The prophetic word of Samuel is thus fulfilled:

For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth, because his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not.-iii. 13.

It is noteworthy in passing that the two sons of Samuel were as bad in their way as Eli's sons. Samuel, though of a more rigorous nature than the amiable Eli, did not, perhaps could not, any more successfully than Eli, use his power as judge to restrain or punish their excesses, and it was in despair at the situation that the people began to entertain the project of a monarchy. We hear no more of them. Samuel's family like Eli's doubtless declined, in the common way of tainted families. The record of the doom pronounced on Eli's house has been preserved on account of its connection with an event of some historical importance in Israel, the transference of the high-priesthood from the house of Ithamar to that Eleazar. It is the "house" more than any individual member of it, that lies under the doom. The cause assigned is the combined weakness of Eli and excesses of his sons. An exact knowledge of the several personal characters of their descendants might perhaps show inherited defects of character contributing to the fulfillment of the doom which pursued the house. Most important is it, however, to insist upon the distinction which the record expressly makes between the doom, and "the sign" of it, in the coincident deaths of Eli's sons. We are bound to censure the blind judgment which finds gross wickedness punished as it deserves by an honorable, and, as things stood, a fortunate death. We must protest against an illustration of the justice. of God in distributing the wages of sin by a case in which the chief sinners got off with the least of suffering and the most of glory. Even the child, so far as thoughtful, must find a mystery in the two wicked priests faring no worse than many thousands of their countrymen.

For this preposterous blunder of mistaking the villains' honorable escape for the villains' punishment, how true a lesson, how close to the temptations of daily life, might have been substituted, if there had been discernment enough to see, as "the central truth" of this narrative, the Divine judgment upon

formalism. The ark, powerless to save its superstitious devotees, conveys a warning to all in every age who rely for salvation on forms rather than spirit; who trust in sacraments, in church-membership, in creed-profession, in their saying “Lord, Lord," in any thing short of faithfully doing the Lord's commandments.

We will not fail to do the "Lesson Helps" the justice to admit that some of them find this lesson among the teachings of the history, and plainly improve it by saying, "all external ordinances are powerless to save; they are valuable only as means to an end." But this is said in the fourth place, firstly, secondly, and thirdly, are devoted to the remarkable misimprovements we have criticized. It is with a tardy and comparatively feeble voice that intelligence at last emerges from the confusion into which tradition has gotten thought by cataloguing these specimens of sinners unpunished in the list of sinners punished.

A second instance of this fallacious deference to the labels which uncritical tradition has affixed to biblical events is afforded by the utter misinstruction given upon the narrative of the institution of the kingdom (ch. viii.).

A historical survey gives us the following data for a correct estimate of this as a good thing rather than a bad.

1. The antecedents:

a. Israel's victories in Samuel's best days.

So the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more into the coast of Israel; and the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. And the cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron even unto Gath; and the coasts thereof did Israel deliver out of the hands of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.--Ch. vii. 13, 14.

b. Decadence of Samuel's vigor.

And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, he made his sons judges over Israel. Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together and came to Samuel unto Ramah, and 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.-Ch. viii. 1, 4, 5.

2. Signs of an imminent crisis.

a. Intimation of new distresses demanding a new deliverer

Now the Lord had told Samuel in his ear a day before Saul came, saying, To-morrow about this time I will send thee a man out of the land of Benjamin, and thou shalt anoint him to be captain over my people Israel, that he may save my people out of the hand of the Philistines; for I have looked upon my people, because their cry is come unto me.-Ch. ix. 15, 16.

b. An Ammonite invasion within a month (so the LXX.) after Saul is anointed by Samuel.-Ch. xi. 1.

c. The record of extreme prostration after two years of Saul's reign.

Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel; for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears: But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his ax, and his mattock. So it came to pass in the day of battle, that there was neither sword or spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan: but with Saul and with Jonathan his son was there found.-Ch. xiii. 19, 20, 22.

3. The obvious need, otherwise and generally, as apparent in the history of other nations-the England of the Heptarchy, for instance of consolidation and centralization, in order to national development. Compare the Israel of the disunited and jealous tribes under the Judges with the Israel of the Davidic and Solomonic reigns. The development of the religious as well as the political life of Israel needed the strong frame-work of the monarchy as a lantern glass for the light of the spirit of prophecy.

