Digging Deeper for such a time as this: ***Part 1 of 2 *** SAMUEL IN FAVOUR WITH GOD And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour both with the Lord, and also with men.—1 Sam. 2:26. 1. THE period of Samuel was a critical period in the nation’s life because it was a time of transition. In religion and in politics it was a period marked by change. The age of the judges was drawing to an end; the demand for a king was making itself heard. Such times of transition, when old things are passing away and the new era is not yet fully come, are difficult and perilous times in the life of a nation; they carry with them something of the mystery and of the painfulness that belong to all processes of birth; and, for any leading personality who endeavours to sum up and to guide their uncertain tendencies, they involve misunderstanding or neglect. Samuel, in whose day the theocracy at which he had been aiming in his organization of the national forces was merged in monarchy, has been called the first martyr of the order of prophets. He stood between the past and the future, the living and the dead. Brought up in reverence for the days of old, he attempted to be the mediator, in a changeful epoch, between the old and the new; and thus he found himself among those of whom it has been said that they are attacked from both sides—charged with not going far enough and with going too far, with saying too much and with saying too little; who cannot be comprehended at a glance like Moses or Elijah or Isaiah and therefore are thrust aside, and yet who are “the silent healers who bind up the wounds of their age in spite of itself”; “the reconcilers who turn the hearts of the children to the fathers and of the fathers to the children.” The real power of such men lies in the fact that, while they are driven more or less to take active part in the political developments of their country, they are or may be—as Samuel was—men of deep religious feeling, seeing Him who is invisible and trying to shape their politics, amid the hard, intractable affairs of this world, in accordance with the Divine will. ¶ The darkest part of the night is just before the dawn. When the enemy comes in like a flood the Lord lifts up a standard against him. God never leaves Himself without a witness. Somewhere, in the most godless times, can be found those who love and serve God. Elijah may fancy that he alone is left to stand for the truth among a nation of idolaters, but God shows him that he has yet seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal. And God makes this very Elijah the beginning of a second line of prophets, that holds on through Elisha and Ezekiel even to Malachi and John the Baptist. At the very time that the army of the king of Syria is stricken with blindness, supernatural vision is granted to Elisha’s servant, and the young man’s eyes are opened; he sees, and, behold! the mountain is full of horses and chariots of fire round about his master. So, in every dark day in the history of His people, God wakens some chosen servant of His to see what the common crowd are blind to. 2. The affairs of Israel were allowed to drift into a lamentable condition under the good and well-meaning but weak Eli. The disuniting process of centuries seemed then to have done its worst. The tribes had been falling more and more apart; and now at length, instead of forming one nation, they were more like a group of petty states, each taken up with its own individual interests, and little concerned to maintain oneness with the rest. In Israel, by Eli’s time, the idea of nationality had been largely lost sight of. It was not counted worth caring for, much less fighting for; and the policy of selfishness and drift was everywhere in favour. This state of things, deplorable enough in the case of any country, was peculiarly melancholy in the case of God’s favoured people, who, in addition to the ordinary ties of brotherhood, ought to have been welded together by their common loyalty to Jehovah, who offered Himself as His people’s portion, and was pleased to regard them as His own inheritance. The one outward bond that subsisted longest between the tribes was the religious ceremonial observed at Shiloh. Even that, no doubt, had sunk into a piece of ritual, and in too many cases a piece of mere routine. Still, it was a bond, however slight and feeble, between the tribes, as they assembled together at stated seasons at Shiloh, professedly to worship the one Jehovah. But Shiloh itself, alas! instead of being a healthy religious centre, a throbbing heart of national piety, a “Place of Rest,” as its name means, became in course of time a centre of corruption. And then came the catastrophe for which Israel was fully ripe. An unprovoked war, waged in a heathenish spirit, could have but one appropriate result; and when poor old Eli,—the object at once of pity and of blame,—crushed under the accumulation of disaster, fell back dead in the day of woe, and passed from the midst of a nation and a time with whose necessities he had been far too feeble to cope, it was at least evident that Israelitish affairs had