, out of mercy to you, will break up and destroy the traditions and forms on which you have been relying; that the eternal and divine may stand forth apparent to your spiritual apprehension, and be apprehended by yourself for yourself, as though they were meant for you alone. It is a great hour in the history of the soul when the traditional, to which it has become habituated by long wont and use, is suddenly exchanged for the open vision of God; when we say with Job, “I have heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee”; when we say with the apostle, “Leaving the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those that are before, I press toward the mark.”

Will you believe then that God may be coming very near you, and is about to reveal Himself to you in the Lord Jesus, as not unto the world? He is about to transform your life, and lift it to an altogether new level, so that though you may have to face the old circumstances, it shall be from a higher standpoint, as the spiral staircase is always returning to the same view-point, though always at the elevation of some few additional feet.

II. The Vision of the Young Eyes.—(1) When God came near his young servant, it seemed as though He placed his seal upon his faithfulness. Hitherto but small services had been required of him. To close and open the doors of the Tabernacle; to light the seven-branched candlestick in the late afternoon, and supply it with pure olive oil every morning; to render little services to the aged priest, whether by day or night—such were the duties assigned to him and performed with punctilious care. It was meet that he who had shown himself faithful in a very little should have a larger and wider sphere assigned to him.

(2) The vision came as night was beginning to yield to dawn; but “the lamp had not yet gone out in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.” Thrice the boy was startled from his innocent slumbers on his little bed in the chamber he occupied adjacent to the sacred building. He heard his name called softly, tenderly, lovingly, and made sure that Eli needed him, and thrice sped across the intervening space to report himself. Once, and again, and yet again, he ran unto Eli, and said, “Here am I, for thou calledst me.”

When God approaches us to reveal his Son in us, the tendency is always to speed with all haste to some place, or some spiritual adviser, where we suppose that the interpretation of the vision will be given. Young converts, for instance, are apt to say, “If only I could have my questions answered by such a man of God, I am sure I should get blessing.” And thus they are kept in constant perturbation, running backwards and forwards, repeating Samuel’s vain experience—running to Eli and saying, “Surely you called me, and can interpret for me the vision and the voice.”

(3) Eli was very wise in his treatment of the lad. He might have posed as the sole depository of the Divine secrets, might have warned the lad against listening to vain delusions, might have given way to ungoverned jealousy and suspicion, might have stood on the dignity and pride of office. But instead of any of these, without the slightest trace of hurt pride, he took the boy’s hand in his, and, so to speak, led him into the Divine Presence, knowing full well that the seals of sacred office, which had been taken from himself, were about to be laid on those youthful palms.

If Eli had inherited the traditions of the priesthood merely, he would stand between that young soul and God, hearing its confession, wielding over it a terrorising influence, and directing it, as in the place of God. Instead of this, however, the old man said sweetly, “Go and lie down again, and it shall be when He shall call thee, that thou shalt say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ ”

It is not the business of the Christian minister to lord it over the eager and aroused disciple, to demand confession, or offer absolution, but to say in effect: “Thou needest more than we can give. God, and God only, can suffice thee. Go, and lie down again. Be quiet. Let thy soul be still before God. Wait, for He will assuredly come again. And it shall be, if He call thee, that thou shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ ”

As Thomas à Kempis puts it, “ ‘Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.’

“Let not Moses speak unto me, nor any of the prophets, but rather do Thou speak, O Lord God, the Inspirer and Enlightener of all the prophets; for Thou alone without them canst perfectly instruct me, but they without Thee can profit nothing.

“Speak Thou unto me, to the comfort, however imperfect, of my soul, and to the amendment of my whole life, and to Thy praise, and glory, and honour everlasting.”

(4) The message entrusted to the lad was a very terrible one. We cannot wonder that he feared to show Eli the vision. With a beautiful modesty and reticence he set about the duties of the day, and opened, as usual, the doors of the house of the Lord. It was not for him to blurt out the full thunder which had burst on him. This was another lovely trait in the boy’s character. But he had misread Eli’s character; he did not realise that men like him will die, but not murmur—will resign themselves without a word of expostulation or defence, determined to know the worst, and when they know it, meekly answering, “It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him good.”

(5) It is well to notice that the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the Word of the Lord. Let us not seek for revelations through dreams or visions, but by the Word of God. Nothing is more harmful than to contract the habit of listening for voices, and sleeping to dream. All manner of vagaries come in by that door. It is best to take in hand and read the Scriptures reverently, carefully, thoughtfully, crying, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” And in response there will come one clear, defined, and repeated message, asseverated and accentuated with growing distinctness from every part of the inspired volume. “This is the way—walk in it; this is my will—do it; this is my word—speak it.” Let us hear what God the Lord shall speak.

V. Misfortune on Misfortune

(1 Samuel 4, 5, 6)

Oh, the outward hath gone! but in glory and power.

The Spirit surviveth the things of an hour;

Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame

On the heart’s secret altar is burning the same.

—Whittier.

THE scanty records of these chapters (4:1–7:7) bridge over a considerable tract of Scripture, covering, perhaps, forty years. The details of Samuel’s life and growing influence given by the sacred historian during that period are very fragmentary. But the narrative of events is interesting, and must be understood by those who would have a right conception of the great service that Samuel rendered to his people. It will appear, also, that there is a remarkable parallel, not only between those days of anarchy and our own, but between the work he did and the work that is needed as urgently in the present day.

It was an age of disunion and anarchy. After the deaths of Joshua, Caleb, and of all that generation, “there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the work which He had wrought for Israel” … (Judges 2:10), There was no man, and no tribe, able to unite the people under one leadership, or recall them to the lofty monotheism—the worship of the one Jehovah—which characterised the founder of their commonwealth. The bonds of their national unity were loosened, each tribe and each great city asserted its independence of all the rest, the heart of the national life beat feebly, and, to quote again the expressive phrase which so completely represents the age of the judges, “Every man did that was right in his own eyes.”

The only common centre was afforded by the Tabernacle, the Ark, and the High Priesthood; but even the influence of these had become greatly reduced, as “the children of Israel forsook Jehovah, the God of their fathers, which brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the peoples that were round about them, and bowed themselves down unto them.”

There was, therefore, nothing to hinder the steady encroachments of the neighbouring nations. Now it was the children of Ammon on the east, then the Amalekites and Midianites from the desert, and again the Philistines on the southwest, that broke in on the land of Promise. From time to time judges were raised up, but their authority was only temporary and limited. For the most part it ceased with their death, and was the means of delivering only a section of the land. “When the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge … but it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than their fathers” (Judges 2:18, 19).

Our story is specially connected with the southern and midland districts of Canaan, which, notwithstanding Samson’s herioc exploits—for he was contemporary with Samuel’s early years—lay under the tyrannous yoke of the Philistines, who seem about this time to have been largely reinforced from the original seat of their empire in the neighbouring island of Crete, and to have made the position of the Hebrews almost intolerable.

In these Philistines stealing up from their own territories and cities to dominate the Hebrews, in the land which God gave them for an heritage, a land to which the Philistines could have no possible claim, but which was certainly the allotted possession of the chosen people—I see the type of much which is always taking place in our own experience. For instance, they stand for unholy desires and evil habits, from which we were once set free by the risen Son of God, but which, in subsequent years, may have come back to assert their former sway and tyranny. And again, they represent the inroads of worldliness into the Church, and of wickedness into the State. The forces of evil are never at rest. Just as the spirit of destruction and waste is perpetually at work in untiling our roofs, stripping off our wall papers, pulling down our walls, and sowing our gardens with weeds whilst we sleep; so the evil tendencies in the heart, the Church, and the nation are ever warring against the law of the mind, and bringing men into captivity to the law of sin.

In the insidious attempts to rob us of our Rest Day, and to turn it into one of public amusement; in the unblushing effrontery of vice in various forms; in the threatened domination of all other interests by the mad greed for money; in the spirit of amusement which infects society; in the worldliness and luxury which divide with the spiritual and heavenly the hearts and lives of professing Christians—we are brought face to face with the bands of the Philistines as they steal up from their lowlands to the uplands of religious constancy and strength. They have no rights, but they never fail to assert their pretensions; and sometimes we almost lose heart, and begin to question whether there is any use in opposing them.

Why this constant strife? Were it not better to yield the point in controversy, and to acquiesce?

At other times, like the children of Israel, we are goaded to make one desperate effort for freedom.

I. An Ill-fated Attempt.—“Now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle, and pitched beside Ebenezer, and the Philistines pitched in Aphek” (“the Fortress,” perhaps in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem). From these words we infer that the war was commenced by Israel throwing down the gage of battle, because the yoke of Philistia was too galling to be endured; but it is almost certain that from the first it was an ill-starred and badly managed campaign.

Very distinct directions were issued by Moses as to the way in which a campaign should be commenced and conducted (Deut. 20), but none of them seems to have been put in force on this occasion. No priest was called in to ask counsel of God, or bless the going forth of the Israelite hosts. Not even Samuel, in whom the people were beginning to recognise the servant and prophet of Jehovah, seems to have been consulted. It was the sudden flaming out of a spirit of hatred and revenge from a race of slaves who were stung to the quick by the taunts, the insults, and the scorpion-whips of their masters.

Such has been the spirit in which we have sometimes turned on the powerful sins which have asserted their mastery over us. We have seen the ruin to which they were bringing us, we have winced at the shame and indignation which they were causing to others, we have felt insulted and outraged in any lingering sense of honour and nobility that may have escaped the general wreck, and we have turned on our tormentors. We have signed the pledge against the use of intoxicants, we have taken a solemn oath never more to yield to our besetting sin, we have vowed that we will be free. But within a month we have been back in the old state. It has not gone better with us than with Israel, for this battle is not to the strong, nor this race to the swift.

It went hard with the Israelites. Their hosts, hastily summoned and insufficiently armed, suffered a heavy defeat. Four thousand men lay dead on the battlefield, and a spirit of intimidation and dismay spread through the entire host. Such will ever be the result when God’s people leave Him out of account. Their education is so costly and necessary that He can afford to let them suffer, again and again, that an arrest may be put on courses that are not good.

II. The Ark, but not God, to the Rescue.—On the evening of that disastrous day the elders of Israel held a council of war (v. 3). It was evident that their defeat must be attributed to some failure in their relations with Jehovah. They said, “Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us to-day before the Philistines?” They were conscious that they had left Him out of their reckoning, and suddenly bethought themselves of a happy expedient by which they might almost compel Him to enter into the fray, and to take sides with them against their foes. “Let us fetch,” they cried, “the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh, that it may come among us, and save us out of the hand of our enemies.”

They remembered the wonderful scenes in which that Ark had played a part; how the waters of the Jordan had fled before it, and the walls of Jericho had fallen down. Its going forth, in the words of their great lawgiver, had always meant the scattering and flight of Jehovah’s foes. Surely it would do the same again. They did not realise that God’s very present help depended not on the presence of a material symbol, but on moral and spiritual conditions which they should have set themselves to understand and fulfil. It was much as though a high Sacramentarian should depend for deliverance from trial by wearing some amulet or charm, or even carrying a piece of the consecrated wafer in a golden casket upon his person, instead of exercising himself in manly faith and prayer.

The arrival of the Ark, in due course, borne by the Levites, and accompanied by the sons of Eli, as its custodians, was received with the exultant shouts of the entire host. Eli had evidently been most unwilling to allow it to leave the sacred enclosure—“his heart trembled for the Ark of God”—but he had yielded too often and too long to be able to sustain a successful protest; and probably no one else had any misgivings, for “when the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again.’

