Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial.
Indulgent home life
I. The sins it induces. The sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are the more prominent, so we will contemplate,
1. Their conduct and character. They appear in an official capacity; but the official must be viewed in its association with the personal, A degenerate priest is but the natural outgrowth of the degenerate man. The evil is in the moral constitution of these men, and whatever they do, wherever they go, it will appear.
(1) They were audacious. (Ver. 12.) The children of Satan, and yet in the temple of God. They knew not the Lord. There are certain qualifications needful to the right discharge of every occupation, and he is a bold man who will undertake the duty without the fitness. What verdict would society pass upon anyone who should pursue the career of a doctor, without having studied the principles of anatomy, ignorant of the laws of medicine? Death to the patient would in all probability be the result. Much more criminal he who will engage to remedy the malady of the immortal soul when ignorant of its antidote. “They knew not the Lord.” They were in the very place surrounded by indications of the Divine--how wilful their ignorance! The history of their religious life was embodied in the ark; they could not look upon its ancient timbers without seeing in every board the mercy and providence of God. But their hearts were out of sympathy with these holy associations, and instead of stimulating to devotion, habitual contact with such sanctities led to criminal familiarity. When it is said that they knew not the Lord, it cannot mean that they doubted the reality of His existence. Faint gleams of His essential life had shone upon their intellects. Though in the sunlight, they saw not the beauties it revealed. Probably when at first they entered upon the Temple duties it was with feeble steps--the pallor of a revealed dread would blanch their cheeks; but now fear had lost its tremor in the cool hardihood of habitual sin. What a degree of defiance does their conduct disclose!
(2) They were covetous. (Vers. 18, 14.) What a contradiction is an avaricious priesthood! how strangely out of harmony with the royal beneficence of its Institutor, and the noble munificence of its intended exercise. A devoted ministry looks more to the Divine remuneration than to the human, and does not strike its “fish hook” into the “caldron” of the worshipper. So instead of stimulating the religious sentiments of penitent souls, and lifting them to God, they perverted the design of their office by making themselves the object of its toil. “The priest took for himself.” Such a class of men have almost unlimited scope for the exercise of their purpose. The strongest instincts of the soul are those which pertain to God and His worship. Hence when claims are presented to the mentally weak and morally credulous, such demands have but to be uttered to be obeyed. How mean thus to make religion a means of personal gain!
(3) They were despotic. (Ver. 16.) Coercion is operating without its sphere when brought to bear on matters of religion. Spiritual life and devotion are essentially free, both as regards the principle of its action and the form of its homage. “I will take it by force” of these wicked priests. A religion that cannot establish its claim by motive must be weak. Force is always the weapon of the morally imbecile.
(4) They were adulterous. (Ver. 22.)
(5) They brought contempt upon religion. (Ver. 17.) Men failed to make a distinction between the priests and the religion whose interests they wore pretending to serve. Nature is inherently beautiful, but if viewed through a piece of stained glass its perfection would be marred by an unnatural tint. So if we desire to behold the loveliness of piety we must not regard it as presented through any coloured media, but by direct contact and inspection. Religion to be correctly estimated must be felt; it is not a thing for the eye to admire, but for the heart to appreciate. Still, ungodly men have their ideals of rectitude, often sharply defined, and such, seeing the sacrilege of the priests,” abhorred the offering of the Lord.”
(2) The conduct and character of Eli. As a parent he was over-indulgent (1 Samuel 13:18). This statement is demonstrated even by his rebukes. Eli was “very old,” and the slightest vexation would be harassing to his feeble energies, but especially when occasioned by the ill conduct of his sons. What a sad reality!--the father old in years, the sons old in sin!
What a reflection upon his discipline and example!
(1) The method of Eli’s reproof. He reproves them
(1) Collectively--“Ye.” Should not each have been taken to the private chamber, that correction might have been adapted to disposition and age. The reproof was, therefore, indiscriminate. He reproves
(2) By interrogation (Ver. 23);
(3) By assertion (Ver. 24);
(4) By argument (Ver. 25).
(2) The Effect of his reproof. “They hearkened not.” Eli would be reminded that correction had come too late; though the plastic nature of childhood might have yielded to his touch, he had now to deal with sterner material. God’s controversy with an indulgent parent (Ver. 27). Eli is held responsible for the sins of his family. “Unto Eli.” He is charged with
(1) Ingratitude (Ver. 28);
(2) With insult (Ver. 29).