sunk to their very lowest. At any rate there was now the grim comfort for any patriot that things could not become worse than they were, and might possibly improve. The symbol of God’s presence was gone. Shiloh, its home for three centuries, was but a shadow of what it had been; for neither Jehovah nor His ark was there, and its oracles were dumb. ¶ The passage from a Theocracy to a Monarchy was so dangerous that it would have been no great surprise if the ship of the State had gone to pieces. That it made its journey successfully was due entirely to Samuel’s skilful steering. And the skilful steering was due to Samuel’s character rather than his worldly wisdom, to his knowledge of God rather than his knowledge of men. “Because,” writes Dean Stanley, “in him the various parts of his life hung together without any abrupt transition; because in him the child was father of the man, and his days had been bound each to each by natural piety; therefore he was especially ordained to bind together the broken links of two diverging epochs; therefore he could impart to others, and to the age in which he lived, the continuity which he had experienced in his own life; therefore he could gather round him the better spirits of his time by that discernment of a pure heart which sees through heaven and hell.” He knew how events were trending, what their inevitable issue must be; and if he made a mistake in the selection of the first king, it was not one that he could have avoided. I SAMUEL’S BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD And she called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord.—1 Sam. 1:20. But Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child.—1 Sam. 2:18. And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak; for thy servant heareth.—1 Sam. 3:10. 1. The child Samuel was asked of the Lord.—In olden times children got names from some circumstance attending their birth, or some hope regarding their future lives. The Bible gives us many examples of this. Thus Moses and John and Jesus and Samuel are all names with a meaning, and intended to instruct. Hannah had a reason, too, for the name she gave her child. She said, “I have asked him of the Lord,” and called him Samuel. Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, an Ephrathite, and for a long time she was without children; and to be without children was counted a reproach among the Israelites. This reproach Hannah had to bear. “Her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret,” because she had no child. In her trouble she sought the Lord. She sought Him with earnest supplication. It is a prayer full of confidence in God. She addresses Him as the “Lord of Hosts” (Jehovah-Sabaoth)—the first time this afterwards familiar name is found on the page of Scripture. She calls on Him, that is to say, as the Lord who rules in heaven and earth; who leads out the hosts of heaven, the stars, by number; who sends the hosts who dwell in heaven, the angels, upon His errands; who, as the Lord of Sabaoth among men too, can do His will, as in heaven, so also among the inhabitants of earth. If such a God as this will but speak the word, Hannah knows that all things are possible with Him. She has every confidence that He can grant her the desire of her heart. It is a prayer, further, that is full of fervour and yet of submission. “Look,” she urges, “look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid.” In this intense reiteration the supplicant is pouring out her very soul before God, if haply He may condescend to regard her plaint and to remember her petition. But, while fervent, the prayer is no less submissive in its tone. “If thou wilt,” Hannah begins; and, as her supplication proceeds, it breathes, even in its importunity, the spirit of one who desires to submit her own will and judgment to the wisdom and goodness of her God. And it is, the while, an expectant prayer. She feels that she has come with her trouble to the right quarter. Her Maker and God, to whom she has now unburdened her heart so completely, will not turn away her prayer from Him unheeded, or withhold His mercy from her. In some wise, beneficent way, she is sure the Lord will deal with her petition. She expects, she knows that. She can leave it all with Him. Through the confidence of her faith her bitterness of heart is soothed away, and when she rises from her knees “her countenance is no more sad.” Hannah realized, even before Eli spoke, 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 shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” 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. 