SAMSON;

OR, MAN'S WEAKNESS AND GOD'S

STRENGTH.

THERE is often something striking about the birth of great men. It was so with Isaac

and Moses; and it was so with Samson. His mother was childless; and an angel from heaven appeared to her, and also to her husband Manoah, to tell them that they should have a son; and this son was to be a remarkable person-very unlike the ordinary race of men.

The Israelites were, at this period, often sorely harassed by the Philistines and other heathen nations. And God, from time to time, raised up persons, whom he called Judges, to deliver them.

Now, Manoah and his wife were told that their son Samson was to be one of these Judges, or Deliverers. He was to be brought up as a Nazarite, which means a person

specially set apart for God's service. And in token of this, he was charged to drink no strong drink, and his hair was never to be cut.

A ground of quarrel soon sprung up with these Philistines. It happened that there was a damsel in their country whom Samson desired to have as his wife. And on one occasion, when he was going to Timnath to visit her, he was attacked by a furious lion. Being unarmed at the time, his life was in the greatest peril. But we are told that "the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would a kid, and he had nothing in his hand." Here then the Lord specially interfered to save his servant's life.

Some little time after, when he was again on his way to Timnath, he passed the same spot. Wishing to see if the carcase of the slaughtered lion was still there, he turned out of the road, and found, to his surprise, that a swarm of bees had made their hive in it, and were filling it with honey. Upon this he framed a riddle, and told it to the Philistines whom he met at Timnath. They tried hard to find out the meaning of this

riddle; and only did so at last with the help of his wife, to whom he had told the secret. This so provoked him, that he made an attack upon a party of them, and killed thirty.

His father-in-law having refused to let Samson take his wife home with him, he again goes to Timnath. And he then finds, to his great grief, that she, on whom he had set his heart and affections, had been taken from him, and given to another. This was more than he could bear; and, in the heat of his fury, he destroys some ripe corn. belonging to the Philistines, and again slaughters a number of them.

Upon this the Philistines invade Judah, in the hope of making Samson their prisoner. And now he falls a victim to the cruel treachery and ungenerous conduct of some of his own countrymen, who seized him, intending to give him over into the hands of his pursuers. But they little knew what wonderful strength God could give him; for, although they bound him with strong cords, in a moment he snapped them asunder, and, rushing upon the Philistines who were shouting at him in scorn, he again made

great havock among them, killing them by hundreds.

On another occasion, at a place called Gaza, where he was hemmed in by those who thirsted for his life and were on the point of seizing him, being hard pressed, he tore up the gates of the city, carried them off in triumph, and escaped.

At length however, the Philistines succeeded in getting him into their power. And now they are determined first to torture him, and afterwards to put him to death. They seize him, put out his eyes, bind him with chains of iron, and then make him grind like a common felon at the prison mill.

This is not all they gather an assemblage of people together, bring him forth before them, and make their unhappy prisoner a laughing-stock to the populace.

This treatment drives him almost to madness. He calls upon God to give him that special strength which he had received on former occasions, and then he lifts up the very pillars, on which the house where they were all assembled rested, so that it falls, burying himself and thousands of his

tormentors beneath its ruins. "So the dead, which he slew at his death, were more than they which he slew in his life."

What a history! How many things there are in it, which are hard to be understood! How many difficult questions rise up in our minds! Can we speak of Samson as a servant of God? Shall we justify his conduct? Shall we imitate it or shun it? His history has puzzled many. Some uphold him in all he did, whilst others condemn him without mercy. Let us try to take a calm and unprejudiced view of his character.

First, I think we are bound to look upon him as a Believer. For we find him to have been a man of prayer, and one who looked to God as his Helper in every time of need. Besides, his name is coupled with several others of God's servants by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews. He says there, in the eleventh chapter, "The time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,