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What was the character of Samuel?

While David was a wanderer, the venerable Samuel descended to the grave. He lived to the age

of ninety-eight years, all of which he had A C. 1057. devoted to the service of God. He was one of the most holy and excellent men whose actions are recorded in the Sacred Volume. His magnanimity, his integrity, his ardent zeal, his patriotic attachment to the institutions of his country, his firm resistance to arbitrary oppression, his tenderness of affection, his unhesitating obedience to the will of God, and the blameless purity and consistency for almost a century, combine to render his character one of the loveliest, as well as the most important, described in the history of the Jews. Samuel was the commencement of that line of prophets which was never discontinued until the days of Zechariah and Malachi-a chain whose actual existence and whose mighty object has been asserted by apostolic testimony, (Acts iii. 24.) From a passage in a part of revelation composed long after his death, (1 Chron. xxvi. 28.) it appears that Samuel was one of those who enriched the tabernacle by magnificent presents-from the same authority we learn that he bore an important part in the arrangement which was made for the proper distribution of the Levites for the service of God and he too is said, at the institution of the regal form of government, to have inscribed in a book "the manner of the kingdom," that is, to have stated according to the law (for it is a remarkable fact that God, foreseeing the institution of the regal form of government, had made an explicit revelation to Moses on the subject, Deut. xvii. 14.) the rights, prerogatives, and revenues of the king, and the defined limits of his authority and power.

What transactions took place between David and Nabal?

While David was at Ziklag he demanded supplies from Nabal, a rich and prosperous man, as some compensation for the protection which he and his men had afforded to the flocks in the field from the lawless freebooters of the country. When the messengers of David were dismissed with insult, he indignantly pro

nounced the death and destruction of Nabal. The ready submission, the prudent precautions, and the seasonable liberality of Abigail, the wife of that churlish man, who met David and his troops with a peaceoffering, averted from the head of Nabal his doom. After the death of Nabal, which occurred shortly afterwards, Abigail became the wife of David, and the partaker of his misfortunes and his triumphs.

What was the interview of Saul with the witch of Endor?

When the Philistines with a mighty army again marched against Saul, most deplorable was the condition of that infatuated king. Conscious that he was forsaken by God, suspecting the fidelity of his people and the attachment of his army, when he saw the vast array of the Philistines, his heart trembled within him, he inquired of God, but there was no reply. Although the very existence of those infamous wretches who pretended, by dealing with demons, to discover approaching events, was proscribed by the law of Moses, and though a short time before, Saul himself had banished such diabolical impostors from his dominions, yet now he determined to go in disguise to Endor, where a celebrated sorceress lived, and to ascertain by her miserable incantations, what was to be the event of his struggle with the Philistines. He repaired to her abode. She was ready for his arrival; and skilled in practising upon the imaginations of the deluded persons who visited her loathsome den of abomination, she inquired of Saul what spirit he wished her to recall from the invisible world. "Samuel," was his reply. The woman was as astonished as Saul, to perceive, by the actual existence of the apparition, which she, with all her infernal ingenuity, could never have called forth, that the mysterious power of God was exerted, that an awful inhabitant of the separate state was before them both, and that such an interposition proved that the crouching and trembling person who had sought her haunt was no other than the monarch of the Israelites. A dreadful voice was heard proclaiming to Saul, that God had utterly forsaken him; and the tremendous annunciation was made, and the imagination shudders at the bare idea of the im

pression it must have made, "TO-MORROW SHALT THOU AND THY SONS BE WITH ME. Saul felt this appalling declaration to be the premonition of his approaching doom.