4. The effects of the introduction of the monarchy, especially as apparent in the golden age of Israel, in the reigns of David and Solomon, attested it as a good thing.

5. The monarchy appears both in the earlier and the later Scriptures as an integral part of the providential design.

a. A progeny of kings was promised to Abraham and to Jacob (Gen. xvii. 6, 16; xxxv. 11).

b. The Deuteronomic law contemplates the monarchy as a step in the orderly and natural development (Deut. xvii. 14-20).

c. The prophets depicted the future glory of Israel under the figure of the Dividic kingdom (Is. ix. 7).

d. The angel of the Annunciation foretells the glory of Christ as a perpetuation forever of the Davidic kingdom (Luke i. 32, 33).

In view of these facts and Scripture testimonies, the Sunday School teaching on the subject of "asking for a king," finds the "Central Truth" to be this, that "God sometimes punishes by letting men have their way." This, of course, is an instance of such punishment. "God in his anger gives them a king," says a widely circulated "Help" for teachers. Aside from the immorality of such a representation of God, as a being like that Jupiter who sent to the clamorous frogs King Stork to eat them, how does it square with the Scripture testimony above quoted, that the king was ordained in mercy to save a distressed people? But enough. It doesn't square with any of the facts.

The whole drift of the Sunday school teaching on this subject contradicts both Scripture, history, reason, and the moral sense. It represents the institution of the kingdom as a bad thing for Israel, and as ordained in punishment for an error in prayer.

But from what did so monstrous a misconception take rise? Partly from a misconstruction of the address of Samuel, in which he forewarned them of the irrevocable nature of the step they were about to take, and of the grievous burdens it would impose upon them (viii. 10-18). The free spirit of the loosely confederated tribes, unable as it was, without a more compact organization, to resist powerful invaders, would have to come under a despotic yoke, under which they would sigh for their ancient liberty. This was all the evil of which they were forewarned, simply the price of their ransom from the far greater evils of foreign and hostile domination. The address of Samuel upon this topic was only a rational fore-reckoning of costs.

Partly, also, from a misconstruction of Samuel's declaration, that the petition for a king was tantamount to a rejection of God as king (viii. 7, 21; xii. 17). But an open-eyed teacher will inquire whether this rejection of God lay in the thing sought, or in the spirit which sought it; whether it was the thing that was evil, or the spirit that was wrong. The lesson manufacturers have ground out their grist in such a hurry as to

miss an important and very obvious distinction here, which would have substituted for some gross errors a moral truth of daily practical application.

The sin of the people in the petition for a king is the sin of every one to-day who seeks any good thing, as a fortune, or an education, or a worldly position, in an irreligious spirit, simply for personal aggrandizement, and not for beneficent ends, or as a thing good in itself apart from good uses intended, and apart from the blessing of God upon it, and the use of it, and the user of it. It is the common sin of worldly-mindedness, putting faith in things, rather than in God, relying on contrivances and institutions, but not on the Providence who works in and through them. It is the common way in which men to-day reject God, as Samuel accused Israel of doing. Instead of a sound lesson like this, closely touching our present life, the Sunday school has been dosed with a decoction of crudities and untruths, biblical, historical, and moral, which has in most cases, we fear, been as blindly swallowed as blindly administered.

The third and remaining instance in which we find such faulty teaching in the recent lessons is on the subject of the deposition of king Saul (ch. xv. 15-26).

The children of the Sunday school are here brought in front of a subject as perplexing as any in the Old Testament, its massacres by ostensible Divine command. The intrinsic difficulty of the subject is here intensified by the fact, that a king, who had done nobly as a national deliverer, is treated with inexorable rigor for failing to execute one of these edicts of massacre to the very letter of an utter extermination. Still more is the problem deepened by finding, in connection with this implacable spirit, one of the purest and loftiest moral truths, the insistance on obedience as the most acceptable worship of God, which is characteristically a gospel truth. Then as if to gather all the conceivable difficulties of the subject into one Gordian knot, the destroying mission, which Saul is deposed for failing to execute, is expressly described, not as an execution of Divine wrath upon an abominable nation too corrupt to live, but as an act of retaliation for an act of justifiable war 400 years before.