As soon as the Philistines, by means of their scouts, were acquainted with the cause of this exuberant outburst, they were correspondingly depressed, for they, too, identified the presence of the God of Israel with the advent of the Ark, which had always been associated in their minds with the hand of “these mighty gods that smote the Egyptians with plagues in the wilderness.” Neither had they any idea of those moral considerations on which alone the co-operation of God could be given. “Woe unto us!” they cried, “for there hath not been such a thing heretofore. Woe unto us! Who shall deliver us?”

It was necessary that a decisive answer should be given to these materialistic conceptions of the Hebrews and their foes. It must be demonstrated that the mere possession of the symbol of the Covenant was valueless, so long as the strange gods and the Ashtaroth were tenaciously cherished, and the abominations of the heathen were constantly and shamelessly pursued (7:3, 4). The asseveration of holy words, the quoting of venerable precedents, the reliance on sacred emblems, are alike in vain, unless the heart is pure and the hands clean. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”

The Philistines seem to have stirred themselves to deeds of desperate valour because they believed that they were to fight, not only against flesh and blood, but against the deities who had led Israel in one long succession of victories. They advanced to the conflict with the words of their leaders ringing in their ears: “Be strong, and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants to the Hebrews, as they have been to you. Quit yourselves like men and fight” (see 1 Cor. 16:13).

The issue of that terrible day was disastrous in the extreme. “Israel was smitten, and they fled every man to his tent, and there was a very great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen.” Around the Ark the ground must have been heaped with corpses, as the Hebrews fought desperately in defence of the symbol of their faith; but in vain, for the Ark of God was taken, and the two sons of Eli were slain. Thus had Samuel foretold, and thus it befell.

That afternoon a Benjamite, with his clothes rent, and dust upon his head, bore the tidings to the hamlets and villages that lay all along the ascending and open road to Shiloh, and, as he passed through eager and expectant groups, a wail arose that grew in volume as he sped onwards until it reached its climax in the City of the High Priest, the capital, so far as there was any, of the entire land. “When the man came into the city, and told it, all the city cried out.” On the still evening air arose a piercing outburst of lamentation, for what was there to hinder the immediate march of the victorious army on the defenceless city, deprived in one day of its warriors, and apparently of its God!

The old man, Eli, blind and anxious, had caused himself to be seated on his throne, facing on the main thoroughfare. He had a foreboding that bad news was in the air, and when the noise of the tumult arose, he anxiously inquired of the attendant priests and Levites, and, perhaps, of Samuel, waiting as usual to respond to his least appeal for help, “What meaneth the noise of this tumult?” At the same moment the messenger appears to have burst into the presence of the little group, telling Eli who he was, and in answer to the eager inquiry of the High Priest, “How went the matter, my son?” without warning or preface, and with no care to soften the asperity of the harsh words, he blurted out, with an ever-rising climax of dread awfulness: “Israel is fled before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the Ark of God is taken.”

The old man received the tidings in silence. The three first shots hit him severely, but not mortally; but “when he made mention of the Ark of God, he fell from off his seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck brake and he died.” With her last gasp the wife of Phinehas gathered up the horror of the situation with the single word which she uttered as the name of her child, prematurely born. It was sorrow indeed that she was a widow; sorrow that her father-in-law had died at the moment when he was needed so sorely; but sorrow most of all that the Ark was taken, for with it the glory had departed. True soul that she was, and worthy to be classed with Hannah in her loyal devotion to the name and house of God.

But worse troubles still befell. In frantic haste the Israelites bore away the remnants of the sacred tent and its furniture, and concealed them. In subsequent years they were at Nob (1 Sam. 21:1). The removal of these precious relics was hardly effected before the Philistine invasion burst on the deserted city as an overflowing flood. “Go ye now,” says Jeremiah, “in the Divine Name, into my place which was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel” (Jer. 7:12). And the further fate of the city, which for 300 years had been the centre of the national life and worship, may be guessed from the pathetic words of the Psalmist:

He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh,

The tent which He pitched among men;

And delivered his strength into captivity

And his glory into the adversary’s hand.

He gave his people over also unto the sword,

And was wroth with his inheritance.

Fire devoured their young men,

And their maidens were not praised in the marriage song;

Their priests fell by the sword,

And their widows made no lamentation.

(Psa. 78:60, etc.).

III. The Awful Name of God.—We need not concern ourselves, to any great length, with the most interesting adventures of the Ark, the sacred symbol of the worship of Jehovah. This part of the history more closely concerns the growing illumination of the surrounding nations as to the true nature of the God of Israel.

There was no other way in which the Spirit of God could inform the people of Philistia, as to his holiness and power, than that which He adopted in the present instance. They bore the Ark from the battlefield to the Temple of Dagon in exuberant triumph. It seemed as though they had not only triumphed over Israel, but over its tutelary deity, and that Dagon was superior to Jehovah. But it would have been a great disaster had they been allowed to cherish this idea in perpetuity. As in Egypt, centuries before, so now in Philistia, God must reveal his lonely and unapproachable supremacy. He cannot give his glory to another, nor his praise to graven images, and therefore He suits Himself to the crude and materialistic conceptions of these blinded idolaters, and meets them in their own sphere. They would not have been impressed by the message of a prophet. They would have scouted and stoned any who opposed the universal, national adoration of Dagon; but they could not resist the conclusions forced on them when, on two following mornings, they found his image prostrate before the emblem of Jehovah, and on the second occasion the head and arms severed from the body, so that the only part which was left intact was the fish’s tail with which the figure ended. That it might be made still clearer that this was no coincidence, but the act of God, and that He had a controversy with them, a terrible plague of “tumours” broke out on each successive city to which the ark was removed, and a visitation of destructive vermin on the country districts where it may have been deposited.

We must not suppose, of course, that God had no love towards these untutored souls; but that there was no other way of convincing them of his real nature and prerogatives. The plagues of Egypt were ordained, not only to punish the sins of pride and obstinacy, with which Pharaoh made himself strong against the Almighty, but that the Egyptians might be forced to recognise that He was the great God of Heaven, of whom now and again they caught a glimpse. Similarly, in this instance, the prostrated form of Dagon, the painful disease by which they were smitten, and the devastation of their crops, caused them to cry unto heaven (5:12), as though they realised that they were being dealt with by a greater than Dagon, by the great Being who was superior to all local gods. In after-years the Hebrew psalmists and prophets heaped scorn on the gods of the heathen that were no gods, and magnified Jehovah, who made the heavens; but the lesson took years to learn, and cost an infinite amount of pains and patience, before monotheism became the generally admitted creed.

The reverence with which the Philistines refer to the God of Israel indicates that new and lofty conceptions were beginning to take the place of the low and materialistic ones that had degraded Jehovah to the level of their own local deities. “The cry of the city went up to heaven.” “Ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel.” “Take the ark of Jehovah.”

What a sublime revelation this is of the Divine methods with man! With an infinite longing He desires to win the allegiance and devotion of all men. The consummate and unapproachable revelation which He has made for this purpose is in the Son of his Love. “The only begotten of the Father, He hath declared Him.” But of what use had it been to have spoken of his Son in those early days, when the hearts of men were darkened by the grossest conceptions and basest morals? No! line must be on line, precept upon precept. The times of ignorance must be “winked at.” The light must be tempered to the weak and diseased eyes. God must adopt the language that could be understood by the children of men, whom He loved, just as in after days our Lord exposed his hands and side to the incredulous Thomas, condescending to a method of demonstration which he could appreciate, and had himself suggested. If the Philistines could have understood Epistles like those of St. John, they would, without doubt, have been written for their learning and correction, and communicated to them by some man of God; but since they could not understand such means of instruction, they were reached by the overthrow and shattering of their idol, the plagues which accompanied the progress of the Ark, and the direction taken by the milch kine, who, whilst lowing for their little ones, bore their sacred burden along the straight road which led them from their home towards Beth-shemesh.

Similarly, the inhabitants of that frontier town had to learn by a stern lesson that God was a holy God, and that He could not permit them to manifest a wanton curiosity and irreverence in handling the sacred emblem of his presence. To pry into the Ark as they did, lifting its lid, and peering on its contents, was forbidden to the priests, and even the High Priest himself; how much more to them? It had been distinctly asserted, when the two sons of Aaron perished on the day of their inauguration to the priesthood, that God would be sanctified in all that came nigh Him, and before all the people He would be glorified (Lev. 10:3).

The reverence due to Him must be shown to the vessels of the sanctuary, which were carefully veiled by the priests before they were taken up for transportation by the Levites (Num. 1:50, 51; 4:5, 16–30). The swift retribution which followed on this act of irreverence extorted the reverent acknowledgment of the awful holiness of God, as the men of Beth-shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God?” When, on the other hand, the Ark had been reverently borne to Kirjath-jearim, the city of the woods, some three miles’ distance from the great valley of Beth-shemesh, on which the crops were goldening in the sun, and had been carefully entrusted to the custody of Abinadab and his son Eleazar, the blessing that befell his house was an indication of the tender love and pity of the Divine nature, who is willing to dwell with him that is of a humble and lowly heart, and that trembleth at his word.

Oh, do not fear Jehovah with the dread of a craven heart, but with the loyal love and devotion of sons, and open your heart to receive not the Ark of the Covenant only, but Him whom God had set forth for a propitiation, and who is the propitiation for our sins, i. e., the mercy-seat which covers the Ark of the Covenant, sprinkled with blood, and exactly fitting and hiding the Tables of the Law beneath.

VI. The Work of Reconstruction

(1 Samuel 7:2)

Be still and strong,

O Man, my Brother! hold thy sobbing breath,

And keep thy soul’s large window pure from wrong!

That so, as life’s appointment issueth,

Thy vision may be clear to watch along

The sunset consummation—lights of death!

—E. B. Browning.

WHILST the events described in the last chapter were in progress, Samuel was giving himself to the great and noble work of reconstruction. As soon as our flesh is lacerated, or our bones broken, Nature begins to pour out her reparative forces to renew the broken tissues, and so rebuild the ruined temple. As it is in physical life, so in spiritual there are always holy and gentle natures that are charged with the Divine work of bridging over the roaring torrent of revolution, and of rearing new continents of order from the weltering ocean waste by which the previous land had been engulfed. Blessed work, indeed, is this, like the work of the Almighty, who, when the earth was without form and void, began to build in the midst of her the habitable places for man’s existence.

To this Samuel devoted the twenty years that followed directly on the fatal field of Aphek. The Philistine invasion seems to have somewhat subsided from its first triumphant outburst, and to have retired from the occupancy of the interior portions of Israel. He was thus able to pursue his quiet and unobtrusive toils for his fatherland, free from the zealous supervision and opposition to which, otherwise, he must have been subjected.

He seems to have taken up his abode in Ramah, so intimately associated with his earliest days. Here were his headquarters, where young men gathered to him, and were formed into the earliest of the schools of the prophets, and where also he married, and became the father of two sons. Their names are suggestive of their father’s piety and walk with God, the name of the one being Joel—“Jehovah is God,” and of the other Abiah—“Jehovah is my Father.” Amid the general disturbance of the religious life in which he had been nurtured, with the Ark in one place and the remnants of the Tabernacle in another, with the discontinuance of the sacred rites and feasts, which had been so great an assistance to piety in former years, Samuel nevertheless was able to walk with God, and to preserve a devout religious life. Probably this is why God permits from time to time so great a shaking of the things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken, the unseen and eternal, may be more clearly defined and more eagerly sought unto. In this present age, we have heard Him saying, “I will overturn, overturn, overturn”; we have seen theories of inspiration rudely assailed, churches menaced with destruction, ancient creeds ruthlessly questioned; but out of it all true religion is destined to emerge in undiminished lustre, as gold from the purifying furnace. In the meanwhile let us say with Samuel, Jehovah is God and Jehovah is my Father. Let us hold fast, above all, to the unchanging love of our Father, who loves us with a love with which there is nothing to compare in heaven or earth.

