th
good and evil, yet seemingly demanded by the spirit of the times,--in
one sense an advance in civilization, in another a retrogression in
primeval virtues. It resulted in a great progress in material arts,
culture, and power, but also in a decline in those simplicities that
favor a religious life, on which the strength of man is apparently
built,--that is, a state of society in which man in his ordinary life
draws nearest to his Maker, to his kindred, and his home; to which
luxury and demoralizing pleasures are unknown; a life free from
temptations and intellectual snares, from political ambition and social
unrest, from recognized injustice and stinging inequalities. The
historian with his theory of development might call this revolution the
change from national youth to manhood, the emerging from the dark ages
of Hebrew history to a period of national aggrandizement and growth in
civilization,--one of the necessary changes which must take place if a
nation would become strong, powerful, and cultivated. To the eye of the
contemplative, conservative, and God-fearing Samuel this change of
government seemed full of perils and dangers, for which the nation was
not fully prepared. He felt it to be a change which might wean the
Israelites from their new sense of dependence on God, the only hope of
nations, and which might favor another lapse to pagan idolatries and a
decline in household virtues, such as had been illustrated in the life
of Ruth and Boaz,--and hence might prove a mere exchange of that rugged
life which elevates the soul, for those gilded glories which adorn and
pamper the mortal body. He certainly foresaw and knew that the change in
government would produce tyranny, oppression, and injustice, from which
there could be no escape and for which there could be no redress, for he
told the people in detail just what they should suffer at the hands of
any king whom they might have; and these were in his eyes evils which
nothing could compensate,--the loss of liberty, the extinction of
personal independence, and a probable rebellion against the Supreme
Jehovah in the degrading worship of the gods of idolatrous nations.

When the people, therefore, under the guidance of so-called "progressive
leaders," hankered for a government which would make them like other
nations, and demanded a king, the prophet was greatly moved and sore
displeased; and this displeasure was heightened by a bitter humiliation
when the elders r