THE ALTARS ARE OVERTHROWN.

that God would deliver them by his hand. And God gave him a sign, to assure him that he would be with him.

Gideon was soon at the head of an army of two-and-thirty thousand

men, but God told him the people were too many, and that if they won the battle they would declare they had done so in their own strength. So Gideon ordered all that were in the least degree afraid to go to their

homes, and twenty-two thousand went away. There still remained ten thousand, and this God told Gideon was too large a number; three hundred only were chosen-for God can save by few as well as by many -and these, with Gideon, went up against the enemy. Every man carried in his hand a trumpet, an empty pitcher, with a lighted torch inside. They came secretly upon the camp of the enemy under cover of the night, and, as soon as they were very near, Gideon gave the signal,

and all blew their trumpets, and shouted, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon ;" at the same moment they dashed their pitchers in pieces, and the bright glare of their torches flashed in the eyes of their foes. The light, the trumpet blast, the shouts of battle, terrified the enemy, who imagined that a great army had come against them, and fled in confusion.

Thus it was that God, by the hand of Gideon, delivered the Israelites from their foes.

Other great and mighty men were raised up by God to lead the people-men of whose brave doings we have not space to tell. But one of the most remarkable was Samson.

Samson was a man who had been vowed to God from his infancy. His hair had never been cut-that was part of the vow-and he never drank any wine or strong drink. This man possessed immense strength and great courage. One day a lion attacked him, and he seized hold of it by the jaws and rent it in two. Some days afterwards, when he was passing by that way, he found that wild bees had swarmed in the body of the dead lion, and he took some of the honey and did eat. Not long afterwards, Samson was married, and the woman he married belonged to the enemies of the Israelites they were called Philistines. At the wedding feast Samson proposed a puzzling question to the young men—a sort of enigma -and gave them seven days to find it out, promising to give them, should they be successful, some costly presents. The puzzle was, "Out of the

eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' They tried hard to find out what it meant, but could not, and they persuaded Samson's wife to make him tell her, so that she might tell them; and he, foolish man, little thinking of the use she was about to make of it, told her about the lion and the honey. On the seventh day the young men gave the answer-" What is sweeter than honey, and what is stronger than a lion?" Samson no sooner heard the answer than he suspected how they had found it out. He gave them the promised reward, but was very angry, and from that time forth he was the bitter foe of the Philistines. They took away his wife, and he burnt up their corn. This made the Philistines more cruel to the Israelites, who became so terrified at what Samson had done, that they bound him with cords, and gave him up a prisoner into the hands of his foes. The Philistines shouted when they saw him; but their joy was quickly turned to mourning: Samson burst the cords that bound him, and with no stronger weapon than the jawbone of an ass, killed a thousand men.

On another occasion Samson was in a city called Gaza, and when the Philistines heard of it they shut the gates and prepared to take him; but he rose up at midnight, and putting the gates of the city on his shoulders, carried them away with him to the top of a hill. At another time the Philistines offered a large reward to a woman, named Delilah, a woman whom Samson loved, to find out the secret of his strength. He refused to tell her for a long while; but at last he trusted her—his strength was in his hair. She watched till he was asleep, called in a man to shave off his locks, and then, rudely waking him, called out, "The Philistines be on thee, Samson." He rose up, not knowing what had happened; but his strength was gone from him, and his enemies bound him with chains, put out his eyes, carried him prisoner to Gaza, where they made him grind a mill, and gave thanks to their false god Dagon for the victory they had obtained.

THE STORY OF SAMSON.

At one of their feasts the Philistines had Samson brought into the house where they were assembled, to mock at him, and make him show feats of strength. There were some thousands of persons in the building, and blind Samson stood before them. And he prayed, “O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes." Breathing this prayer, Samson took hold of the two middle pillars on which the building stood, of the one with his right hand, of the other with his left, and he said, "Let me die with the Philistines.' He bowed himself with all his might; the pillars shook, the house trembled, and fell in one great heap of ruin, burying beneath it all that were there.

Thus died Samson, judge of Israel.

He had been

The last of the judges was the prophet Samuel. vowed to God's service by his mother before he was born, and while he was yet a very young child he had been brought to the house of the Lord, and had dwelt with the priest Eli.

Now you must know that Eli the priest was a very old man, and foolishly fond of his sons. He had allowed them to do just as they pleased, until at last they cared neither for him nor for any one-nay, they cared nothing for God; and yet they as well as their father were priests of the Lord. They were very wicked, stubborn, selfish young men, and they behaved so badly that the people began to despise not only them, but the priesthood altogether, and not only the priesthood, but the very God they ought to have adored. When Eli heard of his sons' doings, he spoke to them very seriously, and tried to dissuade them from their evil ways. "Why," he said to them, "do ye such things? for I hear of your evil dealings by all this people. Nay, my sons; for it is no people to sin; if one man

good report that I hear: ye make the Lord's

sin against another, the judge shall judge him; but if a man sin against