followers, or as the desperate resolve of men who felt that all was at stake, this time they waited not to be

attacked by the Israelites. In the battle which ensued, and the flight of Israel which followed, no less than

thirty thousand dead strewed the ground. In the number of the slain were Hophni and Phinehas, and among

the booty the very ark of God was taken! Thus fearfully did judgment commence in the house of Eli; thus

terribly did God teach the lesson that even the most sacred symbol connected with His immediate Presence

was in itself but wood and gold, and so far from being capable of doing wonders, might even be taken and

carried away. Tidings of this crashing defeat were not long in reaching Shiloh. Just outside the gate of the

sanctuary, by the way which a messenger from the battlefield must come, sat the aged high-priest. His eyes

were "stiffened" by age, but his hearing was keen as he waited with anxious heart for the expected news.

The judgment foretold, the presence of his two sons with the army in the field, the removal of the ark,

without any Divine authority, at the bidding of a superstitious people, must have filled him with sad

misgivings. Had he been right in being a consenting party to all this? Had he been a faithful father, a faithful

priest, a faithful guardian of the sanctuary? And now a confused noise as of a tumult reached him. Up the

slopes which led to Shiloh, "with clothes rent and earth upon his head," in token of deepest meaning, ran a

Benjamite, a fugitive from the army. Past the h igh-priest he sped, without stopping to speak to him whose

office had become empty, and whose family was destroyed. Now he has reached the market-place; and up

and down those steep, narrow streets fly the tidings. They gather around him; they weep, they cry out in

the wildness of their grief, and "the noise of the crying" is heard where the old man sits alone still waiting

for tidings. The messenger is brought to him. Stroke upon stroke falls upon him the fourfold disaster: "Israel

is fled!" "a great slaughter among the people!" "thy two sons are dead!" "the ark of God is taken!" It is this

last most terrible blow, rather than anything else, which lays low the aged priest. As he hears of the ark of

God, he falls backward unconscious, and is killed in the fall by "the side of the gate" of the sanctuary. Thus

ends a judgeship of forty years! 47

Yet another scene of terror. Within her house lies the wife of Phinehas, with the sorrows and the hopes of

motherhood upon her. And now these tidings have come into that darkened chamber also. They gather

around her as the shadows of death. In vain the women that are about try to comfort her with the

announcement that a son has been born to her. She answers not, neither regards it. She cannot forget her

one great sorrow even in this joy that a man is born into the world. She has but one word, even for her new-

born child: "Ichabod," "no glory." To her he is Ichabod - for the glory is departed from Israel. And with that

word on her lips she dies. The deepest pang which had wrought her death was, as in the case of her father-

in-law, that the ark, the glory of Israel, was no more.48 Two have died that day in Shiloh of grief for the ark of

God - the aged high-priest and the young mother; two, whose death showed at least their own fidelity to

their God and their heart -love for His cause and presence.

But although such heavy judgment had come upon Israel, it was not intended that Philistia should triumph.

More than that, in the hour of their victory the heathen must learn that t heir gods were not only wholly

powerless before Jehovah, but merely idols, the work of men's hands. The Philistines had, in the first place,

brought the ark to Ashdod, and placed it in the temple of Dagon as a votive offering, in acknowledgment of

the victory which they ascribed to the agency of their national god. Had not the ark of God been brought

into the camp of Israel, and had not the God of Israel been defeated and led captive in His ark through the

superior power of Dagon? But they were soon to feel that it was not so; and when on the morn of its arrival

at Ashdod, the priests opened the temple doors, they found the statue of their god thrown upon its face in

front of the ark. It might have been some accident; and the statue, with its head and bust of a bearded man,

and body in the form of a fish,49 was replaced in the cella at the entrance of the temple. But next morning the

head and hands, which were in human form, were found cut off and lying on the threshold, as if each entrant

should in contempt t read upon these caricatures of ideal humanity; and nothing but the Dagon itself,50 the

fish-body, was left, which once more lay prostrate before the ark.

But this was not all. If the gods of Philistia were only vanity, the power and strength in which the people

may have boasted, were likewise to appear as unavailing before the Lord. He "laid waste" the people of

Ashdod - as we infer from 1 Samuel 6:4, 11, 18 - by that terrible plague of southern countries, field -mice,