SAMUEL'S DEFENCE.

1 Samuel xii.

T would seem that a fitting time had now come for Samuel's

Iretirement from his great position. We are all conscious of

the fitness of certain historical occasions, so much so that we can adopt the duties which they suggest with a sense of harmony and rectitude. After the splendid victory acquired by Saul it would seem as if the dispensation of Samuel must naturally close. Blessed is he who can say, "He must increase, but I must decrease;" and still more blessed is he who looking back upon all his career can adopt the language and spirit of the veteran Samuel. In this noble speech there is no sign whatever of intellectual exhaustion or the blunting of that fine sagacity which had so long led the policy and fortune of Israel. It is better for men to retire whilst in full possession of their faculties, rather than to live themselves into the deserved contempt of their fellow-men. Still, throughout the speech there is a tone which expresses something like resentment, as if the old man would have gladly continued but for the impatience of the unruly populace. Who likes to resign a great leadership? We should consider these things in looking upon men, and their offices, and their supposed duties. Probably we do not make allowance enough for the instincts which constitute our very manhood. It is easy to stand by and to suggest to other men that they should resign their positions and abandon the fields in which they have won a hundred honours; but it is not always so easy for the man who is most deeply implicated to rise to this heroism of self-renunciation. We should be patient with our veteran leaders, our old statesmen, our well-proved teachers and guides. It is instructive to observe, however, the wonderful manner in which Providence intervenes, to show when times have arrived for the cessation of this or that function and the inauguration of

a new period of rule and service. Things work together quite wonderfully in this way; so much so that an attentive observation of their course impresses the mind with the fact that there is a Power, call it by what name we please, which centralises all things and gives them their best applications. Samuel seems to have pondered upon all the events of his time so wisely as to have come to the conclusion that the hour of retirement had arrived. Let us now hear his valedictory speech. Even though the king walked before Israel, Samuel was not afraid to call attention to himself. It is notable that the whole reference is distinctly of a moral quality. He seems to be anxious only to come out of the court of trial with an unstained character. He asks for no crown or sceptre or purple of a merely artificial or decorative kind; his one desire is to be clothed with the robe of an unpolluted reputation. Truly, it is a kind of heaven which the old man claims. He would be called good, rather than great. Is there a finer picture upon earth than an old and grey-headed man who is able to challenge the world to bring a just accusation against him? Samuel was able to descend into minute details, and to show that in so-called little things he had lived a life that was beyond suspicion. Samuel had lived in the blaze of noonday since he was a child; indeed, he could hardly be said to have had any childhood, so early was he pressed into the public service. Now he looks up to the heavens, and asks that the people might witness against him if they had any charge to make. Behold, here I am witness against me before the Lord, whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken ?" (v. 3). The ox and the ass represent possessions of considerable value in that primitive age and in a country where agriculture was the principal source of revenue. A further inquiry is, "Whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed?" For many years he had been supreme judge in Israel, and now that he is about to retire from the judgeship, he gives all men liberty to speak and to testify against him if they could. Throughout the whole year nothing was more common than for judges to receive bribes, in order that their favour might be bought and a wealthy criminal might escape. On this point Samuel puts a direct inquiry:"Of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith?"

These are searching questions, and every man who professes to be godly ought to be able to put them to his own age. What if we have kept all the dogmas of orthodoxy and performed all the ceremonies of artificial religion, if we have not been free from the spirit of covetousness, or if we have defrauded or oppressed the helpless and the weak? Away with the orthodoxy that is not supported by a pure morality! "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings." These are the conditions upon which God offers communion to man; not intellectual conditions which only a few can attain, but moral conditions which are open to the whole world. The virtue of our public men has a large influence upon the virtue of society. Where there is corruption at the head, there must of necessity be some measure of corruption in all the departments which that head rules. Like priest, like people. It is true that sometimes the nation has been in advance of the throne in the purity of its moral sentiment; but it is also true that where the throne has been renowned for probity and beneficence a very happy influence has been exerted upon the nation at large. In this regard it is of infinite importance that men should pray for their kings, rulers, judges, and magistrates, that society in its highest places should be kept pure and healthful. Every man will have to give an account of his life, and it rests with the man himself, to a large extent, whether that account shall be good or bad. It is not every one who may be able to stand up with Samuel and make the same wide and minute challenge, with the same consciousness that exculpation will be the result of the searching criticism; at the same time, here is a line by which we may be guided; here is an ideal towards which we may constantly aspire.

