1 Samuel 1:28

I have lent him to the Lord.

Samuel, the Child-Christian

There is no child explicable apart from his parentage. The foundations of one generation are in all respects laid in the antecedent generation. In an important sense the boy begins to live when his father begins to live. The child is the parent continued down into a new generation. And so Scripture biography, much of it, begins with a statement and exposition of parentage. You remember how it was with Jesus, with John the Baptist, and now with Samuel. Science today lays large stress on heredity. Revelation emphasised heredity long before science was born. Francillon says that “the lives of the mothers of great men form an important branch of biographical literature.” The author of the old Hebrew chapter quietly asserts the same fact by going about to narrate to us Samuel by first acquainting us with his mother. There are numerous intimations in Scripture that in the bequest of spiritual legacies the law of heritage works with peculiar constancy and vigour. “The promise is unto you and to your children.” And that occurs as a frequent and favourite thought, “I will establish my covenant with Isaac for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.” And this principle is wrought into the structure of the whole Jewish record. It is as though God held parent and child in one individual compact of grace, parental faith throwing itself forward upon the child, and working in and for the child vicariously; the faith of the parent becoming in time the child’s faith, just as by a physical law the features of the father and mother reappear in time in the child’s face, in growing distinctness. Of Elkanah, Samuel’s father, little notice is taken. A single remark of his indicates the mutual loyalty and confidences of husband and wife, and along the course of the first chapter is shown his faithful observance of religious obligations. But Samuel was preeminently his mother’s boy, as boys are apt to be. It was his mother that prayed for him; his mother that took him to Shiloh with the bullocks, the flour, and the wine; his mother that offered him in consecration. Appreciating the quality of the parentage, then, we have laid for us a basis of just expectancy touching the quality of the offspring. We must just mention Samuel’s early connection with the church and the sanctuary. I suppose that this, too, had its strengthening and educating effect. It was just in the midst of the sanctuary that the Lord’s presence became manifest in him, and that the Divine voice shouted clearly and intelligibly in his ears. We may gather from the fact that there is great virtue in early and affectionate association with the church, and in earnest participation in things that concern the church. But great as is the supplementary service which the church can render the child, the home is at once his physical birthplace and his proper spiritual birth place. It is a Spanish proverb that an ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. The home is the first church, the hearthstone the first altar, and the father and mother the first priests. And so the more home there is in the home, the more readily and completely does it fulfil its offices as a child church. And the home, for the same reason, is the child’s proper Sunday school. It is not quite evident how Christian parents can ever farm out their children to the spiritual nurture of strangers. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)

A mother’s formative influence on the characters of her children

Who can hear the name of St. Augustine--that shining light, twice on the point of being extinguished, but snatched by turns from sin and heresy, to glorify the true and living God down to the latest posterity. Who can think of his name without joining with him in recognising, in his two-fold deliverance--next to the hand of God--the influence of the tender, humble, patient Monica? Theodoret, Basil the Great, Emmilia, Chrysostom, and many of those who have walked in their ways, had each their Monica; and were each proofs of the power of a mother’s prayers. In later times we read of Bishop Hall, Philip Henry, and his son Matthew, Hooker, Payson, Doddridge, the Wesleys, and of many other bright stars still shining in the churches, who have had pious mothers, and who have confessed to the power of a mother’s influence. John Newton learned to pray at his mother’s knee; and such was the influence of her life upon his mind (and, be it remembered, that she was called to her heavenly home before her son John was eight years of age), that in after years, when at sea, and in the midst of many dangers, his agonising prayer often was, “my mother’s god, Thou God of Mercy, have mercy on me!” The prayer was heard, and from that time the name of “John Newton” has been a name honoured in the churches, and he will remain yet for ages as “a burning and a shining light.” It was through Newton that Thomas Scott, the commentator, was led to Christ, and Wilberforce, the champion of the freedom of the slave, and the author of that “Practical View of Christianity,” which brought Leigh Richmond into the ministry of Christ. And who shall now go further in attempting to estimate the probable influence of one pious mother? (Footsteps of Truth.)

Vows fulfilled

Hannah’s fulfilment of her vow was to be an ample, prompt, honourable fulfilment. Many a one who makes vows or resolutions under the pressure and pinch of distress immediately begins to pare them down when the pinch is removed, like the merchant in the storm who vowed a hecatomb to Jupiter, then reduced the hecatomb to a single bullock, the bullock to a sheep, the sheep to a few dates; but even these he ate on the way to the altar, laying on it only the stones. Not one jot would Hannah abate of the full sweep and compass of her vow. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)

The connection between God and children to be cultivated

Do not treat lightly, O parents, the connection between God and your children! Cherish the thought that they are God’s gifts, God’s heritage to you, committed by Him to you to bring up, but not apart from Him, not in separation from those holy influences which He alone can impart, and which He is willing to impart. What a cruel thing it is to cut this early connection between them and God, and send them drifting through the world like a ship with a forsaken rudder, that flaps hither and thither with every current of the sea. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)

