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his hair both his strength and Jehovah departed from him, and deprived of sight and liberty, he worked in brazen fetters for his captors.

The Philistines naturally attributed this triumph over Samson and Jehovah to the superior power of their national god, and hastened to offer rich sacrifices to Dagon for their deliverance from the enemy. By which we perceive a remarkable resemblance between. Hebrew and Philistine theosophy, varying only in distinctive objects of similar worship.

A day of festive thanksgiving was appointed. The lords of the Philistines assembled with the people in a temple, the very roof of which was crowded with men and women, spectators of the exciting scene, as the once terrible Hebrew was led forth by a boy amidst the exultation of his enemies. Samson, whose hair had partially grown, begged for permission to rest against the pillars of the temple, prayed to Jehovah for help, 'took hold of the two middle pillars on which the temple stood,' and overwhelmed all in crashing ruins.

It needs no depth of criticism to detect in all this a Semitic version of the Herculean myth, accepted as Scripture by the credulous editors of the Restoration, and consecrated by the anonymous author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who catalogues Samson with Samuel, David, and all the prophets. Eminent commentators, entangled in the meshes of scriptural infallibility, therefore accept Semitic mythology as revelation, and tell us that the story of Samson, which stakes the fortunes of the Chosen Race on the shorn locks which fall from the lap of Delilah, is veritable history flowing from the pen of inspiration. But his career is some

thing very different from that of other famous Shofetim of Israel. If Ehud was an assassin, Deborah a eulogist of the same crime, and Jephthah guilty of human sacrifice, they at least worked according to their lights for the deliverance of Israel and the glory of Jehovah. But Samson judged Israel twenty years,' and yet we hear of nothing but his amours, and miracles evoked, not for national but for personal vengeance.

If modern Orthodoxy deems this criticism impious, we can only repeat that the impiety lies with those who degrade Divinity through cosmopolitan legends, and fail to recognise an Olympian hero in the Semitic Hercules. As we see tortured foxes carrying devastation, with blazing torches, through the products of human industry, and hear the appalling crash of falling columns, crushing men and women, conscientiously praising their ancestral god for deliverance from a man in whom they necessarily saw a sanguinary monster, we marvel at the superstition of an enlightened age which identifies the God of Samson with Jesus of Nazareth.

The sufferings of the Israelites from foreign aggression, under the régime of the Judges, were still further aggravated by the horrors of civil war. When Jephthah, by a series of brilliant victories, had delivered his countrymen from the Ammonites, the Ephraimites complained that they had not been invited to join in the war with the common enemy.1 This merely sentimental grievance caused a fratricidal contest, in which the men of Ephraim were defeated, and all fugitives from the battlefield massacred, so that the slain reached the number of forty-two thousand.

1 Judg. xii.

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The last three chapters of Judges record, with doubtful date, the revolting details of a crime committed in Gibeah, a city of the Benjamites. The atrocity of the offence aroused the indignation of the other tribes, who demanded the surrender and punishment of the criminals. This request was rejected; and the children of Israel, therefore, arose and went up to the house of God, and asked council of God, and said, which of us shall go up first to the battle against the children of Benjamin? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first' -an obvious response through the oracle of Urim and Thummim. The Israelites, therefore, went forth to battle in a just cause approved by Jehovah, suffered a disastrous defeat, again consulted the oracle, were divinely instructed to renew the fight, and again repulsed with a total loss of forty thousand men.

The children of Israel accordingly wept, fasted, and sacrificed to Jehovah, who, interrogated by Phinehas, promised victory; and on a renewal of the fatal contest, the Benjamites were utterly routed, their cities destroyed by fire, and the entire tribe ruthlessly exterminated, with the exception of six hundred warriors, who escaped into the wilderness, and abode in the rock of Rimmon four months.'

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In the interval, the Israelites had time to reflect on the national calamity involved in the destruction of an entire tribe, and, repenting of the extreme measures adopted towards the unhappy Benjamites, became anxious that the six hundred fugitives, intrenched at Rimmon, should be supplied with wives to prevent the final extinction of the tribe. The children of Israel could not supply them because they had sworn

at Mizpah: There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin for wife.' The difficulty was, however, met by another oath sworn at Mizpah, to the effect that any of the tribes not attending the meeting there should be put to death. The inhabitants of Jabeshgilead, a city on the east of the Jordan, were convicted of this offence, and forthwith murdered, with all the married women and children, by twelve thousand most valiant men! Four hundred virgins were, however, secured as wives for the Benjamites, and the necessary number completed by forcible abduction of two hundred daughters of Shiloh. This narrative concludes with the remark: In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.' And yet Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, was in communication with Jehovah as the temporal Ruler of the nation.

From these sanguinary episodes in the annals of Judah we infer that many of the calamities of the nation resulted from superstitious reliance on the oracles of Urim and Thummim; and that the cruelty of the Hebrews towards alien nations indicates, not divine vengeance, but native barbarism, as ruthless in conflict with Benjamites as with Philistines.

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Passing over the idyl of Ruth,' with its unwonted picture of rural tranquillity among the Hebrews, and unusual recognition of virtue in a daughter of Moab, we next hear of the pontificate of Eli,1 a vener able priest and judge, whose character stands out prominently in admirable contrast with his sanguinary predecessors, as he is accused of nothing worse than

1 1 Sam. i.-iv.

being a too indulgent parent. Even in modern times the offspring of eminent bishops are not always exempt from the ancestral vices developed through heredity, as was the case with Hophni and Phinehas, the dissolute sons of Eli, who, as members of the priesthood, were not content to dine on the prescribed shoulder of peace-offerings, but insisted on more appetising food and varied cookery. They were also guilty of other improprieties, for which Eli rebuked them sternly: but they hearkened not to the voice of their father, because Jehovah would slay them:' and Eli adopted no more vigorous measures-practically impossible to nonagenarian senility.

An anonymous man of God, accordingly, appears upon the scene, and insults the venerable prelate with insolent denunciation-heard with a patience superior to that of Job, for he utters no word of remonstrance, and, even when cursed through the lips of a child, he thus anticipates the gospel: It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good.' In fact, Eli was sufficiently in advance of his age to have been a Galilean Apostle.

The children of Israel were obviously irresponsible for the actions of theocratic priests, in whose appointment they had no voice; and yet, for the sins of Eli's sons, the Philistines slew thirty-four thousand of them, and even captured the sacred coffer of Jehovah, which, passing from place to place as an iconoclastic and plague-producing talisman, was at length restored by the enemy to the men of Beth-Shemesh, fifty thousand of whom were slain by Jehovah for examining its contents. Meantime the venerable Eli, having heard of the

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