The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Samuel — Section 3

behind them nothing more lasting than a J onah's gourd. Samuel WBS too wi11a to trust to mere personal influence. If Israel was to be saved, it must be by institutions which would daily exercise their pressure, and push the people upward to a higher level. He seems to have studied the past history of his nation carefully, and to have clearly seen where its weakness lay. And so ha set himself earnestly to the task of giving it mental culture and orderly govern- ment ; externally security from danger, internally progressive development. The means he employed for the nation's internal growth was the founding of schools, and here the honour of the initiative belongs to him, as well as of the wise devlllopment of his institutions. What Walter de Merton long afterwards did for Oxford and England, that Samuel effected for Israel. But as regards the kingdom he was rather the regulator than the initiator of the movement. Still his wise mind saw the ripeness of the times for it, and to him is due its greatness and success. Thus then, in prophecy and the kingdom, Samuel gave to Israel first education, and secondly constitutional monarchy. Samuel was the first founder of schools, and as the great and primary object of his life had been the internal reformation of the Jewish people, we can well understand how his personal work had led onwards to this attempt to redeem his countrymen from ignorance. In those long years which he spent in perpetual wanderings up and down the land he must have constantly found that a chief obstacle to his work was the low mental state of the people. He had been brought up himself amidst what- ever learning the nation had imported with it from Egypt;_, but Shiloh's sun hau set. Was learning to perish with it 1 Nowhere in Israel were men to lie found :fit to bear office or administer justice. The decisive failure of one so highly gifted by nature as Saul, and who started with so much in his favour, and under Samuel's guidance, but who seems to have had no ideas beyond fighting, proves that Samuel was right in his hesitation about creating a king. The :fitting man was nowhere to be found. Schools were the primary necessity. Through them the whole mental state of the people would be raised, and men be trained to serve God in Church and State. From these schools came forth a David. Without them the brave warrior, but fierce despot, Saul was all that was possible. .At the N aioth, or Students' Lodgings, for so the word means, near Ramah, his own patrimonial inheritance, Samuel gathered the young men who were to lift up Israel from its debasement. He taught them reading, writing, and· mu.sic; he also impressed their minds with solemn religious services, and apparently made history and psalmody their two chief studies. These schools were termed Schools of the Prophets not only because Samuel was a prophet, 11 nd the teachers bore the same honoured name, but because the young men were trained expressly for the service of Jehovah. Of course Samuel did not ez:pect his students to receive the gift of inspiration. That was the most rare and precious of gifts, to be obtained by no education, but bestowed directly by  nm BOOKS 01<' SAMUEL. . God; from whom it might come to a herdman, with only such learning as could be picked up in a country town (Amos vii. 14, 15), but was never given except for high purposee, and where there was a special internal fitness on the part of tht receiver. But the word has a wide meaning in Holy Scripture. .AJJy religio111 uninspired service, especially if musical, was called prophecy ; David's trained singers prophesied with harps and other instruments (I Chron. xxv. 1-3). But e.11 of them, inspired and u'.11.inspired, went forth to do work for Jehovah ; not as priests, not necessarily as teachers, or as musicians, though they were Israel's bards. The institution was essentially free, was open to all comers, and when educated the prophet might return to his farm, or to some avocation of town life. But he was first of all an educated man, and, secondly, he had been taught the nature of Jehovah, how he was to be worshipped, and what was the life which every member of a covenant nation ought to lead. Thus Samuel's schools not only raised Israel to a higher mental level, but were the great means for maintaining the worship of Jehovah, and teaching the people true and spiritual notions of the nature of God. As such we find future prophets earnest in maintaining them. Incidentally we learn that Elijah's last earthly work was the visitation of the prophetic schools at Gilgal, at Bethel, and at Jericho. He must have restored these schools, for Jezebel bad done her utmost to exterminate the prophets. He must also have laboured with masterly energy; for within ten years after Elijah's great victory at Mount Carmel, Ahab, at Jehoshaphat's request, was able to collect at Samaria no less than 400 men who claimed to be "prophets of Jehovah." Of Elisha we have abundant evidence that the main business of his life was to foster these schools, and even personally teach in them (2 Kings iv. 38). What we read of these two men was probably true of all the great prophets. At suitable places there were schools in which they gathered the young men of Israel, and the learning which at Shiloh had been confined within the sacred priestly enclosure was made by them general and national. It ceased to be a special prerogative, and became the inheritance of the whole race. Apparently it culminated in the time of Heze- kiah, and then came the Assyrian invasions, and with them the destruction of a high and noble civilisation. But under Ezra and the men of the great synagogue it revived, and Israel became again, and continued to be, a learned and intellectual nation. Thill then was one part of the labours of Samuel. He laid the foundation and fostered the rapid growth of a grand system of national education. At Ramah he trained men to be Israel's teachers ; but he did not confine himself to this. Most of the great ornaments of David's court were his disciples, and it is probable that large numbers of the wealthy and more promising youth of the kingdom went to his schools simply to learn something of those wonderful arts of reading and writing, which opened so new a world to the youth of a race always distinguished for its intellectual aptitudes. And through them Samuel raised the whole people mentally and morally. Trained men henceforward were  INTRODUCTION TO