II. The sorrows it entails.
1. God revokes the mandate of Eli’s election, and asserts the universal principle of his action (Ver. 30). Eli’s election was not unalterable, or irrespective of personal conduct. A motto for the warehouse, “Them that honour Me I will honour.” The punishment predicted. This was the cloud before the storm.
(1) It was humiliating (Ver. 31). The once priestly family is to be divested of all authority or power. “I will cut off thine arm.”
(2) It was irreparable (Ver. 32).
(3) It was eternal. A new line of priests was to be established which should be “forever.” How the prophetical becomes historical! It is a page of war which issues in
(1) National defeat (1 Samuel 4:10);
(2) Social consternation--“All the city cried out.”
(3) Spiritual declension (Ver. 22).
(4) Family extinction (Vers. 17-20). While Eli sat on the gate, above it sat the Eternal God. So one evil family contained the germ of the nation’s overthrow.
Lessons:
(1) Parental discipline should be firm as kind.
(2) The welfare of the nation and church depend upon family training.
(3) A respect of God the truest way to promotion.
(4) The sorrowful termination of even a good man’s life.
(5) The awful extinction of an impious priesthood. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Eli’s house
The notices of little Samuel, that alternate in this passage with the sad accounts of Eli and his house, are like the green spots that vary the dull stretches of sand in a desert; or like the little bits of blue sky that charm your eye when the firmament is darkened by a storm. We see evil powerful and most destructive; we see the instrument of healing very feeble--a mere infant. Yet the power of God is with the infant, and in due time the force which he represents will prevail. It is just a picture of the grand conflict of sin and grace in the world. It was verified emphatically when Jesus was a child. It is to be noticed that Eli was a descendant, not of Eleazar, the elder son of Aaron, but of Ithamar, the younger. Why the high priesthood was transferred from the one family to the other, in the person of Eli, we do not know. Evidently Eli’s claim to the priesthood was a valid one, for in the reproof addressed to him it is fully assumed that he was the proper occupant of the office. From Eli’s administration great things would seem to have been expected; all the more lamentable and shameful was the state of things that ensued.
1. First our attention is turned to the gross wickedness and scandalous behaviour of Eli’s sons. Hophni and Phinehas take their places in that unhonoured band where the names of Alexander Borgia, and many a high ecclesiastic of the Middle Ages send forth their stinking savour. They are marked by the two prevailing vices of the lowest natures--greed and lechery. It is difficult to say whether the greater hurt was inflicted by such conduct on the cause of religion or on the cause of ordinary morality. As for the cause of religion, it suffered that terrible blow which it always suffers whenever it is dissociated from morality. The very heart and soul is torn out of religion when men are led to believe that their duty consists in merely believing certain dogmas, attending to outward observances, paying dues, and “performing” worship. What kind of conception of God can men have who are encouraged to believe that justice, mercy, and truth have nothing to do with His service?
2. It is often very difficult to explain how it comes to pass that godly men have had ungodly children. There is little difficulty in accounting for this on the present occasion. There was a fatal defect in the method of Eli. His remonstrance with his sons is not made at the proper time. It is not made in the fitting tone When disregarded, it is not followed up by the proper consequences. We must not forget that, however inexcusable their father was, the great guilt of the proceeding was theirs. How must they have hardened their hearts against the example of Eli, against the solemn claims of God, against the holy traditions of the service, against the interests and claims of those whom they ruined, against the welfare of God’s chosen people! Could anything come nearer to the sin against the Holy Ghost? No wonder though their doom was that of persons judicially blinded and hardened. They were given up to a reprobate mind, to do those things that were not convenient.