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, when the time had come about, she bare a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, “Because I have asked him of the Lord.” ¶ If ever there was a child of many prayers, Samuel was he. His life was an answer to the fervent supplication of his mother, by whom he was dedicated before his birth to the holy service of Jehovah. For weal or for woe a mother’s influence is infinitely great. We are not surprised to learn that Byron’s mother was proud, ill-tempered, and violent; or that Nero’s was a murderess. On the other hand, we need not be astonished that Sir Walter Scott’s was a lover of poetry; or those of Wesley, Augustine, Chrysostom, Basil, and others, remarkable for their intelligence and goodness. Like mother, like child. This is what led the good Lord Shaftesbury to exclaim, “Give me a generation of Christian mothers, and I will undertake to change the face of society in twelve months.” When barren Hannah, prostrate on the floor, In heat of zeal and passion did implore Redress from Heaven, censorious Eli thought She had been drunk, and check’d her for her fault;— Rough was his censure, and his check austere;— Where mildness should be used we’re oft severe. But when his lustful sons, that could abuse The House of God, and ill God’s offerings use, Appeared before him, his indulgent tongue Compounded rather than rebuked the wrong. He dare not shoot for fear he wound his child;— Where we should be severe, we’re oft too mild. 2. Hannah lent Samuel to the Lord.—Living in the great age of vows, Hannah had before Samuel’s birth dedicated him to the office of a Nazirite. As soon as he was weaned, she herself with her husband brought him to the tabernacle at Shiloh, where she had received the first intimation of his birth, and there solemnly consecrated him. Then his mother made him over to Eli. From that time the child was 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 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 this 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. (1) It was whilst thus sleeping in the tabernacle that Samuel received his first prophetic call. When about to bring in great changes and to substitute the new priesthood in place of the old, not to Eli, the aged priest, nor to any who might be great before men in station and authority, did God reveal His judgments; He communicated the heavy tidings to the child in the temple. The occasion may have part in our Lord’s great thanksgiving, when He rejoiced in spirit and said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” And how full of interest is the whole narrative: Samuel, the thrice called of God, the thrice chosen, thrice loved—as if, as in the case of St. Peter afterwards, that repeated invocation of his name were a token of great things that were to be done by him hereafter. And with what ready childlike obedience was the call heard! It was indeed receiving the Kingdom of God as a little child. And we may notice the modesty of nature which there is about the child of prayer, he is as a child throughout in bearing this vision of God; he rises from sleep, he hastens to his priest and guide; and after all he lies down again in peace and quiet. There is nothing constrained, nothing unsuitable; for Divine love “vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly”; nor, again, does it willingly divulge what it receives from God. Such is the natural simplicity of the child of prayer. ¶ Why did God speak to a Samuel and not to an Eli? Why was there no man of maturer years to come from the outer world and speak to the priest at the temple and tell him of the judgment on his house? Why, because God seeks the susceptible heart and the open door. It is according as we live that God comes; it is as we spend our days and our hours in the holy place, and our hearts are waiting and open, that we hear the voice of God, and are conscious of the Holy One. As Samuel was prepared, so Samuel heard the voice; and as you and I live as it were in the presence of God, does God come to speak to us. “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.” (2) “And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him (literally, “had been 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.” It is evident that other Divine communications followed upon the first, and that already in early youth Samuel had become a national influence: “And the Lord appeared again in Shiloh: for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord” (1 Sam. 3:21). This expression, “revealed himself,” is a very striking one. It means literally, “uncovered the ear,” as one in the East might brush back the flowing hair of an intimate friend and pour into his ear confidences meant for none beside. Already Hannah was reaping abundant interest for her precious loan. For the pain of the early severance she had now double in her own soul. She had no hard dealer to transact with in Jehovah. She had given to Him only what was all the while His own; and yet how rich was the recompense He brought to the Israelitish mother’s heart. “Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him.” We cannot fail to be struck with the contrast between the bright, progressive, gracious development of Samuel and the fast downward course of Eli’s sons, who, madly grasping at base present gratification, lent none of their powers to God, but, forfeiting all the happiness of the future in time and eternity for the sake of short-lived sensual pleasure, went down quickly to dishonoured graves. Samuel’s was a good motto, surely, for youth or