cumstances to influence
him. The son of a saint becomes mysteriously a drunkard or a fraud, and
the son of a sensualist becomes an ascetic. This does not uniformly
occur: in fact, the sons of good men are more likely to be an honor to
their families than the sons of the wicked; but why are exceptions so
common as to be proverbial?

It was no light work which was imposed on the shoulders of Samuel,--to
establish law and order among the demoralized tribes of the Jews, and to
prepare them for political independence; and it was a still greater
labor to effect a moral reformation and reintroduce the worship of
Jehovah. Both of these objects he seems to have accomplished; and his
success places him in the list of great reformers, like Mohammed and
Luther,--but greater and better than either, since he did not attempt,
like the former, to bring about a good end by bad means; nor was he
stained by personal defects, like the latter. "It was his object to
re-enkindle the national life of the nation, so as to combat
successfully its enemies in the field, which could be attained by
rousing a common religious feeling;" for he saw that there could be no
true enthusiasm without a sense of dependence on the God of battles, and
that heroism could be stimulated only by exalted sentiments, both of
patriotism and religion.

But how was Samuel to rekindle a fervent religious life among the
degenerate Israelites in such unsettled times? Only by rousing the
people by his teachings and his eloquence. He was a preacher of
righteousness, and in all probability went from city to city and village
to village,--as Saint Bernard did when he preached a crusade against the
infidels, as John the Baptist did when he preached repentance, as
Whitefield did when he sought to kindle religious enthusiasm in England.
So he set himself to educate his countrymen in the great truths which
appealed to the inner life,--to the heart and conscience. This he did,
first, by rousing the slumbering spirits of the elders of tribes when
they sought his counsel as a prophet, the like of whom had not appeared
since Moses, so gifted and so earnest; and secondly, by founding a
school for the education of young men who should go with his
instructions wherever he chose to send them, like the early
missionaries, to hamlets and villages which he was unable to visit in
person. The first "school of the prophets" was a seminary of
missionaries, animated by the spirit of a teacher wh