The dedication of Samuel

In those rude times which long preceded the birth of science in our country, when there was no appliance of steam to wear vessels off the dangers of a lee shore, nor lights shone forth on sunken reef or rocky headland to guide them through the gloom of night, one of the royal family of Scotland was in imminent hazard of shipwreck. After every effort had been made, but made in vain, to wear off shore, he vowed a vow that it God would interpose to deliver them from death, he would build and endow a chapel, as an acknowledgment of God’s gracious interposition and an expression of his own gratitude. They were saved. And, though a Papist, a better man than many Protestants who forget, in the day of returned health or prosperity, the vows and resolutions formed in an hour of trouble, he fulfilled his promise. In the erection of Maison Dieu Chapel (in Brechin, Forfar), for so it is called, David, Earl of Huntingdon, paid his vow. Associated though it be with popish superstitions, it sprang from higher motives than either ecclesiastical pride or sectarian rivalry; and humble as these ruins are now, they form a venerable and interesting memorial of the simple faith, and devout piety, that ever and anon, like the blaze of a brilliant meteor, lighted up the long night of the dark ages of the Church. Such dedications and vows as those to which that chapel owed its existence, have fallen into too great disuse. The devout, but too much neglected, practice which these famous saints observed, Hannah also recommends to our imitation. It was in the performance of such a vow that she returned to the house of God, not empty handed; but to earn, if I may say so, the high encomium pronounced on her of whom our Lord said, “She hath given all she had.” In that child of prayer, her only son, the boy whom she leads lovingly by the hand, Hannah presented to God a gift more beautiful and costly, more precious far, than Jacob’s tithe of corn and cattle, or David’s richest spoils of war. A blessed contrast to another woman, the unhappy partner of Ananias’ guilt and also of his doom, who, pretending, while a part was withheld, that the whole price had been given, lied to the Holy Ghost, Hannah, in going to perform her vow, like a martyr marching to the stake, “walks in her integrity.” Hannah’s case was peculiar. She might, repenting of her vow, have kept back not a part of the price, but the whole; nor thereby laid herself open to challenge or censure; to the taunts of Peninnah, her enemy, or of anyone else. When she vowed that if God would give her a son, he should be the Lord’s, Eli saw her lips move; but no more--and hearing nothing took her for a drunken woman. Only God and she herself knew what these lips had said. That was enough for Hannah. It should be so for us. “Thou God seest me,” should place us in circumstances of greater restraint than broad daylight, the public street, the eyes of a theatre of spectators; even so it was a sufficient reason for Hannah performing her vow that God had heard the words of her noiseless lips, and that the vow, though a secret to others, was none to Him. It is to the honour of Hannah’s sex that the only two offerings on which Jesus, He who offered himself for her and us on the cross, ever bestowed the meed of His applause, were both made by women. The one was a widow. Poor, and meanly clad, in her offering as much as in her dress, she presented a remarkable contrast to many who, sweeping into the house of God, attired in all the gaieties of changing fashions, give a wide berth to the plate at the door, or drop into the offertory, without a blush of shame, the merest, meanest pittance. Though but two mites, hers was a munificent gift, being her little all. The other woman, praised by Him whom all heaven praises, was one--strange as it will appear to such as have not reflected on the blessed truth, that a fallen is not necessarily a lost woman--from whose touch decency and decorum shrinks. As the phrase went, “she was a sinner.” Lying, where all have need, and the purest love, to lie, at Jesus’ feet, she washes them with a flood of tears; and, taking an alabaster box of precious ointment, pours its fragrance on the feet that for her, and us, were ire be nailed on Calvary. Beside these women Hannah deserves a place. In her dedication of Samuel, in giving him up who was the light of her eyes and the joy of her home, she parted for God’s sake and his service with the costliest, the most prized and precious, thing in her possession. Before turning the dedication of Samuel to a practical use, let me observe, that though we may have to wait for the reward and recompense in heaven, Hannah had not so long to wait. She says of Samuel, “I have lent him to the Lord;” and God paid her good interest for the loan. Ages before the great words were uttered by the lips of Jesus, she proved the truth of His saying, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” “There is that scattereth,” says the wise man, “and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat.” Such was Hannah’s experience. She gave away one child, and God paid her back with five; and promptly too. To turn the dedication of Samuel to a seasonable and important use, let me ask why so few parents now follow Hannah’s example? why so few either dedicate themselves, or are dedicated by others to the Christian ministry? When other professions are overstocked, why is it that almost all the churches, both in this country and in America, are complaining of a hack of candidates for the sacred office, and especially of such as possess not only the piety, but the talents and culture which it requires? Why should not our Christian youth come forward to embrace this noblest, though meanwhile poorest, of all professions? Some years ago, leaving titles, estates, luxurious mansions, kind fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and blooming brides, many threw themselves on the shores of the Black Sea, to face frost and famine, pestilence and iron showers of death, under the walls of Sebastopol! And shall piety blush before patriotism? Shall Jesus Christ call in vain for less costly sacrifices--either of money or of men? Let those whom Providence has enriched, some with silver and some with sons, remember the touching question one wrote beneath a figure of our Lord stretched bleeding on the cross, “This Thou hast done for me, what shall I do for Thee?” (T. Guthrie, D. D.).