1 Samuel 3:8

And ere the lamp of God went out.

The lights of the sanctuary ever burning

A blacksmith can do nothing when his fire is out, and in this respect he is the type of a minister If all the lights in the outside world are quenched the lamps that burn in the sanctuary ought still to remain undimmed; for that fire no curfew must ever be rung (C. H. Spurgeon.)

A memorable surprise

With the first mention of the temple we have the last mention of the candlestick, for, as Dean Stanley points out, its place was taken by ten separate lamp stands in Solomon’s temple, end that which appears represented on the arch of Titus at Rome was a copy of the original made for Herod’s temple, and carried off at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman conqueror. This lamp of the Lord was lit at sunset and supplied with sufficient oil to last through the night. At sunrise the lights were extinguished. The narrative therefore suggests that it was in the early morning the Lord appeared to Samuel. In Nature’s morning, and in the morn of life, came the sunrise of the soul, the great spiritual awakening to the Hebrew boy. It came when the world was still and the heart was young. (J. B. Morgan.)

And Samuel was laid down to sleep.--

Little Samuel in bed

There was once a great painter, and his name was Sir Peter Lennie, and Sir Peter Lennie said that he never looked at a bad picture; for if he looked at a bad picture, he was quite sure when he began to paint next time one of his colours would have a bad tint, or one of big figures would have a crooked line. So we will not look at a bad picture, but a good one, and Samuel is a good one. Josephus, who wrote “the history of the Jews.” tells us that Samuel was twelve years old when that happened which we are going to think about now. It is a very great thing to be twelve years old. I find that in the Bible. Do you know when a little Jew became twelve years old, then he was admitted into the Jewish Church; and he was therefore called “the child of the law;” it was something like our “Confirmation,” that is at twelve years old. Do you remember a little girl, twelve years old (who had died) to whom Jesus was very kind? Do you remember He raised her from the dead? He said to her “Talitha cumi.” She rose up, and do you know Jesus was very kind; He thought she was hungry, and He said, “Give her something to eat.” It was very thoughtful and kind to say that! Do you know what Jesus did when He was twelve years old? Did He teach the scribes and elders? No, He did not. Did He learn of them? Yes, when He was twelve years old, He went and “asked them questions.” And Samuel was twelve years old at the time we are going to think about him. Little Samuel went to bed. He had a right to go to bed. He had earned his bed. He had been very busy all day--for it says just before, be had been “ministering,” that is serving all day. Do you earn your bed? He had earned his by being very busy. I want to speak a little about going to bed. When you go to bed take care of two things--Wash, and wind up the clock. Don’t misunderstand me. I say wash. Do I mean wash your body? Yes, I say God tells us to do that. Be very particular about washing, because it says in the tenth chapter of the Hebrews, we are not only to have “our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience,” but “our bodies washed with pure water.” I would not give much for the religion of that boy or girl who is not very clean, very particular about washing. Do you know what I mean by “winding up the clock?” You have got something inside you like a clock--your heart. There are a great many strange works there like a clock. You will find this, if you do not take care, it will run down and stop. I wind up my watch every night; you must wind up your heart every night, or else it will stop. Pray to God about it; wind it up. I do not know where little Samuel’s bed was; you do not know, do you? I should think it was very near the ark, and very near Eli’s, but it was not in the same room as Eli’s One thing I will tell you, it was at the foot of Jacob’s ladder. If you see a little baby in the cradle, that little baby is sleeping at the