8 the priesthood was still preserved in the tribe of Levi), had been broken by Samuel himself; and in the lifetime of Eli, he had been elected to succeed him in that high and holy office, which his own sons should have inherited, had not "the sons of Belial," as Hannah named them, proved themselves unworthy, by their crimes, their impiety, and their incapacity! The sons of Samuel, like those of Eli, wanting the personal and moral qualities of their father, to ensure their succession to his power and ministry, it was to no purpose that Samuel in his old age placed the executive in the hands of the two eldest, Joel and Abiah; for the people rejected them because they had sold justice, accepted bribes, trodden under foot the laws of the Lord, and of the land, plunging into the most voluptuous and disgraceful vices, and living without the fear of their God, their father, or their country! Such were the accusations made by the delegates, the "elders of the people of Israel," when they went to the retreat of Samuel of Ramath, to refuse submission to the incapable governors he had appointed over them; declaring that the hierarchical government (respected in his inspired person), should end with his life. They desired to have a temporal chief-a king to judge them, like all the nations! The revolution in public opinion, (a new power in the state), announced in their demand, struck Samuel with displeasure and perplexity; and, ere he answered, he prayed to the Lord to assist him by his spirit. "And the Lord said unto Samuel: hearken unto the voice of the people, in all that they say unto thee." "Howbeit he protested solemnly unto them, and showed them the manner of the king that should reign over them." It was then that Samuel drew the splendid and graphic picture of a despotic king-such as would once have struck the republican spirit of Israel with indignation and dismay:* and, if the hierarchy had not rendered itself so * Rabbinical writers, and Josephus more particularly, considered the earliest form of political society among the Hebrews to have been a republic. Josephus, at least, in his History of the Jews, borrows that Greek term. "Voilà de quelle sorte la republique fut changée en royauté ; car durant le gouvernement de Moise, et de Josué son successeur et general de l'armée, la forme du gouvernement estoit aristocratique : mais, odious, in the eyes of the people, that even "the manner of king," which their high priest prophesied should reign over them, gained by the comparison, that picture must have stifled all desire of change. But it was in vain that his terrific denunciation wound up with a threat that "the day would come when they should cry out against the king, whom they had chosen.". - Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said: Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we may be like other nations, that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles." The Israelites were no longer predatory wanderers in the desert: if they were still superstitious and stiff-necked in some instances, in others they were on a par with the surrounding policized and powerful nations, in imitation of whose institutes they desired a temporal and responsible chief. They had heard from an inspired woman, that the "Lord was a God of knowledge, by whom actions were weighed ;" and, if their faith in the religion of their fathers was still strong, their blind submission to an hereditary and exacting priesthood was utterly shaken. The venerable and inspired son of Hannah was still, however, the object of religious confidence, and even of their superstitious veneration. He was still their priest, their prophet, their "grand sacrificer," their "seer :” but they desired a lay chief, a political ruler, a great captain -an expedient adequate to their political necessities-a patriot leader or king, such as Hannah had predicted, "when she said that He who raised up the poor out of the dust, and lifted the beggar from the dunghill, and set them among princes,-He who would judge the ends of the earth would give strength to the king, and exalt the power of the anointed." Samuel, haply, may have recalled this prophetic word of his mother, when, directed by inspiration, he sought for one answering to that prophecy, one whom the people après la mort de Josué, personne n'ayant un souverain pouvoir, dix-huit ans se passerent dans l'anarchie. On revint ensuite à la première forme de gouvernement, et l'on donnoit la suprême autorité, sous le nom de Juge, à celui que son courage et sa capacité dans la guerre rendoient le plus digne de cet honneur: et les rois ont succedé à ces juges."-Histoire des Juifs, livre vi. chap. 6. page 317. should approve, one whom he would prepare for his high calling, one whom he would anoint king, one who was not "of the princes," above whom he was to be set," not of the elders, of the aristocracy of Israel, nor of the sacerdotal family of Levi, nor yet of "the poor raised out of the dust,” but a man strictly of the people. Saul, according to his own modest account of himself, “was a Benjamite of the smallest tribes of Israel, whose family was the least of all families of the tribes of Benjamin.” But "he was a choice young man and a goodly;” “ and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he; from his shoulders and upwards he was higher than any of the people.” Such was the youth, who, in the simplicity of his age and class, stopped the high priest on his way to the great festival, given on the occasion of the sacrifice of the people, "in the High Place," and asked him: “Tell me, I pray thee, where the seer's house is! for he came with a servant of his father's to ask advice of an honourable man, a seer, as to the fate of his father's asses which had been lost." And Samuel answered and said: "I am the seer." The whole of the scene that follows is pregnant with inference; marked by the internal evidence of historic truth, and full of graphic beauty. The astounded Saul heard his high destiny from the prophet's lips with incredulity, and almost rejected the belief that he was the one in whom was all "the desire of Israel;" but when he was placed in," the chiefest place," at the sacred festival, and distinguished by a princely portion of the service, when he was taken to the house of the hierarch prophet, honoured by "secret communion with him" on "the top of his house," when "the spring of the day came,” and he was awakened by Samuel to accompany him beyond the city, when he was referred, for the accomplishment of his destiny, to the "prediction of the three signs," (the first of which was to be manifested at Rachael's sepulchre); and when, under the bright canopy of the morning heaven, he felt the holy oil poured on his fervid brow, with the prophetic words: "the Lord hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance!"-then the young and humble Benjamite felt the "spirit of the Lord" upon him; people with their ingratitude to himself, and their contempt of his rejected sons. Justifying his own integrity, also, Samuel "terrified them with thunder in the harvest time." From that moment, Saul felt the power of the great sacerdotal conspiracy, which raised up a rival to his glory, and an anointed successor to his power. From that moment, the reign of Saul (the first on sacred record that stood in the gap of transition, between two great epochs of social history) became a tragic epic, full of dramatic action, grand, fantastic, and sublime !—the inspiration of the master-minds of future ages, the poetry of passion, an illustration of the philosophy of politics. In the struggle Saul fell:—and the people whose opinions he represented, divided by that fickleness, which has ever been the curse of the ignorant, benefited not by a contest, of which he was the victim. Assailed by every evil that can outrage the feelings of man-as prince, patriot, father, friend-by conspiracy without, domestic treachery within, spiritually anathematized, virtually dethroned, reproached, humiliated, and maddened-the evil spirit of God came upon him; and the last act of his life's grand tragedy hastened to its close, in all the poetic sublimity in which it had risen. Abandoned by all resources, divine and human, when his children had left him, when "the Lord had departed from him, when the prophets had deserted him,” and “ he was sore distressed,"-Saul, in his last dire necessity, sought for relief in that great dogma of the East, the divinity of woman's mind. He turned for counsel and for hope, to one whom he believed to hold spiritual communion with the dark and shadowy past, and to possess a prophetic power over the coming future. The great female seers, the prophetesses of more ancient times, the Miriams, and the Deborahs, and the Hannahs, had passed away; but there still existed "wise women" in İsrael, whose acute perceptions of causes and their effects inspired a conviction of their superhuman intelligence,-of their possessing minds "which o'er-informed their tenements of clay." Saul had banished these women out of the land, who haply saw too clearly and foretold too much! But, when |