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that had been so lovingly yet simply entered on, which still direct the steps of travelers to its scene, and have made the city of Ruth and Boaz famous in the annals of time and in the everlasting memories of eternity. It was here that David, Ruth's greatgrandson, tended his father's sheep. The hills around heard the first feeble notes of the harp that banished the evil spirit from the breast of Saul, and has charmed the Church of God, through successive ages, with its inspired and sacred melodies. These hills saw the brave boy encounter both the lion and the bear, and as he plucked the prey from their bloody jaws win victories that were his confidence when, accepting the challenge of the giant, he said, "The Lord that delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine." But Ruth was the ancestress, and Bethlehem the birthplace, of a greater than David. There the Son of God drew his first breath; there the Sun of righteousness arose on a benighted world with healing in his wings; there the fountain of salvation, the waters of which, if a man drink, he shall never thirst more, sprung up sparkling into the light of day. It was in the city where Ruth was married the Saviour of the world was born; it was among these hills the shepherds watched their flocks by night; it was over the very fields trodden by this gleaner's feet the glory of the Lord shone forth, and the midnight sky suddenly became filled with angels, and mortal ears heard those immortals sing, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men !"

S

XVI.

SAMUEL.

AMUEL was the last judge, the first of the regular succession of prophets and the founder of the monarchy. So important a position did he hold in Jewish history as to have given his name to the sacred book, now divided into two, which covers the whole period of the first establishment of the kingdom, corresponding to the manner in which the name of Moses has been assigned to the sacred book, now divided into five, which covers the period of the foundation of the Jewish Church itself. In fact, but one character of equal magnitude had arisen since the death of the great lawgiver.

Samuel was the son of Elkanah, a Levite of Mount Ephraim, and Hannah or Anna. His father is one of the few private citizens in whose household we find polygamy. It may possibly have arisen from the irregularity of the period. All that appears with certainty of his birthplace is that it was in the hills of Ephraim. At the foot of the hill was a well; on the brow of its two summits was the city. It never lost its hold on Samuel, who in later life made it his fixed abode.

It is on the mother of Samuel that our chief attention is fixed in the account of his birth. She is described as a woman of a high religious mission. Almost a Nazarite by practice, and a prophetess in her gifts, she sought from God the gift of a child for which she longed with the passionate devotion of silent prayer, of which there is no other example in the Old Testament, and

when the son was granted, the name which he bore, and thus first .ntroduced into the world, expressed her sense of the urgency of her entreaty-Samuel, "the asked or heard of God."

Living in the great age of vows, she had before his birth dedicated him to the office of a Nazarite. As soon as he was weaned, she herself with her husband brought him to the tabernacle of Shiloh, where she had received the first intimation of his birth, and there solemnly consecrated him. From this time the child is shut up in the tabernacle. The priests furnished him with a sacred garment—an ephod-made, like their own, of white linen, though of inferior quality, and his mother every year, apparently at the only time of their meeting, gave him a little mantle reaching down to his feet, such as was worn only by high personages or women over the other dress, and such as he retained as his badge till the latest times of his life. He seems to have slept within the holiest place, and his special duty was to put out the sacred candlestick and to open the doors at sunrise.

In this way his childhood was passed. It was whilst thus sleeping in the tabernacle that he received his first prophetic call. The stillness of the night, the sudden voice, the childlike misconception, the venerable Eli, the contrast between the terrible doom and the gentle creature who was to announce it, give to this portion of the narrative a universal interest. It is this side of Samuel's career that has been so well caught in the well-known picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

From this moment the prophetic character of Samuel was established. His words were treasured up, and Shiloh became the resort of those who came to hear him. 1 Sam. iii. 19-21. In the overthrow of the sanctuary, which followed shortly on this vision, we hear not what became of Samuel. He next appears, probably twenty years afterward, suddenly amongst the people, warning them against their idolatrous practices. He convened an assembly at Mizpeh, and there, with a symbolical rite, expressive partly of deep humiliation, partly of the libations of a treaty, they poured

water on the ground, they fasted, and they entreated Samuel to raise the piercing cry for which he was known in supplication to God for them. It was at the moment he was offering up a sacrifice and sustaining this loud cry that the Philistines' host suddenly burst upon them. A violent thunderstorm, and (according to Josephus) an earthquake, came to the timely assistance of Israel. The Philistines fled, and exactly at the spot where, twenty years before, they had obtained their great victory, they were totally routed. A stone was set up, which long remained as a memorial of Samuel's triumph, and gave to the place its name of Eben-ezer ("the stone of help"), which has thence passed into Christian phraseology. The old Canaanites, whom the Philistines had dispossessed in the outskirts of the Judæan hills, seemed to have helped in the battle, and a large portion of territory was recovered. This was Samuel's first, and, as far we know, his only, military achievement. But as in the case of the earlier chiefs who bore that name, it was apparently this which raised him to the office of "judge." He visited, in discharge of his duties as ruler, the three chief sanctuaries on the west of Jordan -Bethel, Gilgal and Mizpeh. 1 Sam. vii. 16. His own residence was still his native city Ramah, which he further consecrated by an altar. Here he married, and two sons grew up to repeat under his eyes the same perversion of high office that he had himself witnessed in his childhood, in the case of the two sons of Eli. One was Abiah, the other Joel. In his old age, according to the quasi-hereditary principle already adopted by previous judges, he shared his power with them, and they exercised their functions at the southern frontier in Beersheba.

Down to this point in Samuel's life, there is but little to distinguish his career from that of his predecessors. Like many characters in later days, had he died in youth, his fame would hardly have been greater than that of Gideon or Samson. He was a judge, a Nazarite, a warrior, and, to a certain point, a prophet.

But his peculiar position in the sacred narrative turns on the events which follow. He was the inaugurator of the transition from what is commonly called the theocracy to the monarchy. The misdemeanor of his own sons, in receiving bribes and in extorting exorbitant interest on loans (1 Sam. viii. 3, 4), precipitated the catastrophe which had been long preparing. The people demanded a king. Josephus describes the shock to Samuel's mind, "because of his inborn sense of justice, because of his hatred of kings, as so far inferior to the aristocratic form of government, which conferred a godlike character on those who lived under it." For the whole night he lay fasting and sleepless, in the perplexity of doubt and difficulty. In the vision of that night, as recorded by the sacred historian, is given the dark side of the new institution, on which Samuel dwells on the following day. 1 Sam. viii. 9-18. This presents his reluctance to receive the new order of things. The whole narrative of the reception and consecration of Saul gives his acquiescence in it.

The final conflict of feeling and surrender of his office is given in the last assembly over which he presided, and in his subsequent relations with Saul. The assembly was held at Gilgal, immediately after the victory over the Ammonites. The monarchy was a second time solemnly inaugurated. "All the men of Israel rejoiced greatly." Then takes place Samuel's farewell address. By this time the long flowing locks on which no razor had ever passed were white with age. 1 Sam. xii. 2. He appeals to their knowledge of his integrity. Whatever might have been the lawless habits of Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas, or of his own sons he had kept aloof from all. No ox or ass had he taken from their stalls-no bribe to obtain his judgment-not even a sandal. It is this appeal and the response of the people that has made Grotius call him the Jewish Aristides. He then sums up the new situation in which they have placed themselves; and although "the wickedness of asking a king" is still strongly insisted on, and the unusual portent of a thunder-storm in May or

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