Miriams Schooling and Other Papers | Page 5

is expected from them. "The Lord shall be your King," he said. He trusted that God would speak to the nation as He had spoken to him, and without any leader would guide them aright. That is not the Lord's way. But though Gideon would not be king, he desired some honour, and he asked that he might have the ear-rings of the Midianites who had fallen. Therewith he made an image, a thing forbidden. It stood in his house, a record of what the Lord had done for him; and yet this very record became a snare, and Israel fell to worshipping it, and Jehovah was displaced by the testimony of His own love for us.
Your grandfather is now dead. Abimelech reigns in his place, and has slain all the children of Gideon save myself. Israel has returned to Baal; its strength has departed; before long we shall be subdued under the Philistines. Excepting in our own house, there are none that have not gone a-whoring after Baal; the memory of the battle by the hill Moreh is clean forgotten; and soon the memory of my father will also disappear, and it will be as if he had never lived. To think that the vision of the angel in Ophrah and the night in the valley of Jezreel should end in nothing!
* * * * * *
That night Jotham died.
Fourteen Hundred Tears Later.
"The time would fail me to tell of Gideon, . . . who through faith . . . out of weakness was made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens."--Epistle to the Hebrews.
Three Thousand Years Later.
"'The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon,' answered Balfour as he parried and returned the blow."--Old Mortality.

SAMUEL.
Samuel immediately before his death spoke thus at Bamah:--
I am now old, and before many days are past I shall be gathered to my fathers. Behold, here I am: witness against me before the Lord: Whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith, and I will restore it you. How could it be that I could be other than that which I have been, seeing that from my childhood upwards I have been the chosen of the Lord, the instrument to do His bidding?
There are none of you who remember the evil days of Eli. Many times before then your fathers went astray after false gods, but when Eli was high priest the Tabernacle itself was profaned by his sons, the sons of Belial; for they robbed the people of their meat which they brought for the sacrifice, so that men abhorred the offering, and they lay with loose women at the door of the Tabernacle, after the manner of those who worship the gods of the heathen. To turn aside from the Lord and serve these gods is wickedness, but to serve them in the presence of the Ark, and to defile the sanctuary itself, was an abomination worse than any in Ashdod or Gaza. The Lord might assuredly have left Israel to the Philistines, but He desired that there should be a people preserved to do honour to His name, and He called me, called me even as a child, and to Him have I been dedicate. What I have said and done has not been mine but His, and if any have any fault to find, they must find it with Him and not with me.
My father, Elkanah, was one of the faithful in Israel, and he went up yearly to Shiloh; my mother, Hannah, was his beloved wife, though it was Peninnah who had given him children. I was born in answer to a prayer which my mother prayed in bitterness of soul, and she vowed that if she should have a man child he should be the Lord's all the days of his life; no razor should come upon his head, neither should he drink strong drink. My mother redeemed her vow, and I was taken to Shiloh, and there I ministered before the Lord. I lived in the midst of the iniquity which was wrought by the sons of Eli; but although a youth, the vow which my mother had made for me protected me. The Lord had then withdrawn Himself from Israel, and no word had been spoken to us by Him for years, save a message from a prophet who prophesied the fall of Eli and his house. Still I served, although He gave no sign of His presence, for my mother visited me continually, and she kept me strong and pure. One night, when I had lain down to sleep, I suddenly heard a