the matter, we quite understand why God characterized it as a rejection of Himself, and that in reference to it

He directed Samuel to "bear strong testimony against them."

But sin is ever also folly. In asking for a monarchy like those around them, the people were courting a

despotism whose intolerable yoke it would not be possible for them to shake off in the future (1 Samuel

8:18). Accordingly, in this respect Samuel was to set before them "the right of the king" (vers. 9, 11),78 that

is, the royal rights, as claimed by heathen monarchs. But whether from disbelief of the warning, or the

thought that, if oppressed, they would be able to right themselves, or, as seems to us, from deliberate choice

in view of the whole case, the "elders" persisted in their demand. And, truth to say, in the then political

circumstances of the land, with the bond of national unity almost dissolved, and in the total failure of that

living realization of the constant Presence of the Divine "Judge," which, if it had existed, would have made

His "reign" seem the most to be desired, but, when wanting, made the present state of things appear the

most incongruous and undesirable, their choice seems to us only natural. In so doing, however, they

became openly unfaithful to their calling, and renounced the principle which underlay their national history.

Yet even so, it was but another phase in the development of this history, another stage in the progress

towards that end which had been viewed and willed from the first.79