Samuel knew that there were two objects which must be realised before Israel’s sad condition could be remedied or the Divine ideal realised. First: The national unity must be recovered from the anarchy in which it had been overwhelmed. It was useless to think of holding the land against the inroads of the neighbouring people so long as each tribe was content with an isolated existence, repelling its own enemies for a time, but indifferent to the condition of its neighbours and of the country at large. Israel must be one, animated by a common enthusiasm for its future independence and integrity. Let each tribe be proud of its idiosyncrasy, and fulfil its own distinctive mission; but let all be one in asserting the independence and glory of the chosen people.

This is no less desirable in our own age. The divisions of the Church are her bane, and render her impotent before her foes. Ephraim envies Judah, and Judah vexes Ephraim; and their common enemies make profit out of their mutual recriminations and rivalries. It is a sad spectacle to witness the divisions between Christians in the face of a mocking world, and we shall never be able to make men believe, till we have learned to magnify the points of agreement, and to bear with all those who love the Lord Jesus, and are united with Him as their living Head, though their method of stating the truth may differ widely from our own.

Secondly: The evils that had eaten into the nation’s heart must be put away. The people had forsaken the God of their fathers for the Phœnician and Philistine deities, whose images were worshipped in his stead. Shrines to Baal and Ashtaroth covered the land. Foul orgies of shameless impurity were everywhere rife. And it was evident that only a widespread revival of religion could save the people from rotting away before the very evils for which the ancient Canaanites had been destroyed.

Samuel was pre-eminently a man of prayer. He is known on the subsequent page of Scripture as he that called on the Divine Name (1 Sam. 9:6, 7, 8, 9; Psa. 99:6; Jer. 15:1). In addition, he was a man of blameless reputation and life—in themselves eminent qualifications. It has been truly said that the special work of guiding, moderating, and softening the jarring counsels of men is the particular privilege of those who have grown up into natural strength from the early beginnings of purity and goodness; of those who can humbly and thankfully look back through middle age, and youth, and childhood, with no sudden rent or breach to their pure and peaceful recollections—and such was certainly Samuel’s happy lot. He was also a man of practical sagacity, and by his appeals wrought upon the national conscience; so that, as the result of his efforts, “it came to pass, while the Ark abode in Kirjath-jearim, that the time was long; for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel lamented before the Lord.”

Notice those two phrases; all the house of Israel—there is the restoration of the lost unity; lamented before the Lord—there is the national repentance, which was followed by a widespread reformation: “Then the children of Israel did put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and served the Lord only.” Would that there might be a similar turning unto God in our own time and land! “Revive, O Lord, thy work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years make known.”

VII. The Victory of Faith

(1 Samuel 7:1–14)

Oh bring us back once more

The vanished days of yore,

When the world with faith was filled!

Bring back the fervid zeal,

The hearts of fire and steel,

The hands that believe and build.

—Longfellow.

AFTER twenty years of quiet and unobtrusive toil, Samuel had led his people to desire both to feel and manifest the old unity, which had made them one before their enemies, and there was a distinct yearning after Jehovah. The sacred writer tells us that all the house of Israel “was drawn together” after Jehovah (ver. 2, r. v. margin). In being drawn to God they were drawn towards each other, as the spokes of a wheel centre in the hub. If the Lord Jesus is the centre of our heart-life, we must inevitably be drawn into fellowship with all those to whom He is also first and best.

In verses 3 and 4 we probably have the substance of innumerable exhortations which Samuel delivered to all the house of Israel. From end to end he traversed the country, urging the people to return to Jehovah; to put away the false gods and Ashtaroth, and to direct their hearts to the God of their fathers and serve Him only. Wherever he could find a group of willing listeners, he poured forth his prayers and tears, his rugged denunciations of sin, and his fervent exhortations to a true repentance. Now he would stand upon the historic site of Jericho; then he might be found on the ancient heights of Carmel, Shiloh, Nob, or Hebron, witnessing to vast gatherings of deeply moved and repentant people; and finally, as the result of all that he had said, there was a great turning to God. On every hand idols were cast from their pedestals, and the vicious orgies were brought to an end in the groves and valleys. It was as though the spirit of spring were breathing over some wintry waste, and through the thawing snow the grass and flowers began to appear. Oh, that Samuels by the score might be raised up to induce the Church of God to put away what grieves Him, with the assurance that when she has arrayed herself in the beautiful garments of humility and purity, God will deliver her out of the hands of the Philistines.

I. The Convocation at Mizpeh.—The movement to which we have referred at last demanded a public demonstration, and Samuel summoned all Israel to Mizpeh—which means watchtower, and is evidently a commanding summit that can still be identified in Central Palestine, rising some five hundred feet above the surrounding country, and nearly three thousand above the sea level. It is remarkable that on the summit of this hill, as at Shiloh and Kirjath-jearim, there is a level platform some five or six feet high, cut out of the rock, where doubtless some kind of building was erected to receive the sacred tent.

The day was devoted to fasting, as the law enjoined on the great Day of Atonement. The people confessed their sins, afflicted their souls, and humbled themselves before Jehovah. In addition, a somewhat novel rite was introduced. Water was brought from a neighbouring well, and solemnly poured out before the Lord, as afterwards at the Feast of Tabernacles. Whenever that great festival had nearly run its course, as it was being celebrated in the Temple, it was the custom for the priests to go forth to the Spring of Siloam, accompanied by the Levite choir, and bring thence water in a golden vessel; this was poured out at the foot of the altar at the hour of the morning sacrifice, while all around the white-vestured choir chanted Isaiah’s words, “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.” Whether this scene in the life of Samuel was the origin of that solemn procession, it is impossible to say. Such may have been the case, though it is generally assumed that, as used in the Temple service, the pouring out of water was a memorial of the flowing of water from the smitten rock in the wilderness, and the type of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit (John 7:37–39).

The pouring forth of water may have implied that they poured forth from their full hearts floods of penitence and tears; that they desired by the heaviness of their grief to wash their land free from the accumulated evil of the past years; or that the people realised their utter helplessness, so that they were as water spilt on the ground, which could not be gathered up. But whatever it may have signified, it must have been a very striking spectacle, when Samuel, as the representative of his countrymen, brought the whole nation back to true loyal allegiance to the God of their fathers. It was a worthy act for his manhood’s prime, and we are not surprised to learn that, as by a sudden outburst of acclamation, he was appointed judge (ver. 6).

Oh, who shall induce the professing Church of God to put away the evil things by which her testimony is now impaired! Sometimes in buildings connected with the Church we hear of fancy-fairs, raffles, full-dress soirées, dances, theatricals, comic concerts, and many other such like things, which indicate the corruption of the spiritual life as certainly as an army of fungi indicate the damp and unwholesome atmosphere in which they thrive. What would not be the blessed result if the children of God would come to another Mizpeh and confess, as Israel did, “We have sinned against the Lord!”

II. The Victory of Faith.—The tidings of this great convocation reached the Philistines, who looked upon it as an unmistakable sign of the returning spirit of national life, and “the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel” (ver. 7). From every part the contingents of a great army were assembled, and there was every reason to fear that the terrible experiences of Aphek would be renewed. A panic of fear spread through the multitudes of Israel. There appeared but one hope: God must arise to his people’s help, or they would be trampled as the leaves of autumn beneath the heel of the conqueror. What could timid sheep do against wolves? What could unarmed peasants do against such soldiers? How could the national life, which was just reviving, after the discouragement and anarchy of years, withstand the onset of these bitter foes? “Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us,” the people said to Samuel, “that He will save us out of the hand of the Philistines.”

Ah, soul! this is the only hope for thee. Thou hast been ground down beneath tyrant sins, which have held thee in subjection as the Philistines did Israel; thou hast groaned in the prison-house like another Samson shorn of his locks. There seems no help or hope of deliverance, because thy moral life is impaired by the commission of evils analogous to those which infected the Hebrew nation in the days of the Judges. Only put these away, and stand clear of them; in the name of God pour out all your self-confidence before the Cross where Jesus died, receive the forgiveness which is never withheld from the penitent and believing soul; and then, however many be the obstacles, temptations, and sins that beset thee, know that the Lord will save thee out of the hand of thine enemies.

If only the tempted and overwhelmed would bathe their souls in the purifying waters of the Word of God, and cultivate the spirit of unwavering prayer and faith, the Lord would fight for them, and they might hold their peace.

When so far as we know them we have put away our sins, or at least are steadfastly resolved to be rid of them, we may count on an ungrieved Holy Spirit; and this always means the consciousness of our Saviour’s presence, as our Deliverer from the power of the enemy.

The power of Samuel’s prayers was already known throughout the land, like those of John Knox in the days of Queen Mary. The people had come to believe in them; they felt them to be the palladium of their liberties. If only Samuel would pray, they might count on deliverance. They knew that he had prayed; they now entreated that he would not cease.

But Samuel did more than pray. He took a sucking lamb and offered it as a whole burnt-offering to the Lord, symbolising thus the desire of Israel to be wholly yielded to the Divine will. There must be consecration before there can be faith and deliverance. It is not enough simply to put away sin; we must also give ourselves absolutely and entirely to God. There must be a wholeness in the offering, the yielding ourselves—spirit, soul, and body—to be whatever God would have us be. Failure in the walk always denotes failure in the heart-life. If you are perpetually overcome by the Philistines, be sure that there is a flaw in your inner consecration.

While the smoke of this offering was rising in the calm air, and the eyes of tens of thousands were fixed upon the figure of Samuel, who, as a prophet of the Lord, was within his rights in superseding the Levitical priests in this solemn function, and while his piercing cries for Divine help were rising to heaven, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. Can you not see them creeping up the mountain slopes, and encircling the defenceless crowd which had no might nor power to resist? But suddenly the voice of God answered the voice of the Prophet. “The Lord thundered with a great thunder (Hebrew, voice) on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them.” The sky was suddenly black with tempest, peal after peal rolled through the mountains, the heart of the foe was stricken with terror, and though Israel drew never a sword, the heathen turned in dismay to flee. Then at a signal from Samuel, the men of Israel flung themselves upon the flying foe. Down the steep they sped, catching up the arms which were cast away in flight, and stripping the dead of their weapons. Josephus tells of another circumstance that added to the horrors of that irresistible onslaught. “God destroyed their ranks with an earthquake; the ground trembled under their feet, so that there was no place whereon to stand in safety. They either fell helpless to the earth, or into some of the chasms that opened beneath them.”

The pursuit only stayed when the Philistines came beneath the shadow of their own fortress of Bethcar, the Well of the Vineyards as it is now called.

This is the great message of the whole story for us. If only the Church of God would put away the evils that grieve his Holy Spirit, if only we would ourselves come out and be separate, not touching the unclean thing, and cleansing ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh, the Spirit would interpose for us too. The Lord would deliver us, fighting on our behalf against our foes, so that we should be more than conquerors through Him that loveth us and have to do nothing more than take the spoil.

