Miriams Schooling and Other Papers | Page 9

rehearsed unto them all that had been done for them without the help of a king. I foretold to them that the king would be for himself, and not for them--that he would press their sons and daughters into his service; but the people would not listen to me. The Lord had said unto me that they had not rejected me, but rejected Him that He should not reign over them, as they had ever done since the day when they were brought up out of Egypt. I cared not, however, for their rejection of me, but because it was He who was rejected. I thought over it night and day, and it well nigh broke my heart.
Those who had hitherto been placed over us had not been chosen because they were the sons of the rich, or of those who were chosen before them. Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Jephthah, were all of them select of the Lord from the people. Nay, even a woman had been taken to judge Israel--Deborah the prophetess, who dwelt under the palm-tree here between Ramah and Bethel. It was Deborah who sent for Barak to lead the host against Sisera, and Barak said to her that if she went he would go, but if she went not he would not go, so mighty was her presence. Sisera gathered together his army and all his chariots, nine hundred chariots of iron; but Deborah spoke a word in the ears of Barak, when he was afraid, and Sisera was discomfited with all his chariots and his host. He fled, and it was a woman, Jael, the wife of Heber, who slew him--for ever honoured be her name. In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byeways; the rulers ceased in Israel; the people chose new gods; there was war in the gates; there was no shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel until Deborah arose. The family of Gideon also was the poorest in Manasseh, and yet it was to him that the angel was sent, and he subdued the Midianites and the children of the East. This hitherto had been the Lord's way with us; and now we were to abandon Him for a king, whose children, because they were king's children, were to be our commanders. It well nigh broke my heart, I say. The glory of the Tabernacle was henceforth to be dim, overshadowed by the pomp of a monarch. I could not endure it, and again I went to the Lord, and besought Him to turn the people or visit them with the thunder and lightning of Mizpeh, that they might repent of their iniquity and live. But He would not speak to them beyond what He had spoken through me, and I returned and sent the assembly away, every man to his own city.
I called the people together in Mizpeh again, the place where they had seen the Lord save them Himself, and yet even there they would not yield. Then I prophesied against them, because they had cast aside Him who had delivered them out of all their adversities and tribulations; and I caused all their tribes to assemble before me. Saul the son of Kish was taken, and the fools shouted God save the king. I did my best for them. I wrote laws for them to protect them against him, and I put them in a book and laid them up in the sanctuary.
Henceforth I was in a measure more solitary than before. Saul was a brave man, and led the people to war, and they were pleased with his success, but he was not single in his service of the Lord, and he had for a wife a Horite, one Rizpah, who worshipped false gods. He believed he could make Israel a nation by battles, and he saw not what I saw--that the one thing necessary for our salvation was to keep ourselves pure and separate. The people complained that the Law was a burden, but it was their safeguard: it was the Law which marked them off from the heathen, who were doomed to fall by their sins. I toiled daily to preserve the Law, and to insist upon the observance of its ceremonies, knowing full well that if the people let them go, they would let go the commandments from Sinai; would let go the sobriety and the chastity of their bodies; would mix in the worship of Baal, and be lost. Saul was no observer of ceremonies, and considered them naught, the idiot, who forgot that they were ordained of God, with whom there is no small nor great, and that through them the people are taught. More