It is further noticeable that the challenge which Samuel addresses to the people is strictly limited to themselves. There is no appeal to God to testify that Samuel has always been in his sight a pure and holy character, without stain or blemish. There is no pharisaic boasting, no challenge addressed to Heaven, claiming the crown on the ground of good

conduct. A very wide distinction is noticeable between an appeal to society and an appeal to Heaven. Samuel was talking in his public capacity, and in his public capacity he pressed every question which he asked; he was not engaged in the exercise of prayer, urging his respectability upon the attention of Heaven, and claiming to have been alone faithful in a faithless world. In this respect a man may adopt two distinctly different tones. Addressing his fellow-men, he may speak in a tone of superiority, moral dignity, and stainless honour; in doing so he may in reality be magnifying God, though there may be no nominal profession of so doing; on the other hand, when he comes face to face with God, none may hear the moaning of his discontent, or see the tears of his contrition, as he reflects upon his innumerable shortcomings and perversities. The purist and the Pharisee, therefore, must not be allowed to take encouragement from the example of Samuel, that they may boast themselves as before God. All such boasting is vain and false. Even Samuel himself may say, in the secrecy of the sanctuary, "God be merciful to me a sinner!"

"And Samuel said unto the people, It is the Lord that advanced Moses and Aaron, and that brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. Now therefore stand still, that I may reason with you before the Lord of all the righteous acts of the Lord, which he did to you and to your fathers. When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the Lord, then the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, which brought forth your fathers out of Egypt, and made them dwell in this place. And when they forgat the Lord their God, he sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the host of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought against them. And they cried unto the Lord, and said, We have sinned, because we have forsaken the Lord, and have served Baalim and Ashtaroth: but now deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, and we will serve thee. And the Lord sent Jerubbaa!, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and Samuel, and delivered you out of the hand of your enemies on every side, and ye dwelled safe. And when ye saw that Nahash the king of the children of Ammon came against you, ye said unto me, Nay; but a king shall reign over us: when the Lord your God was your king" (vv. 6-12).

Once more we come upon an excellent practice established in olden times, namely, faithfully to recount the history of God's providence, so far as it is known in human experience. The days are never separated from one another, and treated as detailed points of time. The historians and prophets of Israel

always seem to be searching for the central line of history, which indeed is the central line of purpose; hence we find continuity and cumulativeness in the statements of all the men who address the nation. Very noticeable are these speeches for their statesmanlike comprehensiveness. Every one of them begins at a well-ascertained historical point, and continues the story without omission or perversion up to the then immediate day: this is a philosophy as well as an example. We miss the whole meaning of divine providence if we look at events separately and incidentally, as we miss the whole meaning of the Bible if we read it in detached portions and texts. The providence of life is an inspired revelation of God, but it must be read in its continuity if its meaning is to be correctly and profitably seized. Not what was done yesterday, or the day before, but what was done on the earliest and on every succeeding day, is the inquiry which every man should put to himself. The expulsion of Memory from the service of the Church is an act of sacrilege. Praise is incomplete without recollection. Our hallelujah, though apparently an utterance of rapture, will be louder and sweeter in proportion to the critical accuracy and large comprehensiveness of our memory. So we find Samuel beginning at the beginning,with Moses and Aaron, and the deliverance from Egypt, and "all the righteous acts of the Lord, which he did to you and to your fathers; " Jacob is not forgotten, nor are any of the errors of Israel omitted, nor their consequent subjugation and cruel punishment, their bondage under the Philistines, and their sufferings under the hand of the King of Moab. On and on the great story rolls, up to the times of Jerubbaal, and Bedan, and Jephthah, and Samuel himself; nay, the very last act which they themselves had witnessed is pressed into the great body of the accumulated evidence, and then the appeal is launched upon the judgment and conscience of the people. Consider what that appeal must be to-day if we take in the whole horizon of human history! This is literally impossible, but morally it lies within our power to make noble use of it. The world itself could not contain the books if all providential acts were minutely recorded; but the very fact of the literal impossibleness of the exercise constitutes a direct appeal to the spiritual imagination, which in its highest moods can unite all the courses of providence, and