age, “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” And for any young life this is an enviable record—“And he grew”—in knowledge, in power, in wisdom, in favour, in influence—“he grew, and the Lord was with him.” Speak to me, Christ, amid earth’s sin and riot, That I may hear Thy Love’s sweet pleading near, Bringing my spirit quiet. Low by the dripping levels of my life, Here dwelleth Sin, Barring my heart lest Love should enter in, And setting all my dreams about with strife. Speak to me out of Thy Love’s quiet stretching spaces, That, though afar, I follow may the promise of Thy star, And see again the old, loved, faded faces. And if, amid the songs of Cherubim Where all saints be, The Father hear the pleading needs of me, And, stooping, see mine eyes all sorrow dim, And lead me where my feet, sin shaken free, May safely stand In Love’s own fatherland, Seeing and loving, ’twere enough for me! II THE PROPHET OF THE LORD And all Israel from Dan even to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord.—1 Sam. 3:20. And Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer.—1 Sam. 9:19. The distinguishing title for Samuel most commonly on our lips is, “Samuel the Prophet.” He may be fairly regarded, indeed, as, in one important respect, “the first of the prophets.” There were, no doubt, prophets before his time. Moses, great on almost every side, was a prophet mighty in words and in deeds, in some respects a unique type of the Greater One like unto him, who was to come. And to various men of God, and women too—such as Deborah—particular messages had been entrusted at different times by Jehovah. But Samuel, to Israel as a second Moses, was the first of that long, unbroken line of heaven-sent teachers, men of Divinely inspired insight and foresight, who from his time to the time of Malachi had so important a part to play alongside of the kingship—to guide, to restrain, and sometimes to oppose the throne, and to touch at many points the national life—rousing the listless from their apathy, denouncing the profane, ministering comfort to the depressed, awakening hope, and especially Messianic hope, among the faithful in Israel. 1. As we have seen, Samuel’s youth was a time of preparation for his after-life. When he was yet a child, Samuel was made a seer before he knew. He saw enough of God and man that terrible night to make him an old man and a seer before the morning. As he lay awake till the morning he saw what was the wages of all that wickedness that had so horrified him to see and to hear in Eli’s sons. He saw, while yet a child, that the wages of such sin is death. And he saw what would be the end of all that to Eli also, his father in the Lord. It was indeed no wonder that he hesitated to tell Eli what he had seen and heard that terrible night. And all that must have worked powerfully together to make young Samuel the pure, prayerful, holy child before God and man that he early was and continued to be. His purity of heart and his love for holy things prepared Samuel early to be a seer; and the sights he saw both in heaven and in earth, both in God and in man, only perfected all his days what had been so early and so well begun. ¶ What is a Seer? One who Sees, whose eye pierces beyond this life into the infinite and even attempts to penetrate the very purposes of God. That to the height of his great argument He may assert Eternal Providence And justify the ways of God to man. He is the eagle who can face the sun, unblinded. He is above and beyond philosophy through excess of insight, not of mere ecstasy. He has been “caught up into the third heaven, where he has heard things unspeakable,” but he has come back to earth with the glow of the third heaven about him and can lift us towards it, though not to it. Wordsworth well describes the Seer when he writes of that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on, Until the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. 2. There are two types of experience among God’s greatest servants. St. Paul, made an Apostle from a persecutor, heads the one class. Timothy in the New Testament and Samuel in the Old represent the other. An Augustine or a Bunyan is made the more earnest, humble, and whole-hearted by the remembrance of a wasted youth and of God’s arresting mercy. But there is a serenity and a continuity about a life which has grown up in the fear of God that have their own charm and blessing. It is well to have “much transgression” forgiven, but it may be better to have always been “innocent” and ignorant of it. Pardon cleanses sin, and even turns the memory of it into an ally of holiness; but traces are left on character, and, at the best, years have been squandered which do not return. Samuel is the pattern of child religion and service, to which teachers should aim that their children may be conformed. ¶ As regards what is of consequence in the personal life, Dean Stanley, in a passage of profound insight and rare beauty, has availed himself of the example of Samuel to contrast the religion created by convulsion with the religion developed by growth. Of this last, Samuel is the standing type. There is many an abrupt transition from a life of self-indulgence to a life of self-consecration, in which a great chasm breaks in between the years before and after the sudden conversion. Well for those who, in looking back on wasted years, can see such a chasm in the ever-memorable crisis of repentance separating the sinful past from the regenerated life. But better for those who can look back, like Samuel, on an unbroken growth from childhood up in the way of God, in a life which carries no consciousness of stains and weakness and doubts inherited from years misguided and misspent. 