foot of Jacob’s ladder. Every cradle in the world is at the foot of Jacob’s ladder. I like that thought very much, don’t you. If you are a good child, I am sure it will be. Your bed will be at the foot of Jacob’s ladder. I hope when you go to bed you will have what little Samuel had--do you know what he had? A very soft pillow. Miss Havergall has written a very pretty book on “Little Pillows.” I will tell you how she came to write it. There was a little girl of the name of Ethel, she came to stay with her aunt, and after she bad been tucked up, and her aunt had given her the last kiss, and was just going away, her aunt came back and said, “Ethel, would you like a little pillow?” She looked round on the bed, and saw she had a little soft one there, and she said, “I have got one auntie.” “I don’t mean that,” her aunt replied. “I mean another kind of pillow It is very nice when you go to bed to have a thought, perhaps a text of the Bible, and as you put your head on the pillow, so you put that little text or thought under your heart, and it makes a nice soft pillow to go to sleep upon. Would you like me to give you one?” “Yes, indeed,” replied little Ethel. So her auntie gave her a little text to be a pillow for her to sleep softly on. That made Miss Havergall write her book. So she has given just thirty-one little pillows--one for every night in the month; and she has written another little book called “Morning Bells,” thoughts for the morning. I should advise you to get these two little books and read them--“Little Pillows” and “Morning Bells.” Some say--in the 127th Psalm, it does not mean, “God gives His beloved sleep,” but “God gives to His beloved while they are sleeping.” Can God give us anything while we are sleeping? Yes, I think he does. There are different kinds of calls. Sometimes God calls us to give up naughty things, to become a Christian. Was that Samuel’s call? No, because Samuel was a good boy. He was God’s child. He was what we call “a Christian” then. He was called to do something. God called him by the name of “Samuel.” And little Samuel made a mistake when he thought it was a man speaking to him, and not God. Perhaps you are making the same mistake now? Who is speaking to you now? I, or God? Which? God. When you go home, and your father and mother tell you something, who is telling it you? Your father or mother, or God? God. Because God made your father and mother. He made you their child, and He tells you to “obey your father and mother,” and He is speaking to you through them. And if you disobey your father and mother, you disobey God. I think I once told you what is the seal upon “The Baptist Missionary Society.” They have on their seal--shall I tell you what? An ox, and on one side of the ox is a plough, and on the other side is an altar; and the ox is saying, in Latin, that he is “ready for either”--ready to go and be killed if it is wanted, or ready to go and drag the plough, if it is wanted. Willing for either. Here I am, ready for anything. If God wishes me to die, I am ready to die; if God wishes me to work, I am ready for work. Ready for either. “Here I am.” I heard of a little girl who said to her mother one day, “Mamma, now let’s sit very quiet, don’t let us speak a word--let’s be very still, and let us try if we cannot hear the angels singing up in heaven.” The little girl could not hear that; but it was a nice thought! “Let us be quite still, and see if we cannot hear the angels speak.” If you will be very still, and say, “Speak, Lord; I will listen:” God will speak to you. I am sure He will. Do you know--it is a wonderful thing--that God tells secrets to little children that He does not tell to anybody else. God did not tell Eli, though Eli was an old man; but he told the little boy of twelve years of age; He told him a secret; He told His secret to the little boy. Do you remember anything like that in the New Testament? Do you remember there was only one time in all His life that we are told Jesus was happy, that “He rejoiced in spirit.” You will find in Luke 10:21, what it was that made Jesus happy. God shows His secrets to babes. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