III. The Stone of Help.—“Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called it Ebenezer (the stone of help) saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” This was the same spot upon which Israel had suffered the great defeat which led to the capture of the Ark (4:1). How wonderful this was, that the story of the victory should be told upon the plain which had been the scene of defeat! Does not this carry sweet encouragement? Is it not true that when we turn to God, the disgrace of our failure is blotted out in the glory of our deliverance, so that we talk no more of our sins and their fatal consequences, but only of God and his almighty succour? Yes, child of God, be sure that the place of defeat may become that of victory, sublime and glorious so as to fill thine heart with adoring rapture, and heaven with consenting praise. Think how, in the generations that succeeded, fathers brought their children to look at that great stone, and read the inscription, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us,” arguing from it that what He had done He would do; that the forgiveness and grace which He had shown upon that site would be renewed and repeated in all after years.

From that moment Samuel’s supremacy in the country was established. The Philistines came no more during his judgeship within the border of Israel. The hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all his days. The alienated cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron even unto Gath. The very Amorites, who had taken part with the Canaanites, found it to their advantage to side with Samuel, and abstain from hostilities (ver. 14). As Dean Spence, in “Ellicott’s Commentary,” says: “This success at Ebenezer was no mere solitary victory, but was the sign of a new spirit in Israel, which animated the nation during the lifetime of Samuel, and the reigns of David and Solomon and of the great Hebrew kings. The petty jealousies had disappeared, and had given place to a great national desire for unity. The old idol worship of Canaan, which degraded every nationality which practised it, was in a great measure swept away from among the chosen people, while the pure religion of the Lord of Hosts was established, not only through the care and guardianship of the tribe of Levi, but by the new order of the Prophets.”

What cannot prayer do? It can not only open and close heaven, but will give the soul that prays an undisputed supremacy over his times, so that men will acknowledge that the saviour of the city is not so much the politician, the man of intellect, or the man of affairs, but he who has learned how to walk with God, and by his character and intercession to be the palladium of the national liberties and existence.

VIII. The Stone of Help

(1 Samuel 7:12)

And in the strength of this I rode,

Shattering all evil customs everywhere,

And past thro’ Pagan realms, and made them mine,

And clash’d with Pagan hordes, and bore them down,

And broke thro’ all, and in the strength of this

Came Victor.

—Tennyson.

THERE are many such monoliths as the “Stone of Help” to be found strewn through these northern lands, from such venerable circles as those of Stonehenge to the single ones which are pointed out to the traveller in Northern Wales—the last home of the Druids and ancient Britons.

Throughout the world man has endeavoured to associate himself, and the history of his life, with the permanent monuments of nature. In this he has approved alike his littleness and his greatness—his littleness, because every such endeavour is a confession on his part of the transience of his days, and his consciousness that he has so slight a hold on the earth, on which he is but a sojourner and a pilgrim; his greatness, because he is capable of investing with a halo of undying interest wild glens and barren rocks, darksome caves and deep, rushing rivers. It is for this reason that every spot in the older countries of the world teems with interest. It is with difficulty that the tourist can make his way through England or Scotland, Germany or Italy; whereas he will haste, without hesitation or halting, through thousands of miles of Canada or the Western States. How different, for instance, is the interest of travelling through the New England States, or through Dakota and Wisconsin. Each square mile of the one is fragrant with some interesting reminiscence of the past, whilst the other only recalls a vanished race.

At the foot of this stone let us linger for a little, to learn one or two lessons more. For stones have ears and voices. Joshua said that the stone which he reared, at the end of his life-work, had heard; and our Lord said that the stones around Him might be expected to cry out (Josh. 24:26; Luke 19:40).

I. Its Site.—It stood on ground which had witnessed a terrible defeat and disaster. We are told in the fourth chapter that the great battle of Aphek was fought on this spot. “Israel went out against the Philistines to battle, and pitched beside Ebenezer, and the Philistines pitched in Aphek.” “Now the Philistines had taken the ark of God, and they brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod” (4:1; 5:1).

Many who gathered around Samuel when he raised and named this stone must have been present twenty years before on that fatal field, the Flodden of Israel’s glory. Here the fight had been fiercest, the slain thickest; there the corpses of Hebrews and Philistines had fallen like leaves in Vallombrosa, trampled beneath the feet of the combatants; yonder the fight had raged around the Ark of God, as it was taken, and retaken, and taken again. At this point, desperate deeds of valour had been done to turn back Israel from a shameful flight, but in vain. There Hophni fell, and there Phinehas. In this place a brief stand was made, but again the ill-formed line was broken, and the children of a chosen race, whose forefathers turned not back in the day of Gideon and Jephthah, fled like sheep before the wolf.

But, notwithstanding all this, and though the spot was associated with the memories of disgrace and shame, which in turn were the result of deep transgression on the part of people and priesthood, yet there was the stone erected which spoke so eloquently of the Divine help.

What living encouragement is contained in this for us all! We, too, may be traversing at this very hour battlefields which have been sadly marked by defeat. Again and again we have met the foes of our peace in mortal conflict, only to be repulsed. Our hopes have been dashed to the ground and our banners rolled in dust and blood. We meant never to yield again, but we did yield. We meant that that solemn vow should be kept, that holy resolution carried into effect; but they were shivered in pieces. We have been overthrown by our adversary, and overpowered in spite of all our efforts by our besetting sin. Yet take heart. At the very place where you have fallen you shall stand, for “God is able to make you stand”; where you have been overthrown you shall be more than a conqueror. You shall tread these very fields with songs of joy. The rocks which saw the withered leaves of autumn swirl in eddies around you shall behold the young green of spring and the mature fulness of summer. Be of good cheer! The stone of Ebenezer shall be raised on the very field of the fatal battle of Aphek.

II. Its Retrospect.—What a story this stone had to tell, if all were unfolded, of the wonderful dealings of God with his people. It looked back on the twenty years of patient work, by which the Prophet Samuel had been leading the people homeward to the God of their fathers—quiet, unobtrusive, and unseen work, like that of the coral insects from the bottom of the mighty ocean, till presently the islet emerges, with its crown of fronded palms.

It looked back on many a scene of iconoclasm as, from Dan to Beer-sheba, there had been a general putting away of the Baalim and Ashtaroth, the cutting down of groves, and overthrow of altars. It looked back on that memorable convocation of all Israel at Mizpeh, when water was poured out before the Lord, in confession of sin and humble penitence.

It looked back, specially, to the offering of the burnt-offering, which declared Israel’s resolve to be henceforth wholly devoted to God, and to Samuel’s piercing cry of intercession. Above all, it looked back on that memorable moment, when, as the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel, “the Lord thundered with a great thunder upon the Philistines, and discomfited them, and they were smitten down before Israel.” If that stone had engraved slabs of memory within its old heart, as well as eyes and ears, it surely never would forget the mad onslaught of the men of Israel on their fleeing and panic-stricken foes, to avenge in one brief hour the wrongs and oppressions of twenty long years.

Has anything like this taken place in your life? On your answer much will depend. If since your last failure and defeat there have been no acts of the soul, like those which took place at Mizpeh, believe me, there is no probability of there being any break in the long monotony of your reverses. As you have been defeated, so you will be defeated; as you have failed, so you will fail, unless there is the pouring out of your heart before God, the putting away of idols, and the resolve to follow Him fully.

If I may be permitted to quote my own experience, I must bear witness to the incessant failure of my life, so long as I cherished things in my heart which were alien to God’s holy will. Rules for holy living, solemn and heart-stirring conventions, helpful books and addresses produced but very small result. There was temporary amendment, but little else. But when the scene at Mizpeh had been reflected in the inner mirror of the soul, then victory took place on the very spot marked by defeat. Let my reader ponder this. You cannot keep the moth out of your house, so long as one old blanket, stored in some neglected cupboard or box, is full of it. You cannot keep diphtheria from your home, so long as one crack in the drains is emitting the poison of sewer-gas. You will never raise your stone of Ebenezer until you have stood on the watchtower of Mizpeh and put away all known sin, all complicity with what is grievous in the eyes of Christ. Only so will even his keeping power avail.

You say that you cannot. The evil thing clings to you as the serpent folds around Laocoön and his sons. The deadly creeper has wound itself around the tree of your life, and threatens to crush it to death in its deadly embrace. How can you rid yourself of that which has so strong a fascination that you feel you cannot live apart from it? Ah, that is the point where the Great Physician is willing to interpose for your rescue and deliverance! What you cannot do for yourself, He will do. The only question is, Are you willing? or Are you willing to be made willing? Often enough in the history of the soul it happens that the will, like a tough piece of iron, resists and resents. Then there is one glad resource—take it to Christ, tell Him that you cannot be as you would, or that you will not be as you should, and pray Him to undertake your difficult and almost desperate case.

Do not doubt the result. He takes what we give at the moment of our giving it; and when once He has taken it, we may press to our heart the consolation which the good Naomi gave to Ruth in a memorable moment of her life: “Sit still, my daughter … for the man will not rest until he have finished the thing this day.”

III. Its Inscription.—“Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” Surely if the stone had a retrospect, as we have seen, it had also a prospect. It looked forward as well as backward. It seemed to say, As God has helped, so He will help. It would have been impossible to secure such results as those twenty years had witnessed, culminating in this glorious victory, unless He had been a very present help; and could He have done so much without being prepared to finish what He had commenced? Would He have begun to build without calculating on his ability to finish? Would He have entered on a campaign without counting the cost of carrying it to a conclusion?

As we go through life, let us be careful to erect our Ebenezer stones, so that when new responsibilities begin to crowd on us, or fresh and unforeseen difficulties threaten, we may be emboldened to sing with Newton:

“His love in time past forbids me to think

He’ll leave me at last in trouble to sink,

Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review

Confirms his good pleasure to help me quite through.”

All through life, if you will only trust God, if only by faith you will derive from Him grace for grace, if only you will claim a continuance and a crowning of all that He has begun, you will have occasions to raise these stones of help and to say with the Apostle, “Having, therefore, obtained the help that is from God, I stand unto this day testifying both to small and great.” The last stone that we shall erect will be on the margin of the river. As we turn our back for ever on the land of our pilgrimage, and enter on the work and worship of eternity, we shall set up a great stone to the glory of our God, saying once more, with a deep sigh of perfected satisfaction, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped.”

IX. A Great Disappointment

(1 Samuel 7–8)

They who have steeped their souls in Prayer

Can every anguish calmly bear—

They who have learnt to pray aright

From pain’s dark well draw up delight.

—Houghton.

THE supreme test of character is disappointment and apparent failure. When the flowing stream is with us, and our plans are ripening into fruition, it is easy enough to be at our best. But what we really are does not appear under such conditions. Let the tide turn against us, let men avert their faces and refuse our counsels, let us be driven to stand on the defence against a world in arms—then our true metal is approved. We are now to see how Samuel bore himself in the face of a keen disappointment. This at least may be said of him, as of old it was said of Job, that he still held fast his integrity.

I. How the Disappointment Befell.—During the twenty years that followed the glorious victory of Aphek, Samuel set himself to build up in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen something of that profound belief in the Reign of the Divine King which we know as the Theocracy, and which was so dear to all devout Hebrews.