In the preceding narrative it is assumed, that an actual apparition was made to Saul, because the sacred narrative speaks of it as a fact. It affirms that Samuel appeared, that he spoke with an audible voice, that he foretold the death of Saul, the defeat of the Israelites, and the victory of the Philistines. It is not for a moment to be imagined that this apparition was called forth by magic, or by the incantations of the woman, but by the power of God; not only to show to Saul his sin in resorting to such forbidden sources of information, but also to demonstrate, to the very end of time, the folly and the certain punishment of unhallowed presumption and wicked curiosity. In a history like this, it may neither be improper nor uninteresting, to refer to the opinions of the Jews themselves, upon this memorable circumstance. Some affirm with the celebrated Manasseh-ben-Israel, that there are demons which have power over departed spirits for a limited period after death, and that by such a demon this apparition was caused-others maintain the opinion which has just been stated-and others again who prefer Rabbinical tradition to the testimony of inspiration, believe, that the whole affair existed only in the imagination of Saul, and that it was his own terror which made him suppose that he saw and heard these things. In concluding these observations it is impossible not to inquire, how could this narrative have found its way at all into the Sacred Writings, if the Hebrews, under the Levitical economy, had been as ignorant, as some affirm, of the doctrine of a future state?

What was the mode of the death of Saul?

A. C. 1055.

The battle which was fought between the Philistines and the Israelites upon mount Gilboa, was fatal to the life and to the dynasty of Saul. While the Israelites fled before the impetuous charge of the Philistines, Saul beheld the valiant Jonathan and two others of his sons slain before his eyes; the pursuit was hot; escape was hopeless; the arrows

of the enemy grievously wounded the unhappy king; despair took possession of his soul; he commanded his armour-bearer to kill him; fear bereft the trembling attendant of the power of obedience; Saul threw himself upon the point of his own sword; the wound was mortal; he died upon the field. The armour-bearer followed the example of his sovereign; the mountain was covered with the bodies of the slain; the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities abandoned them in dismay to the enemy; and the signal victory of the Philistines threatened the annihilation of the kingdom of Israel.

What was the character of Saul?

Saul had commenced his government under the fairest auspices, and the most pleasing anticipations might reasonably have been cherished of a long, a prosperous, and a glorious reign. But he became intoxicated with his elevation; his impiety corresponded with his presumption; he became so disobedient, that he seems to have regarded himself as intirely independent of his God; he degenerated into irrational tyranny and abominable cruelty, and completed the climax of his crimes by applying to a diabolical agency for the discovery of the future. The just and equitable regulations included in the divine law for the exercise of the regal authority, he had repeatedly violated, and that in the most flagrant manner-what wonder then, that his reign should come to a disastrous termination, and that a blast should rest upon the succession of his family to the throne? Inspiration in a few words has penned his character and described his doom; "So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit to inquire of it. And he inquired not of the Lord, wherefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse." 1 Chron. x. 13, 14. It must not be omitted that the Affghans, a powerful oriental nation, north-west of Hindostan, claim to be the descendants of Saul, and possess a Persian history of that monarch.

SECTION III.

THE ACCESSION OF DAVID.

HOW did David receive the intelligence of the defeat and death of Saul?

DAVID was not in the battle which decided the fate of Saul. As a kind of feudatory vassal of Achish, he had offered to march with his men in the Philistine army, but was prevented by the jealousy of the principal officers; and he was afterwards engaged in the pursuit of some Amalekites, who, during his absence, had taken, plundered, and burnt Ziklag, and carried away as captives the women who had been left behind. But intelligence was soon communicated to him of the victory of the Philistines, the death of Saul and Jonathan, and the consternation of the Israelites. A young Amalekite, three days after the battle, presented himself to David in possession of the royal ornaments; and no doubt in the expectation of procuring a considerable reward, he boasted that he had been with Saul in his last moments, and that at the request of that unhappy monarch, he had assisted in his destruction. But he was mistaken in supposing that such disastrous tidings would be welcome to David, even though the death of Saul opened his way to the throne. David no sooner heard of the calamity, than he rent his clothes, pathetically bewailed the death of the king and of Jonathan, a friend so faithful and beloved, and ordered the wretch who had boasted that he had imbrued his hands in the blood of the anointed of God, to suffer the punishment justly due to an assassin. He forgot all his injuries in the unspeakable loss he had sustained, he bitterly deplored the miserable condition of his unhappy country, and he poured forth the feelings of his affection in an elegy the most tender, the most pathetic, the most sublime, that human language has ever embodied. It is to be deplored that the spirit of this funereal lamentation for Saul and Jonathan, evaporates in the translation, and that it is impossible to transfer

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