3. It is remarkable that in so active and varied a life as that of Samuel we find only two well-defined points, and these separated by the long interval between the child and the old man. The history is quite minute in its detail, both of the young child’s introduction into the service of Jehovah and of the old man’s agency in the inauguration of the monarchy. The period between has the briefest record: “Samuel judged Israel forty years.” The reason of this silence is doubtless in the character of the time—a time of calamity under ferocious oppression, a time of fighting rather than writing. We next come upon Samuel at a time of almost unbounded importance in the history of Israel, and here again we find in him the “prophet of the Lord.” (1) Samuel is called emphatically “The Prophet.” To a certain extent this was in consequence of the gift which he shared in common with others of his time. He was specially known in his own age as “Samuel the Seer.” “I am the seer,” was his answer to Saul when he said, “Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer’s house is?” “Seer,” the ancient name, was not yet superseded by “prophet.” “The Lord uncovered his ear” to whisper into it in the stillness of the night the messages that were to be delivered. It is the first distinct intimation of the idea of “revelation” to a human being. Samuel was consulted far and near on the small affairs of life; loaves of bread, or the fourth part of a shekel of silver, were paid for the answers. From this faculty, combined with his office of ruler, an awful reverence grew up round him. No sacrificial feast was thought complete without his blessing. When he appeared suddenly elsewhere for the same purpose, the villagers “trembled” at his approach. A peculiar virtue was believed to reside in his intercession. He was conspicuous in later times among those that “call upon the name of the Lord,” and was placed with Moses as standing for prayer, in a special sense, before the Lord (Jer. 15:1). (2) But there is another point which more especially placed him at the head of the prophetic order as it afterwards appeared. This is brought out in his relation to Saul. He represents the independence of the Moral Law, of the Divine will as distinct from regal or sacerdotal enactments, which is so remarkable a characteristic of all the later prophets. He certainly was not a priest; and all attempts to identify his opposition to Saul with a hierarchical interest are founded on a complete misconception of the facts of the case. From the time of the overthrow of Shiloh, he never appears in the remotest connexion with the priestly order. Among all the places included in his personal or administrative visits, neither Shiloh, nor Nob, nor Gibeon, the seats of the sacerdotal caste, is ever mentioned. When he counsels Saul, it is not as the priest but as the prophet; when he sacrifices or blesses the sacrifices, it is not as the priest but either as an individual Israelite of eminence, or as a ruler, like Saul himself. Saul’s sin, in both instances when he came into collision with Samuel, was not of intruding into sacerdotal functions, but of disobedience to the prophetic voice. The first was that of not waiting for Samuel’s arrival, according to the sign given by Samuel at his original meeting at Ramah; the second was that of not carrying out the stern prophetical injunction for the destruction of the Amalekites. When, on that occasion, the aged prophet called the captive prince before him, and with his own hands hacked him limb from limb, in retribution for the desolation he had brought into the homes of Israel, and thus offered up his mangled remains almost as a human sacrifice, we see the representative of the older part of the Jewish history. But it is the true prophetic utterance, such as breathes through the psalmists and prophets, when he says to Saul in words which, from their poetical form, must have become fixed in the national memory, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” (3) The next point is that he is the first of a regular succession of prophets. Samuel planned and set up an institution, so to call it, that has made far more mark on the world than anything else that survives to us out of Israel or Greece or Rome. In his ripe and far-seeing years Samuel devised and founded and presided over a great prophetical school. That school of the prophets, to which we owe so much of Samuel himself, to which we owe David and Gad and Nathan and all their still greater successors—that great school was the