3. But it is time we should look at the message brought to Eli by the man of God. The house of Eli would suffer a terrible degradation. He (this includes his successors in slice) would be stript of “his arm,” that is, his strength. No member of his house would reach a good old age. One word respecting that great principle of the Kingdom of God announced by the prophet as that on which Jehovah would act in reference to His priests--“Them that honour Me I will honour, but they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.” It is one of the grandest sayings in Scripture. It is the eternal rule of the Kingdom of God, not limited to the days of Hophni and Phinehas, but, like the laws of the Medea and Persians, eternal as the ordinances of heaven. However men may try to get their destiny into their own hands; however they may secure themselves from this trouble and from that; however, like the first Napoleon, they may seem to become omnipotent, and to wield an irresistible power, yet the day of retribution comes at last; having sown to the flesh, of the flesh also they reap corruption. What a grand rule of life it is, for old and young. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
The sons of Eli
Eli was high priest of the Jews when the ark of the Lord was in Shiloh. His two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. Their office was holy, but their character was corrupt. They touched sacred things with unworthy hands. The incident shows but too plainly the vital difference between the spiritual and the official. Hophni and Phinehas were officially among the highest men of their day. They bore a holy name, they pronounced holy words, they were clothed in emblematic robes. Yet Hophni and Phinehas were men of Belial. The outside was beautiful; the inside was full of corruption and death. Is there not a lesson here to teachers of Christian truth? It is possible for a man to have a pulpit, and to have no God; to have a Bible, and no Holy Ghost; to be employing his lips in uttering the eloquence of truth, when his heart has gone astray from all that is true and beautiful and good. Is there not a lesson here to professors of Christ? We bear the holy name, and men have a right to expect the holy deed. We need instruction upon the great question of spiritual discipline. When a man who professes to know Christ is found drunk in the streets, we expel him from the Church, and call that discipline; when a man is convicted of some heinous crime, we cut him off from the fellowship of the Church, and call that the discipline of Christian fellowship. It is nothing of the kind; that is mere decency. There is not a club in the world that cares one iota for its own respectability that would not do the same thing. Ours is to be Christian discipline. Yet even here is a mystery--a strange and wondrous thing. Hophni and Phinehas, officially great and spiritually corrupt; minister after minister falling, defiling his garments, and debasing his name; professor after professor pronouncing the right word with the lips, but never realising it in the life. Such is the history of the Church. In the face of all this, God still employs man to reveal the truth to other men, to enforce his claims upon their attention. Instead of in a moment of righteous anger sweeping the Church floor, so that not a footstep of man might remain upon it, end then calling the world around him, and speaking personally face to face--he still employs men to teach men, to “allure to brighter worlds and lead the way.” The incident shows the deadly result of corruption in influential quarters. All quarters, indeed, are influential; yet some are known to be more influential than others, therefore we adopt this form of expression. The priests were sons of Belial. What was the consequence? The people abhorred the offering of the Lord. The minister is a bad man. What is the consequence? His character is felt through all the congregation. We should remember three things in connection with this advice.
1. The natural tendency of men to religious laxity and indifference.
2. The effect of insincerity upon doctrine. Sincerity is itself an argument. Is it possible to speak the truth with a liar’s heart? If his lips pronounce the truth, if his heart contradict it, and his life blaspheme it, what wonder if men--who have a natural tendency towards religious indifference--should believe the life and deny the teaching!
3. The peculiarity of moral teaching in requiring personal illustration. Men cannot understand merely theoretic morals; they must have them personified; they must have them taught by incarnation, and illustrated in daily life. The artist may teach you to paint a beautiful picture! yet he may have no regard for moral truth, His non-regard for moral truth may not interfere, so far as you can see, with his ability and earnestness as a mete artist. It is not so in the Church of God. A man’s character is his eloquence; a man’s spiritual reality is the argument that wins in the long run. The lesson is to Churches. What are we in our corporate capacity? Are we holy? If’ not we are helping to debase and ruin the world; we have taken God’s leverage to help to undo God’s work! The terribleness of a moral leader falling! On the other hand, we cannot admit the plea that bad leaders are excuse enough for bad followers, when that plea is urged in relation to Christian teaching and life. Nor can we allow that exceptional inconsistency should vitiate the whole Church. We go into an orchard and point to one bit of blemished fruit, and say, “Because there is a blemish upon that piece of fruit the whole orchard is decayed and corrupt.” Who would believe it? There can be found a light coin in every currency in civilisation. Suppose we took up a standard coin under weight and said, “Because this is not of the standard weight, your whole currency is defective, and, as a nation of financiers, you are not worthy of trust.” Who would believe it? Such a theory is instantly destroyed by the fact that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church. We do not say, “Look at Christians.” We say, “Look at Christ.” Then, such a theory is never urged but by men who are in search of excuses for their own corruptness. We are not to be followers of Hophni and Phinehas. The priest is not God; the minister is not Jesus Christ; the professor is not the Redeemer of the world. We must, therefore, insist upon the honest investigation of great principles on the one hand, and specially insist upon the calm, severe scrutiny and study of our Saviour’s own personal life and ministry. We have a written revelation. To that revelation our appeal must be made; to the law and to the testimony must be our challenge. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The sons of Eli
We may justly regard this as affording the motto for a very instructive and mournful history, left to give warning of the weakness into which even good men are apt to fall, and of the manner in which a righteous God often punishes the failure of His servants in duty, through the consequences arising out of their own neglect. It is not, accordingly, said, nor is it to be supposed that Eli’s weakness, however blameable, furnished excuse for the wickedness of his children.
