petitions for pardon and for help to cease from this insidious vice. So in a little while the shame is gone, the good promises are forgotten, the friend who spoke so kindly is hated for his pains, and the perverse man succumbs to temptation, and goes on to n drunkard's diRgrace, goes down to a drunkard's grave. There are many other instances of this folly without descending to gross vice. Men have twinges of com- punction and gusts of admirable feeling, and so resolve to lead better Jives. But there it ends. They mean well, but somehow cannot carry out their intention. It is for want of repentance toward God. III. RECOGNISE THE SUPERIOR STRENGTH OF MORAL WEAPONS. Whatever good is doi:e to those who are going astray is effected by moral means and weapons only. David might have fought Saul and beaten him, but that would not have brought ,even a temporary relenting to his heart. It would probably have hardened him. David smote him with the moral power of truth and love, and so disarmed him for the time, and subdued him to unwonted tenderness. So now we can best benefit our fellow-men by using the moral influences of probity and kindness. So may our nation influence other nations as a Christian people ought to do, not by vaunting our power to go where we like aud kill whom we please, but by showing righteousness and good-will towards all mankind. Physical weapons of destruction are not worthy to be compared with the moral weapons that reach the conscience and the heart. IV. RISE TO THE THOUGHT OF Gon's MAGNANIMITY TO us. Though we have con- -ceived in our minds enmity against him, he does not crush us by the might of his arm, or willingly slay us as with the edge of a glittering sword. The gospel conveys to us the sublime appeal of his truth, righteousness, and pardoning love. ·we enter no cave where God is not. We are never beyond his reach; and if be should smite, who is there that could deliver out of his band ? But he has no pleasure in our death. Much as we have provoked him, he has compassion, be spares, he even pleads with us to be reconciled to him. Let us consent to his proposals of grace not with mere evanescent feeling, but with inward repentance and cordial faith. Then we shall not part from our God, as did Saul from David, but abide and " walk together as those that are agreed. "-F.
EXPOSITION. internal quietness a.nd secwity, Snmuel also CHAPTER XXV. established the Jewish monarchy, which DEATH OF SAMUEL (ver. 1). Ver. 1.- was ideally also necessary, because the Mes- And Samnel died. According to Josephus, siah must not only be priest and prophet, :Samuel had for eighteen years been contem- but before all things a king (Matt. ii. 1, 6 ; poraneous with Saul's kingdom. If this John xviii. 37). And side by side with the ealculation, which probably rests upon some kingdom he lived on to see the military suc- Jewish tradition, be at all correct, we must cesses of the first king, and the firm establish- include the years of Samuel's judgeship in ment of the royal power; but to witness also the sum total of Saul's reiipi (see on eh. xiii. the development of that king into a despot, 1), as evidently his fall was now fast the overclouding of his mind "'ith fits of approaching. Samuel's life marked the be- madness, the designation of his successor, the ginning of the second age of Israelite history probation of that successor by manifold trials, (Acts iii. 24). Moses had given the people his ripening fitness under them to be tho their law, but Samuel in the schools of the model of a theocratic king, and his growth prophets provided for them that education in power so as practic1tlly to be now sa fo without which a written law was powerless, from all Saul's evil purposes. Aud so in the and called forth also and regulated that fu1ness of time Same! died, and all Israel living energy in the prophetic order which, gathered together aud made lamentation claiming an all but equal authority, modified for him (see Gen. I. 10), and buried him in ~nd developed it, and continually increased his house. The tomb at present shown as its breadth and force, until the last prophet, that of Samuel is situated upon a lofty hill, Jesus of Nazareth, with supreme and Divine the identification of which with Ramah is power re-enacted it as the religion of the very uncertain. Probably ho was buried not whole world. And ns neither his educational actually in his house, as that would lead institutions nor the prophetic order, whose to perpetual ceremonial defilement (Num. onlinary duties were closely connected with xix. lti ; Luke xi. 44), but in some open spot these schools, coul,1 have llonrishc,l without in his garden (comp. 2 Kings xxi. 18 ; i 476 THE FIRST BOOK OF SAMUEL. [en. xxv. 1--U,