with thee into the hands of the Philistines, and to-morrow thou and thy sons shall be with me. 1 Sam. xxviii. 16-19. SECTION I. The reply of Samuel is the language of surprise.—Wherefore then dost thou ask of me? If the Lord has cast thee off, how can I help thee? The peculiar laws by which the spirits of the dead are governed, we must die to know; but on this maxim rests no obscurity:—they cannot reverse the immutable purposes of God. None can stay his hand, or say unto him, what doest thou? The ghost therefore, conld not assist the monarch in retaining an elevation from which God had determined to depose him. Happy would it have been for Saul if he had invoked wisdom from Samuel sooner; or rather from Samuel's God. It was now too late; destruction was at hand, and, God had decided it should not be stayed. If by folly and forgetfulness you transform the sinner's friend into an enemy; relatives may lament over you when the sins of departed time encircle you about, and they behold the anguish of your souls. But they cannot "minister to a mind diseased." They cannot "pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow." They cannot rase out the written troubles of the brain." They know of no "oblivious antidote," that can ease a shuddering sufferer of the perilous load, which weighs upon the heart. No friend on earth, and no spirit in eternity, can infuse fortitude into a soul forsaken of God; or minister consolation to a hopeless spirit quaking on the margin of hell. Could he call back the moments which are past, hope would be his. But the time he hath lost, has fled for ever; while the dismaying thoughts of time lost, and with its loss an immortal mind destroyed, act on the soul like a moral poison, filling all its immensity with anguish unutterable-with loathing of life, and dread of death. How wretched then is the man who spends his life in treasuring up wrath, till the long-suffering of God expires in revelation of his righteous judgment; and he finds himself, at last, forsaken of all-of God and man-a vessel of wrath fitted for destruction. SECTION II. Samuel's words are the language of sorrow. Extreme was the affliction of the prophet when Jehovah repented that he had made Saul king. It grieved Samuel, and "he cried unto God" in prayer for him "all night." He " came no more to see him until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul." But if he grieved at his forfeiture of an earthly diadem, how would he mourn over his loss of a crown which fadeth not away. And if departed spirits know, as they probably do, the moral state of those they have left on earth, how would the seer sorrow to witness the life of sin Saul was pursuing; together with the disgrace and misery into which he was plunging himself and his family particularly when, commissioned by the Almighty to be the bearer of such heavy tidings to an old and bosom friend. I am aware that it may be asked if this notion be congruent with ideas of heavenly happiness? That the spirits of those who die in the Lord are perfectly happy, it would be equally useless to prove or to deny; but surely this admission involves no supposition which can operate against their sorrowing over the sins and calamities of careless relations yet on earth. Is not God happyperfectly happy? Yet how frequently do we read of grieving the Holy Spirit of the Lord. Unutterable was the emotion in the mind of God, when he looked upon the earth, and saw that the wickedness of man was great; and, when repenting that he had made man upon the earth, he was grieved at his heart. Feelings radically and essentially the same pervade all the celestial orders of thrones and dominions, principalities and powers, of the high and holy place; and if there is joy amongst the angels, over one sinner that repenteth, are we to suppose that they are so destitute of pity and love, as to feel no grief over a sinner that perisheth ?--grief perfectly consistent with rejoicing in a God, righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works? The eye of God was opened on Saul in his application to the enchantress. He knew his desire was once more to consult Samuel, and he sent the prophet to meet him and what emotions of sorrow would the glorified spirit feel, on leaving the realms of the blessed, to revisit earth, charged with a sentence so heavy against a man with whom he was once united in the closest bonds of friendship; with whom he had walked to the house of God, and taken sweet counsel. Could thy parents, O trifler-could thy friends, O thoughtless one, return to earth whilst thou art still in the broad, forbidden path: in what loud and bitter cries would they express their grief, that all the preaching of the Gospel, all the painful providences of God, all the strivings of the Holy Ghost, all the admonitions of " conscience are opposed and resisted, and the ruin of thy soul still the object of incessant pursuit. Oh! if thou art animated with a wish to be happy, with departed parents, and departed friends, make not God thy enemy; provoke not this awful being to swear in his wrath, thou shalt never enter into my rest. "Knowing the terrors of the Lord," let me persuade and adjure the hardened, by all that is bitter in remorse, by all that is intolerable in an awakened and unpurified conscience, by all that is fearful on the death-bed of impenitence, by all that is searching in the frown of an unreconciled Judge, by all that is repulsive in the fellowship of accursed spirits, by all that is woefully agonising in the worm that dieth not, and in the fire that is not quenched, to awaken from the dream of guilty insensibility and to flee from the wrath to come "to the hope set before them in the Gospel. SECTION III. The apparition pronounces the sentence of death. "Moreover the Lord will also deliver Israel with thee into the hands of the Philistines, and to-morrow thou and thy sons shall be with me;" that is, in death. Samuel here predicts three