I. The aggravated guilt with which Eli’s sons were chargeable. Hophni and Phinehas are, in this portion of sacred history, marked out as examples of what is vicious and depraved. Not contented with committing wickedness in secret, they had reached a state of regardlessness, sinning against the Lord publicly, and with a high hand. Nor was it a time in the history of Israel when the conscience of the people was peculiarly alive. The fervour of grateful feeling for the past kindness of God had passed away; there seemed instead to be prevailing forgetfulness of the great purpose, for the advancement of which they had been so favoured, namely, the keeping alive of God’s worship amidst surrounding ignorance and idolatry. Both the civil and religious polity of the nation were in a state of disorder. In Eli’s person the two highest offices then existing in the state were united--for the long space of forty years he occupied over Israel the position, not of judge alone, but of high priest also. But defective as Eli’s conduct towards his family appears to have been--many as were the temptations to which they were exposed, the guilt of Hophni and Phinehas was marked by peculiar aggravation; they had misused great advantages. To know the truth and yet to reject it; to be told of God’s claims on our obedience, and to refuse compliance with them, is to begin in youth a course which often leads to a rebellious and profligate manhood, conducting, perhaps, to a premature grave, or prolonged to an unhonoured and miserable age. Such appears to have been the case with Eli’s sons. They had abused great advantages, and incurred no small measure of responsibility. They were not ignorant of Jehovah’s claims, nor of the holiness of heart and life which He required; their guilt accordingly was conspicuous and undeniable. The lives of Eli’s sons, who were so near to the altar, might have been dedicated to Heaven. The “sons of Eli were sons of Belial:” had reached a frightful ripeness in depravity and maturity in crime. They seemed to have lost sight of the distinction between good and evil, to have forgotten the existence of a God, who “judgeth righteously.” That wickedness was indeed great. There is applied to them in the text such a title as indicates no ordinary proficiency in what was offensive to God, and opposed to His law. They are called “sons of Belial,” as though distinguished on account of the spirit of evil which they manifested. But can we suppose that depravity to have been at once attained? On the contrary, may they not have trembled with the fear and struggled with the reluctance of the less experienced transgressor?
II. We proceed to notice the ineffectual reproof of his sons on the part of Eli, and the punishment with which their wickedness was followed. At this stage of the history mention is first made of Eli as having reproved the shameful conduct of his sons. He was old; his faculties may have failed, and his perception have been dulled, yet surely he could not have been altogether unaware of what was going on. Instead of using his official power to put a stop to their enormities, his duty both as a father and a legislator--instead of the severity of censure and reprimand that were called for, all that Eli said was quite disproportioned to what was demanded by the exigencies of the case. They were his sons, but dear as they had been, if reprimand were fruitless, should they not have been removed, considering the sacred office they held, from the possibility of further transgressing? In this respect also Eli failed, adding to past neglect what was in effect equivalent to a betrayal of that cause to which, with all his faults and failings, he was strongly attached.
III. Let us now attempt to draw from the text one or two practical lessons.
1. We have here a lesson for parents and others, having a sphere of authority and influence. The service of the Lord is still that from which the corrupt heart recoils with unwillingness. How often has the tyranny of evil habit been suffered, as in the case of Eli’s household, to become confirmed, without adequate attempt to check its growth. How frequently is the period allowed to pass, during which a “good foundation” might have been laid, in habits of piety and the fear of God.
2. We have also here a more general lesson of warning to such as persevere in conduct denounced by Scripture, alike by positive precepts, and by means of warning examples. (A. Bonar.)