His headquarters and home were at Ramah, the scene of his happy childhood’s years. Thence he went on itinerating journeys, and wherever he came, Samuel strove to act only as the representative and agent of the Divine King. Who was he but the messenger and minister of the Lord of hosts? With all the force of his character and eloquence of his speech he insisted that the people were the subjects of Jehovah, owing allegiance to Him alone, and receiving from Him direction in times of perplexity, and deliverance in days of battle. They needed no king—Jehovah was King; no officials, but those who uttered his messages; no code of laws, but those that emanated from Him. It was a beautiful and inspiring conception; and as he went to and fro throughout the land of Israel, still upon his lips, like a musical refrain, the words were constantly being breathed, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”

The same object was in his mind as he instituted the schools of the prophets. To Samuel’s wise interpretation of his times we must attribute the institution of these seats of learning. The priesthood had forfeited its right to stand between Jehovah and his people. Eli and his sons had failed too abjectly and entirely to realise the purpose for which their office was instituted, to encourage the hope of the resuscitation of the priestly order. It was clear that some other religious body must be called into existence. The times demanded an order of men who should be trained in the law of God, who should be fitted to interpret the holy oracles to the people, and from the midst of whom men should arise from time to time to tell in the light what they had heard in the darkness, to proclaim on the housetops what God had whispered to their ears in secret. We find these schools flourishing in the days of Elijah and Elisha—some apparently on the same sites, where they had been instituted by Samuel (10:3, 4, 5; 19:23, 24; 2 Kings 2).

As Samuel laboriously built up these institutions, he had but one purpose in his heart. It was his eager desire to imbue the minds of his countrymen with his own sublime conceptions of the Divine Kingship; and how would he do it better than by these young and ardent disciples? And it must have been a constant inspiration to them to live in contact with this great and illustrious man, who was statesman and saint in one, whom they revered for the loftiness of his character, whilst they felt the inspiration of his high ideals. They saw how respected he was in his own city, by young and old (9:12, 13); how accessible he was to all who needed his assistance (5:9); how mightily he wrestled and prevailed in prayer (7:17; 8:10, 21, 22); and they counted it their highest honour to be associated with him in the regeneration of their national life.

But the failure to realise his high purpose seems to have befallen through the failure of his sons. As Samuel became old, he was less able to administer justice, and continue to act as the adviser of his people in their national and domestic affairs. The burden of administering the government, in the name of the unseen King, became too heavy for him, and he appointed his sons to assist him on the extreme frontiers of the South country. The experiment of delegating to them a part of his authority proved, however, to be a disastrous failure. “They walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.”

This precipitated the catastrophe; and “all the elders of Israel,” who evidently formed a kind of representative and popular assembly, came to Samuel at Ramah, to urge that he should make more satisfactory and permanent arrangements for the perpetuation of his authority. “They said unto him, Behold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways; now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.”

Looked at from the human standpoint, there was much to warrant the request. The Philistines were pushing their outposts into the heart of the country (13:3, 5); Nahash, the Ammonite, was a dangerous neighbour on the Eastern frontier (11:1); there was fear that disintegration might again separate the people on Samuel’s death. But, on the other hand, the request shattered the prophet’s hopes. It showed him that his ideal was too lofty and spiritual for the people to appreciate and maintain. They could not believe only in the invisible; they must have the outward symbols and splendour of royalty.

This is the universal failure of the heart of man. It is always craving for the sensuous and visible. Like the children of Israel, with their cry, “Make us gods, which may go before us,” men demand something which they may see and handle, and before which they may prostrate themselves. Hence all spiritual worship shows a tendency to become materialistic. It is hard to believe that God is a Spirit, and that He must be worshipped in spirit and in truth; it is easier to enter into the debate, whether “in this mountain or in Jerusalem men ought to worship.”

These paragraphs are being written in a land where this fact is strikingly illustrated. The national Church was the earliest product of apostolic days—the Church of Athanasius, Cyril, and Chrysostom. From the first it recited the prayers and read the Scriptures in the tongue of the people, eschewed images, and insisted on spiritual worship. Yet now its churches are full of the pictures of the saints, before which women burn candles and men cross themselves; the Holy of Holies is shut off from the common foot by golden gates; the deep bass of the reader mingles with the exquisite voices of boys in rendering the service in an almost unknown tongue—everything that can appeal to the sense is called into requisition. Apparently the people love to have it so, for they stand in dense crowds on the spacious pavements, following each invocation of the Divine Name with profuse genuflections and obeisance. As I turn from these ornate and splendid symbols to other gatherings of God’s people, in which the eye has nothing to allure, or the ear to attract, where the thought is centred on God, and the only splendour is in those great conceptions that elevate and ennoble, I do not wonder that the nature of the ordinary man rebels and cries out for something more suited to the common levels of daily experience.

To combat desires like these the Epistle to the Hebrews was written, that our minds and hearts might thither ascend, and there continually dwell, where the Lord has gone before us. For us, not a mount that can be touched, but a mount not less certainly—Mount Zion; not a city, whose minarets and monuments catch the rays of the rising and setting sun, but a city as surely, whose streets we may walk each day—the heavenly Jerusalem; not the festal crowds of worshippers that jostled each other in their climb to the Temple of Solomon, but fellow-worshippers equally real and numerous—the innumerable hosts of angels, the spirits of just men made perfect, the general assembly and church of the first-born, with whom we come into contact at each hour of prayer.

II. How Samuel Bore his Disappointment.—“The thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us.” It was not so much that they had rejected himself, but that they had rejected God—that He should not be King over them. They had failed to grasp the great conception, and had fallen to the level of the nations around. The one hope that had arisen in his soul, and been nurtured by the dew and sun of every summer, was frustrated; and it was clear that there could never be the realisation of his cherished dream, since it was impossible to imagine circumstances more favourable for giving it effect. If it failed in Israel, it would fail entirely—unless, indeed, the Divine Kingdom could be set up, which would never pass away.

Under these bitter circumstances he made for the one Harbour of Refuge, the one assured safeguard for all broken hearts and wrecked lives, for all that labour and are heavy laden—“Samuel prayed unto the Lord.”

By how many disappointed ones these words may be read! Women whose young hearts were filled on their marriage day with high and buoyant hope, as they dreamed of an ideal life of love and blessedness, but who are mourning over the withered vows, the broken promises, the irrecoverable sense of trust and peace! Men that meant to effect such great things by their lives, to succeed in business, to lead society, to mold and fashion the State! Ministers who, as they knelt on the threshold of their sacred calling, saw visions and dreamed dreams of consecration, tenderness, shepherd-care, and parental solicitude, which have vanished, as the pictures of foliage reflected in deep lakes when a breath of wind stirs the surface of the water! What are such to do? Whither can they go? What resort is there for broken hearts?

There is no answer to these questions but that suggested by Samuel’s action, when he prayed unto the Lord. Go to Him, and tell everything—what you hoped, how you endeavoured, how you failed. Weep your tears out at his feet. He can understand, can sympathise, can bind and heal. There is Balm in Gilead, there is a Physician there. There is help for the helpless, and comfort for the comfortless. To tell God everything is to be far along the road to peace; and where you cannot tell, where the sobs choke the utterance, there the Father seeth, knoweth, and comforteth. Through His love you may be as one whom his mother comforteth.

Then the Lord answered his servant. He always does, and will, answer. The voice may be so soft and low as to be almost inaudible; but it will be there. The words may not quite chime in with our notions at first. Unlike the prophet’s roll, they may be bitter in the mouth, but they will be sweet to the heart. “Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.”

III. The Divine Answer and Encouragement.—When Samuel cried to the Lord about his sore trouble, in the Divine answer it was made clear that the cherished ideal of a lifetime would have to be abandoned. The distinct impression, was borne in on the prophet’s mind that he must renounce his high purpose, abdicate his position, and step down to become subordinate to a king. “Now, therefore,” said his Almighty Friend and Confidant, “hearken unto their voice.”

At the same time his sorrow was greatly mitigated by discovering that God was his Fellow-Sufferer, and that the sorrow of the Divine heart was infinitely greater than his own. “They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me.” It is a great honour when a man is summoned to enter into fellowship with God in the awful pain and grief which men bring on his tender and Holy Spirit.

Surely none will count the phrase extravagant which attributes suffering to God on account of his rejection by human hearts which refuse his reign and do despite to the Spirit of his Grace. Did not Jesus suffer when his own received Him not, when his brethren believed not, when the city, which He loved with patriot devotion, refused to shelter under his shadowing wings, and when his chosen apostles forsook Him and fled? The very abandonment of his self-sacrifice proved the tenderness of his yearning love, and this could not have been present to so large an extent within Him, without exposing Him to excessive suffering on account of human sin. It has been beautifully said by a modern writer: “There is a common saying that cruelty and cowardice go together; so also do self-sacrifice and tenderness. They are different sides of the same idea, and all the delicacy of Christian tenderness is perceptibly an outgrowth of the Cross. It seems as though, till Christ had lived and died, that fulness of human sympathy was impossible.” Now, if that be true—if the Cross of Christ has exhaled through the world the aroma of tender sympathy—how strong this element must have been in his Holy Nature, and how acutely He must have suffered when the keepers of the vineyards cast Him out and slew Him. But He did not suffer alone; they that saw Him saw the Father. He taught us that God was not impassive; but that He yearned, sorrowed, loved, as human fathers do, only with heights and depths of intensity which are indeed Divine.

“Thou who hast borne all burdens, bear our load,

Bear Thou our load, whatever load it be;

Our guilt, our shame, our helpless misery,

Bear thou who only canst, O God, my God,

Seek us and find us, for we cannot Thee.”

The prophet says that God was pressed beneath the sin and rebellion of men, as the groaning wagon is pressed beneath its sheaves.

IV. Samuel’s noble behaviour towards the people demands our notice.

The request of the people for a king was, no doubt, in part based on Deut. 17:14, which seemed to anticipate just such a crisis as had now arisen. In Hannah’s song, also, there had been an unmistakable prophecy of the day when Jehovah should give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed (1 Sam. 2:10). But the present request had been sprung on Samuel prematurely, and with undue passion and haste. Instead of seeking to ascertain the mind of God, the people had made up their own mind; instead of consulting with the aged prophet on the best policy for coming days, they dictated the policy on which they had set their hearts.

Under these circumstances, and with the express direction of God, he protested solemnly to the deputation of elders, and through them to the people, showing the manner of the king that would reign. It was impossible that a king demanded in such a spirit as characterised the people could be a man after God’s own heart. They wanted one who, in his stature and bearing, in his martial prowess and deeds, should be worthy to compare with neighbouring monarchs. This was much more to them than character, obedience to God, or loyalty to the Mosaic code. And as they desired, so it was done unto them. Ah! how often it happens that God grants us according to the insistence of our strong and vehement self-will. He gives us according to our request, but sends leanness into our souls (Psa. 106:15).

All the Oriental extravagance and prodigality of human life, which were the familiar accompaniment of royalty in neighbouring countries, were destined to reappear in the court of the Kings of Israel. They would enforce the service of the young men to fabricate their weapons, fight their battles, and minister to their royal state. They would exact unremunerated labour in the tillage of their lands. From the daughters and wives of the people they would demand confectioneries and bake-meats, and other elaborate luxuries for the royal appetite. Vineyards and olive-yards, farms and lands, would be confiscated at their caprice. A system of heavy taxation would be imposed on the produce of the land, and on the flocks and herds which covered the pasture lands; while the people would have to stand still and see their hard-earned money squandered on the pleasures and self-indulgence of the palace. A brief experience of this kind would lead to a universal outcry, as the nation awoke to its grievous mistake; but the step so rashly taken would be found to be irreparable. “Ye shall cry out in that day, because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

Samuel’s protest and remonstrance were, however, alike in vain. “The people refused to hearken unto the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles.” They trusted in man and in the arm of flesh, their heart departed from the Lord, and in the sequel they were destined to see their king slain on the fatal field of Gilboa, their land overrun by the enemy, and the national fortunes reduced to the lowest possible ebb.

