1 Samuel 1:28

REFLECTIONS

How sweetly the Holy Ghost teacheth the Church in the history of all characters, the universal taint which marks our poor fallen nature! Elkanah, though a pious man, cannot be content without breaking the order of God, in a double marriage. And Hannah, though a partaker of grace, must have a child, or she is a woman of a sorrowful spirit. Oh! how fully doth God the Spirit teach us, by such views, the necessity of redemption by Jesus. Dearest Redeemer! we humbly feel our need of thee, and earnestly pray to be interested in thee. Lord! without thee, and thy righteousness, what are the best of men, but sin and corruption!

See Reader in this verse of Hannah's petition, the blessed effects of prayer! What cannot prayer accomplish! Prayer can shut up, and open again the windows of heaven. For Elias we are told, was a man of like passions with ourselves; and yet at his cry, so the Lord answered. Hannah was one also partaking of human infirmity. And yet the Lord proved himself a prayer-hearing, and a prayer-answering God. Oh! for faith, to plead with God in Jesus's name, nothing doubting, and our Lord Jesus hath said, that all things we ask believing we shall receive.

I detain the Reader with one observation more, in the dedication of Samuel to the Lord, to remark the sweetness, and graciousness of pious parents making a solemn surrender of their little ones to the Lord. To whom shall we commit them, but to Him from whom we have received them? May not every pious parent say; 'All cometh, Lord, from thine hand, all is thine own, and of thine own do I give thee'. But how is this subject heightened to the soul of the believer, in the recollection that such was the unequalled love of the Father to a lost world, that he gave his only begotten Son, to the end, that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life: Oh! forever blessed be God for Jesus Christ!