File priests and the pure child
The change in Samuel’s daily life and circumstances, when his mother left him behind in Shiloh, must have been like that which many a boy is brought to when he first leaves the shelter of home, and begins to find his way in new associations, among new faces, without the old supports and protection. Samuel, however, was too young when his mother first left him to become much stained by the sin that was round him in Shiloh, for the iniquity was too vile, too mature, too gross for him at that early age to know its real meaning and horror; but the danger of infection, of his very life blood, his inmost soul being poisoned and all his future life defiled, was, if we look with only human expectation, most imminent and sad. Between the tabernacle of the Lord at Shiloh and his father’s house at Ramah, there was a difference great and bad enough to blight any life. In place of Elkanah there was Eli; in place of his mother’s pure faith and tender love there were the sons of Eli and the women who came to the tabernacle; instead of home sanctity there was the misery of priestly, official religion, together with the almost inevitable degradation of holiest things. The Lord keeps the feet of His saints when they are surrounded with vile dangers and sad spiritual perils. I can easily understand how Luther, in his dark days of conflict and battle for truth and purity and Christ against apostacy and formalism and a priesthood as dark and vile as that of the two sons of Eli, should often turn to those early Chapter s of the first book of Samuel, and should rise strengthened for the Lord and the struggle against spiritual wickedness in high places and impure error.
I. Samuel was endangered by priestly profanation of Divine ordinances. Just as some of the sweetest flowers smell the foulest when dead, so it was found that these men and their sacred office became rank and foul, defiling all that came to the sanctuary, and depraving even the most sacred things of the Most High. The priesthood, the sacrifices, the holy seasons, the holy places, the bright feasts that God had appointed, they turned to their own vile uses. Those things and offices of religion that Samuel had been taught to regard as most sacred he must have found, if old enough to think at all, systematically outraged and violated; and religion, sooner or later, would be thought by him to be an imposition and its services deceptive. Not that for him or for any young mind to reason or think so would have been or would now be wise; but it would have been human, natural, and not to be wondered at. For it ever has been a common error of young lives to confound principles with persons. Sometimes I have heard the evil lives of the children of pious parents, or of ministers of the Gospel, accounted for by the grim comment--“they are behind the scenes of church life,” and of Christian life. But there ought to be no seeing behind the scenes. If truly in Christ, ye are children of the light and of the day, and ought to walk in the light, as He is in the light. Here it may be well to distinctly, recognise the greater danger there is of the profanation of holy things and sacred duties where there is a ceremonial system than where there is a steady and consistent recognition of the belief that the religion which is most acceptable to God and most consistent with the mind of Christ is that which is least ceremonial, least ritual, least priestly, which, having the smallest possible sanctity in institutions and days and offices, must, if it would be consistent and worthy the name of a religion, insist to the very utmost on the greatest possible purity and holiness in hearts and souls.
II. Another of Samuel’s dangers was from priestly sensuality. In thus arranging the risks of Samuel at Shiloh I wish be keep in our minds the perils that souls as dear to us as Hannah’s child was to her may and do have to encounter when they leave the immediate protection of home. I would not say any more on this part of the subject if it were not for the great, the gross dangers that even children’s lives now meet in the impurities of the streets, the vile sensuousness, bordering on sensuality and licentiousness, of much popular literature, and, with some, in the daily pollution in business places and elsewhere of those who already carry the plague spot about with them, and, like the plague-maddened wretches of old, delight in staining and contaminating others. It is such pernicious associations, such horrid perils, that so frequently lead to the deepest profanation of parts of our life that should be regarded as the most sacred and dealt with most purely. It is such infection that in many cases utterly destroys the influence of a mother’s parting counsels, or a father’s almost divine commands.
III. Another danger of Samuel rose from the priestly rapacity of the sons of Eli. There have been covetous, worldly, rapacious ministers of religion in all ages, but there never have been so many as when and where a priestly system has gone its own way and developed its own life. Earthly greed and rapacity press as closely on the attention of the young in modern business and social life, as did Samuel’s life on him. The judgment of most things and men by a money standard; the public unscrupulousness of so many as to the ways and means they adopt so long as the end of gain is reached; the social customs that increasingly make money the principal thing; the prodigious wealth of our times, and the infatuated efforts of the rich to become richer, to add house to house and field to field;--all these things produce an atmosphere, if I may so say, that is charged with danger. No man’s vileness will warrant you failing away from the truth. No hypocrite’s sin, no minister’s unworthiness, will acquit any young life of guilt in backsliding from the hope and promise of early, pious days. It will now, perhaps, help us to see how Samuel lived in the midst of the sins of Shiloh.
