1 а "unto my place which was at Shiloh; . . and see "what I did to it for the wickedness of my people "Israel." "I will make this house like Shiloh "curse to all the nations of the earth." The very locality became so little known that it had to be specified carefully in the following centuries in order to be recognized. "Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan," "which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side "of the highway that goeth up from Beth-el to Shechem, "and on the south of Lebonah." It is only this exact description, thus required by the very extremity of its destruction, which enabled a traveller from America, within our own memory, to rediscover its site, to which the sacred name still clung with a touching tenacity forgotten for centuries, and known only to the savage peasants who prowl about its few broken ruins. 66 So ended the period, defined as that during which "the house of God was in Shiloh."4 So ended the period of the supremacy of the tribe of Ephraim, whose fall is described, in the Psalm which unfolds their fortunes, as involved in the fall of Shiloh -"He forsook "the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent that He had pitched among men. He refused the tabernacle of Joseph, "and chose not the tribe of Ephraim." So ended the still wider period of the first division of the history of the Chosen People, in the overthrow of the first sanctuary by the Philistines, as the second division and overthrow was to terminate in the fall of the second sanctuary, the Temple of the Jewish monrchy, by the armies of Babylon; and the third in 1 Jer. vii. 12, 14; xxvi. 6. 2 Judg. xxi. 12, 19. See Ewald, ii. 423 3 Seilûn was first rediscovered by Dr. Robinson in 1838. 4 Judg. xviii. 31. 5 Ps. lxxviii. 60, 67. the still vaster destruction of the last Temple of Jerusalem by the armies of Titus. The revival of the nation from the ruins of the first sanctuary must be reserved for the rise of the Second Period of the Jewish Church, when "the Lord was to awake as one out of sleep1 . and choose the tribe of Judah, "the Mount Zion which He loved." Only we may still include within this epoch the great name of Samuel, and the great office of Prophet, which was to unite the old and the new together, under the shelter of which was to spring up the new institutions of the monarchy a new tribe, a new capital, a new Church, with new forms of communion with the Almighty, now for the first time named by the name of "the "LORD of Hosts." 1 P. lxxviii. 65, 68. SAMUEL AND THE PROPHETICAL OFFICE. XVIII. SAMUEL. XIX. THE HISTORY OF THE PROPHETICAL ORDER. XX. THE NATURE OF THE PROPHETICAL TEACHING. SPECIAL AUTHORITIES FOR THE LIFE OF SAMUEL 1. 1 Sam. i-xxviii. (Hebrew and LXX.); 1 Chron. xxix. 29; Ps. xcix. 6; Jer. xv. 1; Ecclus. xlvi. 13–20; Acts iii. 24, xiii. 20; Heb. xi. 32. 2. Jewish traditions (Jos. Ant. v. 10-vi. 14); Fabricius, Cod. Pseudepigr. Vet. Test. 895-903. 3. Mussulman traditions (D'Herbelot, under Aschmouyl); and Weil's Biblical Legends, 144–151. 4. Christian traditions (Acta Sanctorum, Aug. 20). SAMUEL AND THE PROPHETICAL OFFICE. LECTURE XVIII. SAMUEL. THE fall of the sanctuary of Shiloh was the ter mination of the first period of Jewish history Close which had lasted from Moses to Eli. of the It had Theocracy. detail, but with been a period varied and shifting in this common feature, that it was a time of wandering and of strife, of danger and of deliverance, of continual and direct dependence on the help of God alone, with no regular means of government, or law, or army, or king, to ward off the enemies that were constantly assailing them from without, or to repress the disorders that were constantly disturbing them from within. The Judges themselves were regarded as invested with something of a divine or God-like character; the more so perhaps from their solitary and strange elevation above all around them. A new selection of Judges is described as "a choosing of new Gods;" and the two last of the series are especially dignified with the name of "God." 2 This period, called on these accounts by Josephus "the |