Does thy heart cry out for a king, for one who shall reduce the conflicting passions of thy nature to unity and order; beware lest thou choose after the sight of thine eyes, or the hearing of thine ears; let not sense or appetite make the selection; take heed of the lust of thy flesh, the lust of thy eyes, and the pride of thy life!

I was told, when in Russia, that in one of the villages in the Baltic provinces a man is imprisoned in the strong bars of an iron cage, who approaches each person on entering the chamber where it is fixed, and, presenting a silver rouble, says, “This is God.” Very few state the truth so boldly; but of how many such a statement would express the very fact? Let thy King be the man whom God hath chosen, the Man of Calvary, whom He hath exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour. He will not exact from, but bring to thee. He does not impoverish, but enrich. His sceptre is the broken reed; his steed, a foal; his crown, of thorns!

When Samuel saw that the people had made up their mind he dismissed the assembly, and set himself with remarkable magnanimity to do the best he could for them. He did this in obedience to the Divine summons, which lay along the line of his own thoughts.

This is very remarkable, and justifies the remark of Ewald: “Samuel is one of the few great men in history who, in critical times, by sheer force of character and inimitable energy, terminate the previous form of a great existing system—at first against their own will, but afterwards, when convinced of the necessity, with all the force and eagerness of their nature; and who then initiate a better form with the happiest results, amid much personal suffering and persecution.”

During the early years of his life, and well on into the maturity of his power, Samuel sought to vitalise the existing institutions, which were ready to his hands. Only slowly, and against his wishes, he awoke to realise that he must abandon further efforts in this direction, and set himself to build up an entirely new organisation. In doing this he had to sacrifice his previous convictions, and do violence to his better judgment; he had to pull down the very structure that he had been at such pains to establish; he had to be second, where he had been an unchallenged first. But when once he realised that there was no alternative, he became the most devoted and efficient organiser of the new age; just as Dr. Chalmers, when he found that it was impossible to secure what he sought within the borders of the Established Church of Scotland, stepped out from its pale and began to build the Free Church, which has become one of the greatest churches of the age.

“And,” continues Ewald, “if David’s visible deeds are greater or more dazzling than Samuel’s, still there can be no doubt that David’s blaze of glory would have been impossible without Samuel’s less conspicuous, but far more influential career; so that all the greatness of which the following century boasts goes back to him as its real author.”

There are supreme crises in the lives of some of us which search us to the quick. The people whom we have loved, have suffered and sacrificed for, suddenly turn from us. They want something else, and something more. We realise that we must abdicate, and are tempted to do it with grudging courtesy and an ill grace. Why should we make way for others; why renounce our rights and refuse to press our claims?

At such times let us remember Samuel’s heroism; let us acknowledge that God’s will is leading us by a right way; let us care for the flock over which we have been placed as overseers more than we care for ourselves; let us adapt ourselves to the new order; nay, let us expedite it with all the grace and grit that we can command, knowing that the blood of our self-sacrifice will, by God’s blessing, be the best cement of our handiwork.

X. The Voice of Circumstances

(1 Samuel 9, 10)

Yes! thou dost well to build a fence about

Thine inward faith. Oh, mount a stalwart guard

Of answers, to oppose invading doubt.

All aids are needful, for the strife is hard.

—Coleridge.

“WHOSO is wise and will observe these things, even he shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.” In these words the Psalmist sums up his five tableaux of human life (Psa. 107). The track of the pilgrim-host, the experience of the prisoner languishing in his chains, the recovery of the sick from long depression, the deliverance of the storm-tossed crew from the angry breakers, the evolution of a smiling paradise from an arid and parched wilderness—all these things, if carefully observed, yield their testimony and assurance that God is in all events, permitting, directing, controlling, and causing all things to work out his perfect plan.

In all Scripture there is no passage more illustrative of this than the chapters before us, which show how clearly and mightily God is in the circumstances of our lives.

It was the spring of the day. With exquisite clearness and purity the dawn was breaking in the Eastern sky, when three men descended the steep ascent on which Ramah stood, and emerged from the city gate (ver. 11, 12, 14, 27). The group was a remarkable one, comprising the aged seer; “a young man and a goodly,” who was the king-elect, though he did not realise it; and a herdsman, Doeg, so tradition states, who afterwards attained such an unhappy notoriety, but was at that time simply a servant in attendance on his master’s son. When the city gate had been left behind, the servant was sent on in front, that he might not be a witness to the solemn transaction, which inaugurated a new epoch in the life of Saul. “As they were going down at the end of the city, Samuel said to Saul, Bid thy servant pass on before us, but stand thou still at this time, that I may cause thee to hear the Word of God.”

I. The Circumstances that Led up to this Incident.—(1) The asses of Kish, Saul’s father, were lost. But they were too valuable to lose. “And Kish said to Saul, his son, Take now one of the servants with thee, and arise, go seek the asses.”

But when they left home they little realised how far their search would lead them. “And he passed through the hill country of Ephraim, and passed through the land of Shalisha, but they found them not; then they passed through the land of Shalim, and there they found them not; and he passed through the land of the Benjamites, but they found them not.” Three days were consumed in this fruitless search, in stopping every traveller, asking many questions, scrutinising every trail—but all to no purpose.

Lost she-asses! Well, what of them! Let them stray! Yes, but they are worth seeking, not for their worth only, but because the man who tracks them will presently come on a kingdom! Be faithful in a little, and God will promote thee to be faithful in much. Do what thou hast to do for God, and He shall call thee for the highest service! Often the finding of the hid treasure depends on the care with which we drive the plough of lowly labour along the common furrow of daily toil.

(2) By God’s providence, which some call chance, the seekers found themselves in the land of Joseph, and there the thought of his father’s possible anxiety arrested the steps of the young farmer, and he said, “Come, and let us return, lest my father leave caring for the asses, and take thought for us.” This remark indicated a good and commendable trait in Saul’s character. On the whole, a man who cares for the feelings of those nearest to him in the ties of natural kindred is likeliest to be a good ruler of men. Would that all our young men and women, especially those who are away from home in our great cities, would be a little more considerate of the heart-strings stretched even to breaking, and the eyes that often brim with tears because the tidings of their welfare are so scanty and intermittent! Saul feared the effect of three days on his father. What would he have thought of three weeks or months without tidings?

(3) Having arranged for the offering of the piece of shekel (about 2s. 6d.) which was discovered in the bottom of the servant’s pocket, as their gift to the Seer, the two men made for the gate of the little city, “which was set on a hill,” its white houses glistening in the intense sunshine. The maidens of whom they made inquiries, the fact that Samuel was in the city, and on his way to a feast in the high place, the encounter with Samuel himself in the main street, and the tidings that the asses were found, were like so many signposts that pointed them by the way which they should go, till they came to the place that awaited them, the seat and portion which had been prepared by the instructions of the Prophet.

How evidently a Divine hand was in all these circumstances! They could not have happened by chance. Clearly every separate detail had been wrought out in a designing mind with the express purpose of driving Saul into the precise position where he might stand still and hear the Word of the Lord.

But if it was so with these circumstances, must we not believe that as much may be said of all circumstances? If a hair cannot fall to the ground from our head, or a sparrow from the tree, apart from God, can we say of anything that it is too trivial to come into the Divine plan? Even let it be granted that many incidents happen at the instigation of evil men, yet they are permitted to reach us by the will of God, and therefore we may as much trace God’s will in them for our own discipline and ennoblement, as in those others which are evidently of his direct sending. God’s purpose ran through the wicked deeds of the betrayers and murderers of our Lord. There was not a single event on all those fateful days that was not marked on the chart of Divine Providence; and since God is everywhere the same, and the same infinitely, so that we cannot say that He was more present there than here, or was more powerful then than now, we must admit that He is still as much in every circumstance of our lot, as on those memorable and awful days when creation herself beheld the scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary with evident emotion.

Let it never be forgotten that straying asses, an unexpected encounter in the street, the presence of a coin in the pocket, or its absence, are all part of a Divine plan. He who has opened eyes may read the Father’s handwriting, and take the direction of his path, as though angels had flashed before his eyes to direct him. And the prepared path always leads to the vacant seat and the waiting portion. The road may be long, and the tax on patience and strength considerable; but the Father never leads his trustful and obedient child into a quagmire, or leads him out on the moorland to perish of exposure to the cold. There is always a destination to which the road leads, and it only awaits the quick eye, the ready ear, and the obedient heart, to detect the things that God hath prepared for them that love him.

II. The Incident of Saul’s First Anointing.—Saul slept at Samuel’s house that night, and on the housetop. The Prophet had prepared his couch there with a special purpose, which burnt like a clear flame in his heart; for when the house was quiet, he stole up to the young man who was pondering the strange events of the day, and “communed with Saul on the housetop.”

He longed to stir his soul with a profound sympathy in his own passionate and patriotic longings. He may have poured into the listening ear the story of his hopes and fears, of hopes that had been frustrated, of fears that seemed on the point of being realised. Probably he told the story of his own rejection, and of the failure of his sons. He may have whispered into those young ears his longing that someone might appear at this juncture who would gather up the frayed and tangled threads and work out the Divine pattern. Thus, with careful skill, Samuel awoke the sleeping soul of the young son of the soil, who probably had lived in a narrow, circumscribed sphere, interested in flocks and herds, in vines and crops, in the talk of the country-side, but stirred with few thoughts of the national welfare.

He was awoke by Samuel before the breath that announced the dawn had stirred the leaves of the sleeping woods. “Samuel called to Saul on the housetop, saying, Up, that I may send thee away.” Then, on the descent at the end of the city, the servant was sent on, and as the two stood together, Samuel took from out of his breast the vial of oil, and poured it upon the strong young head, bent beneath his touch, giving him the anointing which designated the king, and kissing him in token of his own fealty. “Is it not,” said he, “that the Lord hath anointed thee to be prince over his inheritance?”

It was a great hour in Saul’s life. No wonder that “when he had turned his back to go from Samuel,” it was with “another heart.” The chronicle does not say that he received a new heart; there was no saving regeneration or conversion, no such radical change as comes over the soul at the hour of the new birth, or he would never have perished, as he did, on the field of Gilboa. But he had new aims, new conceptions of the importance and significance of life, new determinations and resolves. In a sense, though not the deepest, old things had passed away, and everything had become new.

Let us mark this distinction. It is possible to have another, but not a new heart; to be arrested by some stronger mind and inspired by a fresh ideal; but beneath the rapid sprouting of the seed there may be a slab of impenetrable and unchangeable rock. The work has been only on the surface, but the dew has sped before the sun, and the cloud which seemed to presage rain has dissolved again into the sky. See that you make sure work for eternity.

III. The Circumstances that Followed.—When we are on God’s path, we may certainly count on the corroboration of outward circumstances. If, in travelling by the railway, one questions whether one is in the right train, it is a comfort to consult the time tables, to see if the names of the stations, as we hurry through them, are those which are mentioned in the list. So, when questions arise, as they will when we are confronted by difficulties and obstacles, of whether we are in the line of God’s will, it is an immense reassurance to meet with corroborating circumstances, which tell us that we are right. Is not this what is meant by the words, “I will make my mountains a way”?

It was not enough that Peter should hear a voice speaking to his heart, or see the sheet let down from heaven—he must hear the knock of the three men, sent from Cornelius, as they stand at the door of the tanner’s house, inquiring for him (Acts 10). In all great decisions, seek the corroboration of circumstances. We will trace this in the subsequent chapter.

XI. As Occasion Serves

(1 Samuel 10:7)

There lies no desert in the land of Life;

For e’en that tract that barrenest doth seem,

Laboured of thee in faith and hope, shall teem

With heavenly harvests, and rich gatherings ripe.