1. And we know, first of all--That Samuel lived uncontaminated by the profanity, the covetousness, and the lust that were so near him. Now learn from this history, that there is no necessity to sin put on anyone anywhere. You cannot help running the risk, but having allowed this much, all has been allowed. If you have sinned it is because you have been careless or wilful, and not because you could not help sinning. Egypt, Shiloh, and Babylon put greater pressure on the young heroes who there fought for the Lord than we have to bear; yet they did not sin. Neither need we.
2. Again: We are told that Samuel grew in Divine grace and human favour with such vile surroundings. God gives this to you that are tempted as a hope and a promise to check our laments over unfortunate circumstances and temptations. You may grow in grace anywhere, just as you may sin anywhere. You may grow in grace on the borders of the pit; and you may sink into the pit from the house of God. Samuel grew in grace: what shall we do?
3. Moreover, Samuel grew thus by grace that we may have. The strongest of us will live as helplessly as a child that cannot yet walk, if we go forth in our own strength, and will utterly fail; while the weakest of us and those of us whose lot in life is full of spiritual hazard and care may have all the more the full and strong confidence that the Lord will keep the feet of His saints and will strengthen us with every kind of might, while the wicked shall soon be silent, in darkness. (G. B. Ryley.)
Degradation at the altar
As garments to a body, so are ceremonies to religion. Garments on a living body preserve the natural warmth; put them on a dead body and they will never fetch life. Ceremonies help to increase devotion; but in a dead heart they cannot breed it. These garments of religion upon a holy man are like Christ’s garments on his own holy body; but joined with a profane heart, they are like Christ’s garments on his crucifying murderers. (Ralph Brownrig.)
Sons of Eli, Sons of Belial
That would seem to be impossible. Eli was a holy man; Eli was a priest. Eli was not intellectually a strong man, but morally he was righteous and faithful up to a very high degree, tie was not much of a ruler at home; still he was substantially a good man. Belial represents corruption, darkness, the devil, the unholy genius of the universe; anything that indicates selfishness, baseness, or corruption of character. Now read the text:--The sons of Eli the holy priest were sons of Belial the bad spirit, the evil genius. We are always coming upon these conflicts, ironies, impossibilities. At the same time there is the fact, solemn, tragical, tremendous, that the sons of a good man may be bad men, and that good men themselves may be surprised or insidiously led into the deepest, gravest evils. Unless we live and move and have our being in God we cannot realise all our privileges and turn them into solid and beneficent character. There may be something in physical descent, and there ought to be in spiritual descent. Eli ought not to have had bad sons. Bad people ought never to come out of good homes. The danger is that Eli himself may be charged with the responsibility. It is so difficult for an ill-judging and prejudiced human nature to distinguish between cause and effect. Do not suppose that you will be a good man because your father was a good man, and your mother a good woman. You may upset the whole process of heredity; you may create a point of departure in your own development. It lies within the power, but not within the right, of every man to say, From the date of my birth there shall be black blood in our family; I will live the downward life, I will make hospitality in the house of evil spirits. So easy is it to destroy, so tempting is it to make bad fame. We see thin not only religiously, in the distinctive sense of that term, but we see this inversion and perversion of heredity along all the lines of life and within all the spheres of human experience. A civilised man, a son of civilisation, may be the most barbarous man upon the face of the earth. It does not lie within the power of a savage to be so barbarous as a civilised man can be. The sons of Eli were sons of Belial. The corresponding sentence in the lower levels of history is, the sons of civilisation are sons of barbarism. So we might proceed to further illustration and say, The sons of education are sons of the greatest ignorance. Who can be so ignorant as a well-informed man when he has given himself up to the service of evil?” It is not ignorance of the base and vulgar type that can be excused on the ground of want of privilege and want of opportunity, but it is that peculiar ignorance which knowing the light hides it, which knowing the right does the wrong. His education is an element in his condemnation. Sometimes we can say the sons of refinement are sons of vulgarity. The whole point is this: that our heredity may be broken in upon, our ancestral privileges may be thrown away,--sons of Eli may be sons of Belial. We hold nothing moral by right of ancestry. Every man should hold his property by right of labour, by right of honest moral conquest. Whatever you have, young man, take it at the spear point. You cannot hand a good character to others. You can set up a good reputation for goodness, and that ought to be a suggestion and a stimulus and a direction and a comfort, but you cannot hand on your character as you band on your acres and your pounds sterling. Every man has to conquer the alphabet as if no other man had ever conquered it before. Why not amplify that idea and carry it throughout the whole scheme of character, and see how we are called upon to work for what we