PREFACE.

THE design contemplated in this book may be described as threefold. In the first place, I have endeavoured to present a general view of that important period in the history of the Hebrew people, intervening between the death of Joshua and the anointing of their first king, during which, to use the language of St. Stephen, "the Lord gave them Judges." Then, selecting the four most eminent persons whom the sacred narrative presents to our view during that period-Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson-men who are specially mentioned by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews as men of faith; the results of a careful study of the history of each of them are submitted to the reader. Lastly, I have wished to render the whole subservient to purposes of edification, and have therefore introduced practical remarks and reflections.

The Book of Judges is perhaps less studied and quoted from than most other historical books of Scripture. Indeed, it is surprising how scanty, com

paratively, are references to it in the writings of our standard English preachers and divines. But even the most neglected parts of the Lord's garden will be found to yield flowers of heavenly fragrance; and I am not without hope that the present attempt, which has been on the writer's part a labour of love, may be the means of awakening in some minds a deeper interest in this part of the history of God's ancient Church.

HIGHBURY,

March 21st, 1870.

L. H. W.

MEN OF FAITH.

THE

PART I.

The Period of the Judges.

SECTION I.

EARLY VICTORIES.

HE last recorded scene in the life of Joshua is invested with singular grandeur. He "called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers," to meet him in solemn assembly. The spot selected for their meeting was calculated, by its historical associations, to confirm their faith in the God of their fathers. As they "presented themselves before God" in the most wildly beautiful of all the plains of Ephraim, the plain of Shechem, they could scarcely fail to remember how their ancestor, Abraham, who had left his country and his father's house five centuries before, had rested there, and had built in Shechem the first altar to the living God which the Holy Land had known; how the same spot, almost two hundred

years afterwards, became the first possession of their race in the Land of Promise; how Jacob, finding a home after his long wandering, bought the parcel of the field where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father; how Moses, not long before his death, and almost within sight of Canaan, had ordered them, as soon as they should have passed over Jordan, to build an altar upon that very mount Ebal, which now bounded their horizon toward the west; and how Joshua, their venerable captain, had built the altar soon after the tribes had crossed the Jordan.*

These associations of the place must have lent additional impressiveness to the parting words of their chief, as he recited once more God's gracious dealings with them and with their fathers, and adjured them, three times in succession, to choose Jehovah for their God. It was not Abraham's own choice, but God's decree, which had separated him from his idolatrous kindred "on the other side of the flood," and given him the Land of Promise. It was Jehovah's arm which had chastised the Egyptians and divided the waters and set Pharaoh's bondmen free. It was not by their own sword or their own bow that they had got the land in possession; it was the Lord, "who had sent the hornet before" them, had driven out the kings of the Amorites, and had given His people the land, a

* Gen. xii. 6; xxxiii. 18, 19; Deut. xxvii. 4, 5; Josh. viii. 30; xxiv. I.