some of them from this persuasion. There must have been in him a real sense of the sacredness of his function. No one could dream that he thought of what he was to gain by it, or ever used it for any base ends. Whatever reverence a man can inspire by shewing that his heart is personally engaged in his work, that it caused him inward delight, he will have inspired. But there is a limit to this kind of respect, and moreover a mischief in it. Eli was a pious or devout man; he was evidently a kind-hearted, amiable man; but he was not, strictly speaking, a righteous man. He did not care that God's order should be established, that wrong-doers should be punished. So long as he could keep his internal quietness, all was well. He wished his sons to be better, no doubt; he told them so. To preserve the commonwealth from pollution, to make the Tabernacle a fit place, not for his devotions, but for God to dwell in, this did not come within the range of his religion. This good man exhibited in himself one side of that atheism which was coming forth in heartlessness among the people, in depravity among his own children. He honoured God as an individual man, not as a father, as a member of a nation, as a high priest. Whatever honour therefore he attracted to himself, did not go beyond himself. He was the specimen of a departing age; he was sincere, no doubt; but his sincerity would die with him. His sons seemed to be the regular natural specimens of the priestly character. 'That was what the mysterious consecration, and

the holy oil, and the vestments for glory and beauty, and the Urim and Thummim, and the words upon the forehead, were coming to at last!'

All this the Scripture does not make the slightest attempt to conceal or to palliate. The case is stated broadly. Eli is condemned as well as his sons. And what then has become of that order of which we have heard so much? Is it nothing? Has it proved itself to be the empty thing which the nations round about always thought it was; which the people of the covenant are beginning to think that it is? The order is just where it always was, not shattered or shaken in the smallest degree; confirmed and established by the unbelief of the people, the crimes of Hophni and Phinehas, the imbecility of their father. If it was not of God, it was false from the first; if it was of God, He I would prove it to be His, and prove that He was not dependent upon the order, but the order upon Him. This is the great and blessed truth which the story brings out before us. It is not, as some would say, that a dignus vindice nodus had occurred, and that then God interrupted the ordinary course of His Providence to set things right. Man, not He, is the interrupter. He breaks the course of his obedience; he will not believe that God is with him of a truth. Then God shews him that He is. He does not allow him to remain in his delusion, to shut his eyes and fancy that he is un

seen.

I. There are two methods in which we are told this revelation or discovery of the reality of things

was made to the people of Israel at this time. Both are methods in the strict sense of the word; not sudden miracles, but a series of acts producing an impression by their conformity with a law, by their continuousness and relation to each other. A child is born to a woman who had for many years been longing and praying for one. In her joy and thankfulness for the gift she devotes him to the service of the Tabernacle. He is brought up as a child under the eye of the priest. As he lies in his little chamber, near the place where the Ark of God was, before the lamp went out, a voice called him which he thought was Eli's. He learnt by slow degrees that another than Eli was calling him, and that he had words to utter which would make both the ears of the whole house of Israel to tingle. Eli perceived that there was something in the heart of the child. He forced him to declare it. Then he told him that the Lord would not cease till he had made an end of the house of Eli, and that sacrifice and offering would not purge away the evil which it had committed.

Does it seem to you that this communication to Samuel was something strange and irregular, not in conformity with the regular course of God's dealings, as I have represented it? I think a moment's reflection will shew you that you are mistaken. A Jew who believed in God's covenant, could never think it a strange event that God should hold converse with a man. The feeling that this was possible was no doubt exceedingly weak at that time; just because faith in the cove

nant was exceedingly weak. The routine of daily services and sacrifices will have seemed to the Israelites in the days of Hophni and Phinehas a mere muttering of addresses to God, or attempts to move His mind, which ordinarily they will have regarded with indifference or contempt, which in critical and extreme moments they will have hoped might be successful. The thought of God ordering the sacrifice, God communicating Himself to the creature, God uttering Himself to him and by him, will have become a faded traditional thought in their minds. Why? Simply because their minds were out of tune, ready to exchange unbelief for superstition and superstition for unbelief, incredulous of an invisible Presence, and therefore credulous of visible powers and influences, turning all things upside down, supposing that it was easier for the meaner being to ascend to the higher, than for the higher to stoop to the meaner. Now if it pleased God to correct this false and vicious state of feeling, and to shew that He does educate His creatures, that He knows what is passing in their inner minds, and can awaken those minds to perception and to action, can you think of any simpler and quieter method than that of training a child, already dedicated to a mysterious service, to feel and know that he was actually under an unseen guide, and was to be the spokesman of His purposes?

Something of what is implied in the very idea of a prophet I have hinted at in former sermons. The full development of the character and office belongs to the later books. But thus much is

clearly intimated in the passage we have read this afternoon, that he whom all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew and felt to be a prophet, was under an education and government which obliged him to feel that his words were not his own, and yet that he was in the highest degree responsible for them; that they were given him, but given him in trust; and that he must seek for continual help neither to hide that which he was to publish, nor to mingle with it notions and fancies of his own. These three characteristics meet in this simple child-prophet. He knows that God is his teacher; he knows that He is teaching others through him; he knows that he is to foretell the inevitable results of ill-doing to priests and to people.

II. This is one of the methods. I have indicated the other in the last sentence, the method of retribution. The righteous Judge of the world shews that the world cannot go on without Him; that priests who try to establish their rule as if they had one of their own and were not merely His servants, must above all men pay the penalty of their sin and unbelief. The people whom they have perverted into godlessness must taste the fruit of their godlessness. Those who have fancied there could be a routine of ordinances without the God who appointed them, and that some independent charm was in them, must be stripped of all signs and pledges of the Divine Presence, till they confessed that Divine Presence without them, and so were fit to be trusted with them again. The Philistines came against Israel. The elders of Israel