particulars, (1) the destruction of the army of Israel; (2) the death of Saul and his sons; and (3) that this punishment should be inflicted on the morrow. Now as God in Isaiah, chap. xli, ver. 21-24; and in chap. xliv, ver. 6-8, claims prescience as a perfection so absolutely essential to divinity, that on the power of foretelling future occurrences he rests the proof of his Godhead, he necessarily excludes all other beings-angels and men-witches and devils, from any participation in it. Neither therefore could the enchantress of Endor, nor her familiar spirit, foreknow the events predicted by the apparition: and as the power to explore futurity resides exclusively within the energies of omnipotence, the supposition that this spectral appearance was an imposture of the witch or her demon, will no more endure the test of reason, than of Scripture. And if we consider the subject attentively, we shall discover in it circumstances appropriate and peculiar. When Samuel denounced judgement on Saul at first, he wore a mantle by which Saul endeavoured to detain him till he should honour him before the elders of Israel. The mantle rent; improving that incident, said Samuel, the Lord hath rent the kingdom from thee. He now comes to ratify that sentence; and since he appears in semblance of the same mantle, may we not presume that the apparition raised the mantle, and pointing to the rent while he spoke, brought his crimes in more vivid colours to his remembrance ?-Thus may we suppose the Almighty to address the spirit worshipping before his throne," Go,—leave for a moment the seats of the happy, behold Saul seeketh thee; his career of iniquity is nearly ended. Go,-assume a material vehicle to render thy presence visible to mortal eye: appear in the mantle rent when sentence was denounced at first: tell him that to-morrow will end his days, point to the rent, thus cause his lurid life to pass before the gaze of his soul: see if in his last moments, and last distress, he will turn to God." Saul had now about twelve hours to live, and in this short period he had to repent of unnumbered sins, to save a soul from hell, and prepare it for God; he had to return to the camp, to array his soldiers for the war, and fight a battle with an inveterate foe, on the issue of which depended his crown, his life and his all. Here was the work of time and eternity-the work of earth and heaven-the work of both worlds crowded within the limited space of twelve hours! A work to perform which would live in its distant consequences for ever and ever: and which, if left unaccomplished, would involve body and soul in ruins, which admit of no boundaries but those of immortality. Sinner, art thou ready to blame the thoughtless monarch for delaying his eternal welfare till the mysteries of the invisible state were ready to burst upon him?-in so doing condemnest thou not thyself? Perhaps twelve hours, and thy clock of life will have performed its destined revolution! Perhaps six hours, and thy pulse will have beaten its last!-Nay one hour more, and thy spirit may return to God who gave it. And art thou better prepared for death than Saul? What, hast thou lived only to anger thy God? Hast thou passed forty or fifty years in sin, and hast thou now within the cycle of a day, to undo the work of half a century. Then no longer blame Israel's wayward sovereign. Arrived at the last moments of existence, and thy soul unsaved! Close not thy eyes to thy danger! Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming! Haste! Haste! time is on the wing. Should death's strong arm arrest, no human-no angelic power, can set thee free. The ghost of a friend came to Saul, and informed him that his moments were ebbing fastly to their finish." Could some "uncharnelled spectre" appear to us in the darkness of the ap proaching night, and utter,-" delegated by God, whose authority thou hast spurned, and whose grace thou hast neglected, I come to testify, that tomorrow and at this hour precisely, thou shalt be with me," should we spend the intervening period in labouring to erase the torturing impression? In endeavouring to bury life's last moment in forgetfulness? Rather should we not be all anxiety-all eagerness-all penitence-all prayer? Alas we know not that we shall live through another hour. The sentence is gone forth, "dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." But while that sentence is irrevocable, the moment of its execution is to all unknown. Days steal on us, and steal from us, and life like a river glides away, for ever changing, yet unperceived the change "In the same stream, none ever bathed him twice: To the same life, none ever twice awoke." we Or our lives may be compared to vessels on the waters; smoothly descend down the stream of time, yet with thoughts employed on other objects, we sail on, unconscious of the gliding wave: "Till on a sudden we perceive a shock--- Our voyage ended, and our souls lost! From such a wreck, and such a loss, my fellow voyager labour to save thyself. From such a wreck of feeling—of happiness—of intellect—of immortality— Good Lord deliver us. PART THE THIRD.-The denunciation of Jehovah by the delegated ghost is executed, and impenitent Saul dies forsaken of God. SECTION I. Samuel having Saul gives indication of deep agony of mind. accomplished his commission disappears, and we are left under the darkened heavens, in company with the witch of Endor, and the man forsaken of God. Yet ere the apparition vanishes, gaze on the countenance of unhappy Saul. Read there the anguish of a seared and blighted heart; the stings of a conscience oppressed with guilt; the horrors of a soul tremblingly alive to its danger; the innate tortures of that deep despair, which so unnerved the whole man, that "Saul fell straightway all along on the earth, and there was no strength in him." The rent in the mantle recalled his sins to memory, and they appeared before him in all their repulsive colours. He had been |