creation and the care of Samuel’s leisure from office. True, Divine prophecy does not come by the will of man in prophetical schools, or anywhere else. School or no school, holy men of God will always speak as they are moved by the Holy Ghost. No man knew that better than Samuel; but at the same time, no man ever struck out a more fruitful line of action in the things of God than Samuel when he laid the foundation of the sacred school of Ramah. Israel had already a Divine deposit of religion and worship and morality and civilization, all of which they had but to accept and assimilate in order to be the strongest, the safest, and the happiest nation on the face of the earth. But the Divine law was too high and too good for the Israelites. Their hearts were hard, and they were not upright in God’s covenant. And the new monarchy was already threatening to become a very stronghold of that hard, worldly, rebellious spirit. Saul, in spite of all that Samuel could do, was soon to become a complete shipwreck. But the throne was destined to stand long after Saul was cast out of it; and Samuel is determined to do his very best to secure that Saul’s successors shall have around them and over their people a class of men who, if not indeed prophets, yet shall watch over the religion and the morals of the people, in the prophetical spirit and in the prophetical name. And thus it came about that at Naioth in Ramah the first school of the prophets was set up. III A LIFE OF INTERCESSION Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you.—1 Sam. 12:23. Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that call upon his name.—Ps. 99:6. 1. That Samuel could pray for Israel is a sign that he was himself accepted of the Lord. It is a very great privilege to be permitted to pray for our fellow-men. Prayer in each man’s case must necessarily begin with personal petitions, for until the man is himself accepted of God he cannot act as an intercessor for others; and herein lies part of the excellence of intercessory prayer, for it is to the man who exercises it aright a mark of inward grace, and a token for good from the Lord. When the heart is enlarged in believing supplication for others, all doubts about personal acceptance with God may cease; He who prompts us to love has certainly given us that love, and what better proof of His favour do we desire? It is a great advance upon anxiety for our own salvation when we have risen out of the narrowness of dread about ourselves into the broader region of care for a brother’s soul. He who, in answer to his intercession, has seen others blessed and saved may take it as a pledge of Divine love, and rejoice in the condescending grace of God. Such prayer rises higher than any petition for ourselves, for only he who is in favour with the Lord can venture upon pleading for others. If we read Samuel’s life we see how truly this was the case with him. He was accepted of the Lord to make intercession for others. He was born of prayer. A woman of a sorrowful spirit received him from God, and joyfully exclaimed, “For this child I prayed.” He was named in prayer, for, as already observed, his name Samuel signifies “asked of God.” Well did he carry out his name and prove its prophetic accuracy, for, having commenced life by being himself asked of God, he continued asking of God, and all his knowledge, wisdom, justice, and power to rule were things which came to him because “asked of God.” He was nurtured by a woman of prayer at the first, and when he left her it was to dwell in the house of prayer all the days of his life. He was born, named, nurtured, housed, and trained in prayer, and he never departed from the way of supplication. 2. Samuel was called upon to undertake the most difficult of all tasks—a task not indeed so great as, but in a real sense almost more difficult than, that of Moses. For, while Moses had created the nation and its faith, Samuel had to recreate them. He had to restore and rebuild out of ruins. It was a task of extraordinary difficulty. To initiate a national and religious life requires the highest original genius, and such had Moses; but to restore them after they have proved unequal to the hopes under the inspiration of which they were initiated requires, if not absolute originality of genius, certainly a faith and a courage and a patience that are hardly anything less. This was what Samuel set himself to do, and did. And what was the beginning of it? The beginning of it was just that simple personal religion which Samuel had learned as a child, and which, as has already been said, he never lost. Samuel as a child had learned to pray, and now, in the great crisis of his own and his nation’s fortunes, he “cried unto the Lord for Israel.” These prayers were one thing which the sword of the triumphing Philistine could not destroy. They were the sacrifice of incense unto God, which remained even though the altar of the tabernacle was in profane hands. All around was heard the voice of lamentation, as women bewailed the loss of the slain; or of reproach and recrimination, as men blamed one another for their calamities; but here was a voice lifted up, not in futile complaining or bitterness, but in humble repentance and reconsecration, and lifted up, not to despairing man but to God, whose grace was not yet exhausted. When the day of restoration came, few, if any, of the people realized how much it owed to these prayers of Samuel. ¶ When Ethelred, the Saxon king of Northumberland, invaded Wales, and was about to give battle to the Britons, he noticed, near the enemy, a host of unarmed men. He inquired who they were, and what they were doing. He was told that they were the monks of Bangor, praying for the success of their countrymen. “Then,” said the Saxon king, “they have begun the fight against us. Attack them first.” 