1 Samuel 3:8

Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child.

Inward convictions

I. We may define a call, as usually understood, to be an inward conviction of the soul that such and such is the will of God concerning it, accompanied with an irresistible desire to obey the conviction. In such cases a test is required. There is perhaps no extent of self-deception to which ah individual may not be led who concentrates the whole of his thoughts and meditations upon the internal emotions of which he is sensible. Hence the necessity of erecting a tribunal without, to which may be referred the judgment of the inward conviction, and by which we may see whether the voice which is abroad in our hearts, stirring and moving, harmonises with the voice of parents and brethren and priest, that so we may, with Eli, perceive of a surety whether the Lord hath called His child.

II. There is another criterion by which men might go far to ascertain the nature of those internal sensations of which they speak, namely, the criterion of outward circumstances. In order to test feeling, we want something removed as far as possible from what is exciting. In the majority of cases it may be fairly assumed that what we are is what God would have us be; the station of life in which we find ourselves is that which He would have us fill. When, therefore, we seem to be Divinely led to an extraordinary course of conduct, it is no vain prudence which bids us inquire whether outward circumstances tend to encourage or dissuade us. (Bishop Woodford.)

God’s call to the child

We can recall a day of spring which began with a clear, bright morning, bathed in sunshine and song, and giving every promise of fair and steady weather. But ere noon the clouds gathered and grey shrouds covered all the blue and gold of the sky. And then the rain came and drenched well-nigh to drowning our last hope of a fair evening. But just as the sun was setting, the veil of cloud lifted in the west, and a sudden gleam of glory shot across the world before all was dark and drear again. So it was with the day of Eli’s life. Fair promise of an early manhood was belied by the failure of later years, and we welcome with joy, which yet has its pang of regret, this one gleam of light that shows up in the sad eventide of an old man’s broken day. Surely, without unduly spiritualising this simple little incident, we can see in it a parable of history. First of all, Hannah’s loan of her boy to the Lord was but the outcome of the instinct of Judaism. From the very first days of the Mosaic dispensation, the children, and particularly the first-born, were dedicated to the Lord. This recognition of the claim of God on the child is, moreover, not one of the merely fugitive elements of Judaism. Much of that great system of religion has passed away--it has been superseded by Christ’s more perfect system. All through the ages the Lord has called the children with a gentle voice that has sounded in the shrine of the child’s own heart--surely the purest and sweetest tabernacle that God can inhabit. One thing is made very clear to us as we study the Bible in its attitude to the child, and that is that child life is of untold value in the sight of God. The position of the child in Judaism was in striking contrast to that occupied by children in the religions of the surrounding nations and of later ages. We can gauge pretty accurately the value put upon child life in Egypt by Pharaoh’s edict, from the results of which Moses was so strangely preserved. Centuries later, the King of Edom sacrificed his son “for a burnt offering upon the wall.” Thus men sought to propitiate their duties by offering “the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their souls.” But, looking in the most favourable light at this sacrifice of children--and perhaps Tennyson’s “Victim” gives us the most generous interpretation, is it not a dreadful misinterpretation of the call of Jehovah to the children? It is not their sacrifice at the hands of others that He desires, but the offering of the living sacrifice of their own hearts and service at their own hands. Children have too often been made the vicarious sufferers for others in cases where the vicarious principle does not apply. When we come to more recent times we find that even the value of a sacrifice is denied to child life. The Roman father was allowed to refuse to accept as his charge any child born to him, if he thought it physically defective or even numerically superfluous. If on its being presented to him he refused to take it in his arms, it was forthwith put out of the way. In Greece it was much the same. The caves beneath Mount Taygetus were full of the bodies of infants that had been exposed by parents, who were fully at liberty to repudiate the duties of parentage. Think for a moment of the swarming crowds of children forever playing in our streets. “The shout of happy children at their play” sounds poetic until we see the class to whom the words refer most largely, and then we wonder if they are happy. You who live in your comfortable homes, and snugly tuck your own bairns up in their warm, cosy beds at seven or eight o’clock, and would not think of allowing them out after dark, what think you of the little ones who answer your call from your doorstep five minutes later for the “Latest Edition?” And yet their souls and bodies are as important in God’s sight as the souls and bodies of your own more favoured pets. Truly, the Eli of today still fails to perceive that the Lord has called the child. Our Factory Acts have vastly improved the whole matter of child labour. I remember a friend of mine in a colliery district in the North of England telling me how he was carried at the age of six (for he was too much afraid of the dark above ground to go alone) to the mouth of the coal pit in the early morning, and then, in the company of two or three other babies of the same age, he went down, clown to the dark and noisome galleries below to act as putters--that is, to open and shut the wooden doors for the trucks that passed so close to them that they dared not breathe while they passed. That is done away. Recent Temperance legislation has abolished much of the abuse connected with the serving of children with drink. But much still remains to be done before Christian England can shake off the reproach of Eli that he was so slow to perceive that the Lord had called the child The modern problem of Hooliganism is largely the outcome of dereliction of duty in this matter. We find in studying the Gospel that Jesus gives a prominent place to the child. Christ has a message for the child. Long centuries of the Christian era let that call and the child’s wistful enquiry as to its meaning go alike almost unheeded. It is one of the chief glories of the Evangelical Revival that its leaders “perceived that the Lord had called the child.” And one of the earliest outcomes of the great Methodist awakening of the religious life of England was the establishment of Sunday Schools. The ideal of the Christian Church as set before her by her Master and Lord will never be attained until she has thoroughly grasped as a principle, and applied in practice, our Lord’s teaching regarding the child. This is twofold--subjective and objective. The subjective aspect of His teaching is that in which the child is made by Him a model in character building. “Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The objective aspect of His teaching is given us in the words, “Whosoever receiveth one of such little children in My name, receiveth Me; and whosoever receiveth Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me.” (G. Waddy Polkinghorne.)