—Kemble.

CIRCUMSTANCES led up to Samuel’s secret designation of Saul as king; and circumstances, so special and significant as to carry on their brow the Divine impression, were destined to corroborate the momentous act. With unerring accuracy the old prophet anticipated them, and with unfailing precision each of them took place. “All those signs came to pass that day.”

(1) First, by Rachel’s tomb, in the border of Benjamin, two men met him to say that the asses had been found, and that his father had left the care of the asses, and was taking thought for his son, saying, “What shall I do for my son?” This was a very significant evidence of the Divine will and choice. It indicated that he was to be henceforth relieved of the care of the farm and the field, to devote himself to other and higher work. Asses could be found without his interposition. Others could attend to them and their like, but for him the kingdom was waiting, and the hearts of men were being prepared. The home-ties, the love of father and family, would always have a claim, but he must leave to others the care of the estates at Gibeah.

This sign is still of inestimable value to those who feel called to give themselves wholly to direct service for God. If it be the case that they are needed at home, to provide for the maintenance of aged parents or sisters, of wife or child, they have no right to withdraw from that sacred duty—that holy obligation—until God gives them an honourable discharge. The message to all such most certainly is that which the apostle gave in a time of great unsettlement to the Corinthian disciples. “Let each man abide in that calling wherein he was called.” “Brethren, let each man, wherein he was called, therein abide with God” (1 Cor. 7:20, 24).

When God has given a call, as clear and unmistakable as that which Saul received at the lips of Samuel, let the recipient wait trustfully and patiently for his hand to slacken the hold of circumstances. Without long delay the shore-rope will be loosed, and the message will come in one form or another: “The asses are found.” Any circumstance of that kind will be an unmistakable assurance that the Lord’s voice has been speaking to the heart, and that his cloud is beckoning us to follow.

(2) Next, as he went forward, filled with bewilderment and awe, near the oak, or terebinth, of Tabor (the situation of which is absolutely unknown), Saul met three men going on a sacred pilgrimage to Bethel, which, from the days of Abraham and Jacob, had been hallowed by the most sacred associations.

These men were carrying, as Samuel said they would, their votive-offerings to the shrine—three kids, three loaves, and a bottle (or skin, margin) of wine. First they saluted him with the invariable Eastern greeting, Peace be unto thee; and presented him with two of the loaves, as though obeying an inner conviction which was pressed home on them by the Divine Spirit, that he whom they had encountered was no ordinary wayfarer, but one who might share their homage even with Almighty God.

What significance lay hid in this act also! Did it not imply that God would compel the respect and reverence of the nation to arise towards the king whom He had chosen, and that there should be no lack of the supplies which were required to sustain his royal state? Was it not an assurance that he need not be anxious about what he should eat or drink or how he should be clothed, since, if he sought first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all things besides would certainly be added?

This, too, will befall each servant of God who steps out on the path of obedience. He may be leaving a well-established business and giving up some lucrative source of income; he may seem to be stepping from the boat on to the heaving, changeful waters; he may be blamed, as Moses was no doubt blamed, for casting himself and those dependent on him on to the trackless, inhospitable desert; but if he will be only true to God’s call he will have no reason to repent, his bread shall be given him, and his water shall be sure, the manna will fall where the cloud broods overhead; first the ravens, then the widow woman, and then the angels, will be commanded to provide bread that he may eat; God will care for his body in life, and in death will bury it with his own hands, as in the case of Moses, or by the hands of devout men, as when Stephen was carried to his grave amid great lamentations.

On one occasion in the Lord’s life He gave a memorable lesson on this matter to his apostles. The tax-collector had come to Peter with a demand which Peter could not meet, and he came to the Master with it. Doubtless, if the fisherman had still been plying his craft, there would have been no need for anxiety—out of the produce of his labour he would have been well able to meet the application; but, as it was, there was no money in his purse or house available for the purpose. “Go thou to the sea,” said the Master, “and cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a shekel; that take and give them for Me and thee.” It was in obedience to the Saviour’s call that Peter had given up his own means of livelihood, and the Lord recognised that the responsibility of providing for the needs, that would otherwise have been met by his toil, was incumbent on Himself. He identified Himself in the common need when He said, “for Me and thee.” If you go forth on Christ’s errands, He will not be unrighteous to forget; you may surely trust Him to pay the taxes, and all other legitimate dues. Do not set your hope on “the uncertainty of riches,” or on the doles of the wealthy, but on God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.

(3) Finally, Saul came to Gibeah (r.v. margin). The A. V. and R. V. note that there was a garrison of Philistines there, but other commentators, thinking it unlikely that Samuel would announce to Saul a fact which must have been so well known to him, have preferred to employ the other meaning of the word translated garrison, and have rendered the sentence, “where the erection, column, or monument, of the Philistines stands,” probably reared by them to commemorate some famous victory.

Hard by this spot, and almost within sight of his home, Saul encountered a band of young men connected with the prophetic school which Samuel had established. They were coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a timbrel, a pipe, and a harp. The afflatus of prophetic fervour and ecstasy was upon them, and as Saul beheld their holy rapture he fell under its spell. So great a change had passed over him, during his brief absence from his home, that he had now a sympathy with these divine raptures which he had never known before. Chords within his soul, which had never vibrated before, began to answer in strange unison. Yearnings after God, susceptibility to spiritual impressions, the sense of the unseen and eternal, filled his soul. “The Spirit of God came mightily upon him, and he prophesied among them.”

This remarkable assertion need not astonish us. It is by no means uncommon to find men temporarily and spasmodically affected by strong religious impressions, who are not permanently and savingly delivered from their former worldly or selfish manner of life. It is possible to be enlightened, to taste of the heavenly gift, to be a partaker of the Holy Ghost, to be solemnised by the powers of the world to come, and yet fall away. A land may have drunk of the rain and been moistened with the gentle dew, and yet bear thorns and thistles. Seed may spring up quickly where there is no depth of earth, and yet wither away. Simon was deeply wrought on by all he saw and felt during Philip’s visit to Samaria, but the Apostle declared that he was still “in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity.”

But what to Saul was only a transient and superficial influence may become, in each of us, a permanent possession. The Spirit of God may come on us to fill us, and abide, as He did with those on whom He came in the early days of the Church. In successive waves of power and grace He may come on us, so that we may not only be filled suddenly and mightily for special work, but be constantly sensible of the holy infillings as were the first converts in the highlands of Asia Minor, so that we may be permanently full, as was Stephen. (Compare Acts 4:8; 13:52; 6:5; note the change of tenses, etc.)

Whenever God calls us to special service He provides a special anointing of the Holy Spirit. Remember how the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, “See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri; and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.” This is universally true. As certainly as there is the call, there will be the equipment. But we must look up for it, we must claim and appropriate it; without feeling it, we must reckon that it is ours, and step out on the predestined path. It is in the act of obedience that we become suddenly and thankfully aware of the possession. Oh, that the Spirit of Christ may come mightily on all his servants, so that they may be equipped for the demands of the present age, and that the Master may say of each of them, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth. I have put my spirit upon him, and he shall bring forth judgment to the people.”

This transformation in the young farmer amazed all that knew him beforetime; and they said one to another, “What is this that has come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?” It made as great a stir as when Saul of Tarsus joined the Christians, whom he had persecuted, or when Bunyan and Newton became ministers of the Word. One of the older people, however, divined the reason. Rumours of Saul’s interview with Samuel were beginning to circulate, and he said, in effect: “Has he not been with Samuel, the father of these blessed and exalted movements? What wonder, then, if he partake of his gifts!”

When the first tremor of excitement had passed, and Saul regained full mastery of himself, he went up to the high place, probably for quiet meditation and prayer, that he might comprehend the full significance of the crowding events which had transpired within the recent hours. To whom can we turn, most Holy God, in the supreme moments of life, but unto Thee? Only Thou canst understand.

Ere Samuel dismissed his astonished and awestricken guest, he bade him act in each circumstance as occasion served (5:7). There is always room for the exercise of sanctified common-sense. The circumstances may be Divinely contrived, but we must use them for good or evil, making them stepping-stones or stumbling-blocks. The same circumstances may come to all, but one man receives their lesson and transmits his answer in a very different spirit from his friend and neighbour. In one case the sun and shower produce flowers and corn, in another weeds and poppies. The Divine guidance of our lives does not obviate the necessity for the exercise of prudence, that looks before and after and upwards, in order to ascertain what the will of the Lord is.

There is always in the regimen of life an abundant need for the exercise of our judgment, through which the light of God may be shining as through a clear pane of glass. We are not dumb, driven cattle, nor the creatures of fate or chance. We are not automatons. So long as we look for guidance it will be freely given, but when it is given, we must use it, and it is useless unless we do. Only they that receive the abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life.

On that memorable night when God’s Angel achieved the deliverance of Peter from his prison, we are told that the celestial visitant led the dazed apostle through the first and second streets, and then departed from him; and when Peter had considered the thing, he went to the house of Mary. So long as he was bewildered, and half asleep, living in a trance, walking in dreamland, it was necessary that he should be carefully watched and led; but so soon as the sharp morning air had revived him, and brought him to himself, so that he was able to consider the matter, he was left to act on the decisions of his own sanctified common-sense.

To him that overcometh, the Master promises to give a white stone, which is surely the Urim and Thummim stone—a judgment through which the Shekinah light glows and shines. May it be our happy privilege to receive it at his hands, that we may be able to say with our Lord, “My judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but his that sent me.”

XII. The Inner and Outer Conflicts

(1 Samuel 11)

What if He hath decreed that I shall first

Be try’d in humble state and things adverse,

By tribulations, injuries, insults,

Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence!

—Milton.

THE eleventh verse records a great victory. It was the first public act of the reign of Saul, taking place a month after his inauguration. It at once justified his selection, and silenced the voice of detraction; he stood forth before the eyes of his own people, and of surrounding nations, as every inch a man and a king.

But in this chapter, for eyes that look beneath the surface, there is the record of another fight. There was the outward fight that Saul made for Israel; there was the inner and previous fight that Saul made for himself, against himself; and it was because he had conquered in the latter, of which there was probably no symptom or sign to the outward eye, that he carried himself erect in the fight with Nahash.

This is always so; within the fight there is another fight. Within the fight that men are waging with the sin and darkness of the world there is always the inner fight, which they must wage with themselves, and for themselves. If, to use the suggestion of another, you had been familiar with Howard, the great prison evangelist, or had known Clarkson, who delivered the slave; if you had been permitted to read the secrets of the heart of Garrison, the great American philanthropist, you would have known that, full often, each was sick and weary with the inward combat, and closed the door of his heart upon the outward fight, that he might turn his thought and attention to himself; and you would have heard the soldier of Christ saying bitterly to himself: “It would be easy for me to conquer, and to win the battle for my Lord against these outward ills, if only I had not perpetually to wage this inward fight; if only I had solid ground to stand on, instead of the shifting sand of my own vacillating nature and irresolute temper.” Perhaps you might even have heard these great soldiers saying: “Surely it would be better to relinquish the outward conflict, so as to bend all attention to the rule of the Home-land.”

Yet it is good for us all that these two conflicts should go on side by side, for if a man were only conflicting against the evil of the world, and knew nothing about the inward fight, he might become arrogant and suppose that he stood aloof from the common sin and the common temptation; whereas if, on the other hand, we were only to confine ourselves to the inward conflict, we might grow morbid and self-centred, dispirited and depressed.

