foundation of military enthusiasm by combining with it religious ardor;
so that by the discipline of forty years,--the same period employed by
Moses in transmuting a horde of slaves into a national host of warriors;
a period long enough to drop out the corrupted elements and replace
them with the better trained rising generation,--the nation was prepared
for accomplishing the victories of Saul and David. But for Samuel no
great captains would have arisen to lead the scattered and dispirited
hosts of Israel against the Philistines and other enemies. He was thus a
political leader as well as a religious teacher, combining the offices
of judge and prophet. Everybody felt that he was directly commissioned
by God, and his words had the force of inspiration. He reigned with as
much power as a king over all the tribes, though clad in the garments of
humility. Who in all Israel was greater than he, even after he had
anointed Saul to the kingly office?

The great outward event in the life of Samuel was the transition of the
Israelites from a theocratic to a monarchical government. It was a
political revolution, and like all revolutions was fraught with both
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