3. From his tender regard for his people, as a father for his children, arises the next affliction of Samuel, on the signs of their unbelief in God in asking for a king; and here again is immediately specified the same never-failing remedy for his sorrow. “But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.” And what does he then do with their murmurings and obstinate opposition? Did he tell it to his friends, or refer to counsellors for advice? No. “And Samuel,” it is said, “heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord.” And after he has given them a king, the account of Samuel’s dealings with them is very beautiful: he seems by prayer, like Elijah afterwards, to hold as it were the elements—the thunder and the rain—in his hands, and this power he uses not to afflict or punish them, but to warn; indeed his unfailing sympathy and great gentleness, and their confidence in his prayers, form the interesting and very soothing part of the history of those days and that hard people. So much is this the case that he comes out strongly, as representing our Blessed Saviour Himself, standing as mediator between God and man with such a tender feeling for their infirmities. He expostulates—warns, yet at the same time comforts and encourages them—and they look to him. “And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God.” “And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not: but serve the Lord with all your heart. For the Lord will not forsake his people.” And then follow these striking words: “Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you.” Here he shows that he considered these continual intercessions for them so much a part of his own duty that to omit them would be a sin in him; that not only love to them, but duty to God was in his prayers. ¶ It is said that it is impossible for every one to find out what he or she is to do. It is, of course, impossible to know the whole plan. Hannah could not have guessed that Samuel was to be a judge, a founder of the School of Prophets, the greatest statesman that had been since Moses. All she could see was that he was placed where he could learn the will of God; and this she did. Samuel could not tell what office he would fill, what God would tell him to do, but he could make his life as a temple server complete as possible, and so make himself ready for the next thing. And faithfulness in little things marks out a man for great things. Consecration is neither easy nor simple. It implies continuous selection; and selection always implies trouble. But it is in the process of selection that the personality grows and is determined. It is in every choice that it takes a fuller shape. As it goes along the path determined of God, it grows into the likeness of His Son; not indeed, that full Image which reflects all the sons of men, but that particular likeness after which it was created. And whether men accomplish much or little, they accomplish that which God intended them to accomplish. So through this determined set of character, this resolute habit of doing from hour to hour that which the Lord wills, Samuel became one of the great personal forces of the world, and especially of his own nation. As Dean Stanley beautifully says: “His long, protracted life was like the shadow of the great rock of an older epoch projected into the level of a modern age. ‘He judged Israel all his life’: even after the monarchy had sprung up, he was still a witness of an earlier and more primitive state. Whatever murmurs or complaints had arisen were always hushed for the moment before his presence. They leaned upon him; they looked back to him even from after ages, as their fathers had leaned upon Moses. And, when the hour of his death came, we are told with a peculiar emphasis of expression that all the Israelites—not one portion or fragment only, as might have been expected in that time of division and confusion—were gathered together, round him who had been the father of all alike, and lamented him, and buried him not in any sacred spot or secluded sepulchre, but in the midst of the home which he had consecrated only by his own long, unblemished career, ‘in his house at Ramah.’ ” Hastings, J. (Ed.). (1914).The greater men and women of the Bible: Ruth–Naaman. Edinburgh: T&T Clark. - via Logos 5
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:53:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015