No, let those two go on together, and let the victories that we win for God in the outward field of vision be weighed against the awful consciousness of failure that we all carry in our inner experience. Let these two go on side by side, and let every man know that if he conquers within, he will conquer without, and that if he fails within he will fail without. It is just in proportion as we are able to overcome, as Saul did, in his heart, that we shall overcome, as he did, against the Ammonites.

Two thoughts lie upon this chapter which are full of interest—first, Saul’s inward fight and conquest; secondly, Saul’s outward fight and conquest.

I. Saul’s Inward Fight, Conflict, and Victory.—(1) He fought the subtle temptation to pride. Samuel, eager to constitute the new kingdom, called a great national assembly at Mizpeh, where so great a defeat and victory had been recorded in earlier days. In their teeming multitudes the Israelites gathered there, and proceeded to elect their king by an appeal to God through a lot. After prayer the lot was cast, and the disposing of it was left to God. First the tribe of Benjamin was taken, then the clan of the Matrites, then the family of Kish, and ultimately the lot indicated Saul, the son of Kish, but he was not to be found. He knew from his previous conversation with Samuel that he was God’s designated king; that the anointing oil had flowed over his head; that he was possessed of a kingly presence, standing head and shoulders above all ordinary men. If ever a man might have stood to the front, and allowed ambition to master him, that was the moment when Saul might have stood forth and presented himself to his people as the unrivalled candidate for their suffrages and the crown. However, he was not to be found. They looked for him everywhere in vain. And it was only when, for the second time, they appealed to the direction of the Urim and Thummim, that he was discovered hiding among the baggage-waggons.

This modesty was extremely beautiful, and our admiration of the natural traits of Saul’s character cannot but be greatly enhanced by his unobtrusiveness. It reminds one of Athanasius, who left the city of Alexandria that he might not be elected bishop, and of Ambrose, who more than once sought to evade the responsibility which was thrust upon him at Milan. It reminds us also of John Livingstone, who, when he was chosen to preach that famous sermon of Kirk o’ Shotts, travelled as quickly as possible in another direction, and only after some hours was led by the Spirit of God to turn again and assume the blessed burden. Those that assume to themselves high positions, yielding before the proud spirit of self-assumption, fail; but they who humble themselves, who generally think others better than they are, who deprecate notoriety and show, are such as God exalts.

(2) There was the strong temptation which assailed him to vindictiveness. Amid the shouts, “God save the King,” which applauded his nomination there were the voices of detractors, men of Belial, who whispered, “How shall this man save us?” One such voice is enough to spoil all the adulation that may be strewn before us by the crowd. What public man is there who has not felt that the clamour of kind voices was marred by the one sentence of criticism and spite, so that the drop of vinegar turned all the rest acid? These voices must have stung the heart of Saul. The adder’s poison must have penetrated to his heart; but he quenched the desire for revenge; conquered, and trampled beneath his feet the smouldering embers of vindictiveness. It was not that he was pusillanimous, for we are told, in this same chapter, that when he heard of the cry of Jabesh-gilead, “his anger was greatly kindled.” He was capable of flaming forth against wrong, but in this case he held himself well in hand. To use the old English phrase of the A. V., He held his peace. The more one examines that phrase, the more fascinating it is—to hold your peace, not to let it go, not to let it be taken or snatched from you, not to let it be trampled under foot in anger, but to hold to it in the midst of irritation and fret, to hold your ground. “He held his peace.”

The Hebrew, as suggested by the margin, is still more striking. “He was as though he had been deaf”—he pretended not to hear. He did hear; every word had struck deep into his soul, but he made as though he were deaf. It is a great power when a man can act as though he were deaf to slander, deaf to detraction, deaf to unkind and uncharitable speeches, and treat them as though they had not been spoken, turning from man to God, leaving with God his vindication, believing that God sooner or later will give him a chance, as He most certainly gave Saul a chance, of vindicating the true prowess and temper of his soul.

If Saul had listened to these men and noticed them, he might have drifted into an awkward and perplexing position, for if, on the one hand, he had passed over their slander, he might have laid himself open to the imputation of cowardice; whereas if, on the other, he had noticed it, he might have been goaded to act tyrannically, and so as to alienate a large number of his people. He could not have done better than to act as though he were deaf, and to conquer the spirit of vindictive revenge by the spirit of self-restraint.

(3) There was one more temptation by which he must have been plied, the temptation to ostentation. When the assemblage was dispersed he returned from Mizpeh to Gibeah. He had been designated by Samuel, and kissed by him in token of homage. Sign after sign had indicated him to be God’s choice for Israel; he had stood forth amid the people’s clamour, the acknowledged king of the land; a number of young men, whose hearts were fired by loyal enthusiasm, had thronged about his path, and with songs of rejoicing had accompanied him to his home; he was conscious of being able to rally about him the chivalry and strength of his fatherland; and yet, when he was back again in Gibeah, in spite of every temptation to ostentation and excess, he was noble enough to return to his rustic life; he took again in hand his plough, and for one whole month he drove the oxen across the fields, meditating much on the strange chance which had befallen, and wondering when God would open the door for him to step forth into the manifestation and enjoyment of the royalty which was already his.

These were the elements of a truly great soul. We do not forget Gilboa; the frenzied insanity by which his career was afterwards blasted; how more than once or twice he hurled his javelin at David; that he became moody and morose; that he betrayed the heart of a murderer and died the death of a suicide; but at this time of his life at least, in his young manhood, he put his foot upon pride and remained humble; he put his foot upon the spirit of revenge and left it with God to vindicate him; put his foot upon that love of ostentation that tempts us all, setting himself to do his daily work, and waiting until God summoned him to take the helm of the state. We cannot but admire this greatly.

You, too, may be conscious of the presence of many amiable natural traits, but unless the natural virtues of your soul be possessed and strengthened by the power of the Holy Ghost they will not be able ultimately to withstand the awful conflict of the world. See to it that in and through the traits of your own amiable nature there may come the transcendent life of the ever-glorious Saviour, that your character may not be the wild growth of nature, but the established and permanent indwelling of the Son of God by the Holy Spirit.

II. The Outward Conflict.—One evening as Saul came back from the field he heard that low wail of distress and panic by which the Eastern populace makes known its anguish; and as he drew near to Gibeah he asked what it meant. “What aileth the people that they weep?” Then the story was told bow, across the Jordan, in the land of Gilead, the city of Jabesh-gilead was hard pressed by the Ammonites, who, a hundred years before, had been disastrously defeated by Jephthah, but who had never relinquished their claim to the land. Under Nahash, the king, they had gathered in overwhelming numbers around the beleaguered city. Its citizens had tried their best to extricate themselves, but in vain. One week of respite alone had been extracted from the contemptuous clemency of Nahash; and if at the end of that week no deliverance came, then the right eye of every man would be put out, which, of course, would make him useless for purposes of war, because the left eye was, of course, always covered by the shield.

In despair the messengers came to Gibeah of Benjamin, because in the days of the judges Jabesh-gilead had refused to join in the war of extermination against the Benjamites, and had given forty of its daughters in marriage to their sons. There was, therefore, a blood-tie between the people of Jabesh-gilead and those of Gibeah, and in this awful hour they felt they had a claim for help—if they would not help, who would? But the people of Gibeah despaired. It seemed as if it were impossible in that short space to send effectual help. Saul was living in the midst of them, but they had no hope that he could help them. The day threatened to close in hopeless despondency and despair.

Then the man who had conquered himself became suddenly aware of the uprising of an altogether new power in his heart. We are told that “the Holy Spirit of God came mightily upon Saul”; a little further on we learn that “the fear of God fell on the people”; and still further on, “the Lord wrought a great salvation for Israel.”

If you will be true in the inward battle, if by the grace of God you will trample upon the sins which so easily beset you, the time will come in your life also, when the Spirit of God will come upon you with an almost overwhelming power, and bear you forward to do what otherwise would be absolutely impossible; and as He works on you, He will work also on the people and on the foe.

Instantly Saul laid hold of his bullocks, slew them, cut them in pieces, and by messengers sent those pieces throughout the land. In some such way, as Sir Walter Scott tells us, the old Highland chieftain used to summon the clans for war by the mission of the fiery cross. Killing an animal, kindling a fire, the cross was burnt in the flames, which were quenched in blood, and it was sent throughout the land, and every man who saw it was bound to hasten to the field.

Similarly, the entire people throughout the whole land of Israel obeyed the royal summons. Three hundred thousand Israelites and thirty thousand of Judah rallied “after Saul and after Samuel.” They were at first but an undisciplined mob. Probably they were armed with scythes and goads, for the Philistines had deprived them of all other weapons; but Saul, in the power of God, numbered them—i. e., disciplined, arranged, and marshalled them; directing them by three different routes to fall upon the Ammonites in the morning. A message was sent to Jabesh-gilead to tell the people that help was coming, and their hearts were glad. Then, as the morning broke over the quiet hills and valleys of Gilead, and the little city was astir with expectation and hope, from three different sides Saul launched his army upon the sleeping hosts. Panic-stricken, they sprang to their feet; hardly awake, and dazed with the clamour of the battle-cries, they were unable to resist the onset of the men of Israel; and the rout was so complete that, by the noontide, two men were not left together. It was a wonderful victory and an auspicious beginning for the new reign.

Would you not win such a victory over the sin of the world? If so, there must be self-mastery. Gird yourselves to fight “the good fight of faith.” We are reminded that there are several circles to that fight. First, there is, of course, the outer circle of circumstances. A man must always begin with these, and rightly so. It is quite wise on your part to give up that business which is a constant source of temptation; to remove from that house where bad people live; to renounce that literature, those books, and that recreation, which are constantly causing you to offend; to extricate yourself from that friendship or fellowship which has been your curse. That is the first thing to do. Get right with your circumstances; touch not, taste not, handle not; come out and be separate. At any cost deliver yourself from the conditions of life that tempt you to sin.

Secondly, there is the inner circle of habit, for if our circumstances are like our clothes, our habits are like our skin, and every man has got to fight his lonely fight against habit; it may be of alcoholism; it may be of narcotism; it may be of impurity and immorality; nothing but the power of God can break the bonds that bind you. That is the second great fight in a man’s life.

Thirdly, there is the battle against heredity. It may be that your father was a passionate man, and has passed on, perhaps from his ancestors, strong and vehement desires; that your mother was a vain, or proud, or quick-tempered woman, and that she has passed on to you something of her own quick, sensitive nature; that you cannot keep calm and still, cannot hold your peace, cannot seem as if you were deaf. Everyone has to meet with a certain number of predispositions in his life, which he has inherited, and which make the battle harder. Enumerate them, consider them, know them; then in the name of God put the grave of Christ between you and them, and let them meet you only through Him that died. Die to them all, die to the first Adam, die to yourself because you have risen to the second. In acting thus you may break the entail and arrest for others that awful inheritance into which you have come.

Then, after all, when all this is said and done, when your outward circumstances are adjusted, when by the grace of God you have broken the spell of habit, when you have died to heredity, then you come face to face with the inner citadel of yourself. There are things that you must not do, temptations to which you must not yield, an inner self which you must crucify. Ah, that lonely fight! Ah, the flowers and grass that become trampled down in the wrestle whilst the blood of your heart is sprinkled on the sward, and you know that all the possessions of your outward life are as nothing to you compared to the agony of the inward conflict. What is success? What is applause? What is the crown of victory compared with your confessed failure to yourself? Thus we fight our fight, and win in the power of the loving Christ. And then Ammon, Ammon, Ammon! Ah, not two men are left together. Fight, fight, fight the good fight of faith; lay hold upon the life which is life indeed.

↑ Back to top