colours. Nor could even the birth of a son, by which the loss of his father might be compensated, shed a ray of joy over a deathbed, embittered by the knowledge that the God to whose service his birth would naturally have devoted him, had been alienated from His people by his parents' treachery and misconduct. And let us close this humiliating record of Israel's disgrace and discomfiture, by an instructive review of the train of misfortunes attributable to the weak infatuation of Eli.

First, the disgust and alienation occasioned among God's people by the tyranny and profligacy of his sons; the weight of personal guilt incurred by these misguided youths themselves; the transfer of the priesthood from their race to another family; the betraying of the ark by their connivance into the hands of the Philistines; their own untimely and merited deaths; and the shock which snapped in so cruel a manner the fragile thread of their old father's existence, and the tender ties which bound to life the wife of their bosom. All these disastrous consequences may be distinctly traced to the culpable negligence of Eli; and let none by whom the fatal train is followed up, hesitate to subscribe to the advice of the "wise man," "Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying; for a foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare him."

MORNING TWENTY-FIRST.

LESSON-1 Samuel, Chapters v. and vi.

MAMA. I think, Mary, that the memorable chapters we have just read must have gone far to remove the not unnatural surprise and concern you expressed yesterday on the ark of the Lord being suffered to fall into the hands of the Philistines. If, impressing these proud idolaters with lofty conceptions of the power of the God they habitually defied, had been (as we saw it was not) the sole object of the momentary triumph accorded them, we should now have become convinced that it was better attained by that triumph than by the most signal victory of the Israelites; so that, had the punishment of the latter been wholly out of the question, the vindication of Jehovah's honour was effectually secured.

It is probable that the ignorant heathens, whose panic at the arrival of the ark in the camp of Israel arose from some superstitious belief in its efficacy as a charm or symbol-hoped, by its cap

arms.

ture and transference to themselves, to ensure the very benefits it had failed to confer on their enemies: just as the foolish king of Israel (of whom we once read) imported and set up those very gods of Damascus who had been powerless to deliver their own worshippers from his victorious There is nothing too stupid or absurd to be freely admitted by those whose understanding has once been brought to seek safety and protection from stocks and stones; and so far from wondering, as many do, at the inconsistencies of idolaters, that word alone seems an epitome of all the folly and perversion of which the human mind is capable.

What proof does the narrative afford that the capture of the ark (the supposed tutelary deity of the Israelites) did not prevent the conquerors from still regarding it as an object of fear and worship?

MARY. They put it into the very house of Dagon, and set it up beside him. What an insult to the true God!

MAMA. Yes, in reality; but not thus intended, by those who were too blind to discern the difference. Do you know any particulars characteristic of this Philistine idol ?

MARY. No.

MAMA. Its name signifies a

66 fish," which

(with a human head and shoulders) its lower parts resembled; a form probably adopted for their idol by a maritime people, from some superstition, not yet entirely eradicated, about mermen, or supernatural beings, half-fish half-man. But is this the first time that Dagon and his worship have come under our notice?

MARY. No, no one would think Sampson's pulling down his temple in the strength of the God of the Jews would have made the Philistines afraid enough of Him!

MAMA. True; and it was not superstitious fear of the God of Israel in which they were now deficient ; but that rational discernment of the Creator of the universe from the meanest workmanship of their own hands, which, at this dark period, the most signal judgments failed to communicate to the benighted mind of man. Did the prostrate and mutilated condition of their national deity at all open their eyes to the tremendous dif

ference ?

MARY. No, they first tried to set Dagon up again; and when all broken to pieces, instead of throwing the useless bits away, they only left off going across the threshold on which he had fallen. Why so?

- MAMA. Because, with inconceivable stupidity, they seem to have considered the threshold hal

Y

lowed by the very humiliation of their prostrate divinity; and so pertinaciously did they adhere to this childish notion, that a prophet of Israel (centuries after) designates the worshippers of Dagon by the title of "those that leap on the threshold."

But was Jehovah content with a mortification which their besotted minds forbade them to comprehend?

MARY. No; "His hand was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them and smote them, with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof."

MAMA. This last expression confirms what we said of its being a maritime district. Ashdod (called in the New Testament Azotus) was a port between Gaza and Joppa. What the precise disease was with which God afflicted its inhabitants, learned men have not discovered; but it must have been grievous, from their anxiety to get rid of the ark, its acknowledged cause.

MARY. If they knew it was the ark that brought all the harm upon them, why did they not pray to the God it belonged to, to cure them? or send it home at once?

MAMA. Just because rational conduct is (as we before remarked), nowhere found in fellowship with gross idolatry. Those Philistines who could unhesitatingly exalt the God of even the vanquished Israelites into equality with Dagon, had