have, and not to depend upon ancestral blessings and privileges. Do not then say, My father was good, my mother was good, therefore I need not take any interest in these matters myself: part of their virtue is laid up for me, I may draw upon it by-and-bye. All that reasoning is vicious, false, and spiritually destructive. A double damnation is theirs who had great advantages to begin with and who did not rise to the nobleness and greatness of their opportunities. What some men had to begin with! how much! They had such roomy homes, such libraries, such kindness and love on the part of parents and friends; they were born to all manner of social advantages so called. Where are they today? What have they done? Did they not begin with too much? Were they not overburdened? Possibly some of you may have begun too well. You are not altogether to be blamed for having fallen as you have done. I have applicants for bounty now from men whose fathers were worth a hundred thousand pounds. These are men who have wasted a whole inheritance of ancestral repute for wisdom and goodness. Yet I cannot altogether blame them; the parental Eli cannot altogether wholly escape responsibility. They had too much, things came too easily; “Easy come, easy go,” is the motto which experience has tested and endorsed. With how little have some other men begun, and yet look at them today. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Corrupt lives contagious
Men of corrupt lives at the head of religion, who are shameless in their profligacy, have a lowering effect on the moral life of the whole community Down and down goes the standard of living Class after class gets infected. The mischief spreads like dry rot in a building; ere long the whole fabric of society is infected with the poison. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
They knew not the Lord.--
Sinful and childlike ignorance of God
(compare with 1 Samuel 3:7):--Hophni and Phinehas did not know the Lord; their lives showed it. Samuel did not know the Lord, and his actions showed it also. But as between the illustrative acts, so also between the meaning of the words in the two cases, there is as wide a difference as it is possible to conceive. It will help us if we here remember how wide a ground in Scripture this expression “to knew” or “not to know the Lord” coverses The first form is at times a synonym for salvation, for the whole course of perfect redemption and complete sanctification. The second, the negative form, is one of the intensest expressions that Scripture uses to state the condition of a sinful soul, and for showing the origin of some of the darkest enormities that have ever degraded the name of religion. The New Testament puts this before us very definitely. When Christ would express His perfect Albion and intercourse with the Father even on earth, He said, “I am not come of Myself, but He that sent Me is true; whom ye know not, but I know Him.” “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. O righteous Father, the world tins not known Thee, but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent me.” John accounts for worldly antagonism to the saints of old in this way--“The world knoweth us not because it knew Him not.”
I. That the expression “not knowing the Lord” may imply and account for every kind and degree of sin. This is sinful ignorance of God. In the case now before use, it explains some of the most degrading transgressions of which man can be guilty.
1. But this sinful ignorance of God may co-exist with full knowledge of the truth of God--that is, intellectual knowledge, received by means of education, by example of others, by home training, by social custom or general habit. You may see this in the example of the two young priests. It is certain that they knew the law of the Lord which is perfect. They knew the truth of God, the ways of the Lord, the expectation and hopes of the Almighty that were associated with their priesthood and the offering of sacrifice. They knew the truth, but they knew not God. Their hearts and His were at enmity. Let us make the same distinction for ourselves, between knowing the truth of God and knowing the Lord; between knowing what God has said and knowing God Himself. Is it not one of the saddest facts that some of the worst lives are those that like Hophni and Phinehas know the way of the Lord, have had holy training and gentle nurture, many associations with God’s house, much hearing the Word, and still show that they know not God? Not the knowledge of truth or forms of truth, not correct beliefs or anything of such kind can be depended on to put us right with our God.
2. Notice, again, that there is an ignorance of God that is sinful in its consequences, but is at the same time not guilty. We can understand the vast transgressions of great cities, the brutal tendencies of so large a mass of the population by remembering their inheritance of gross ignorance and animalism in body and mind, their entailed heritage of utter ignorance of God, of inability almost to realise or even to recognise a God and Father of love, or see any meaning in the cross whereon their sins were borne. Is not some of the responsibility resting with Christians, on whose part there has been neglect of extending the light of the glory of God.
3. We must further note that there are cases in which ignorance of the Lord is in it, self a greater transgression than the worst sins that it may beget or account for. These two priests ware as evil in some things as men could be. But more shameful than their deepest impiety was that which was the cause of it--even their wilful ignorance of God. There is practically no restraint left that can touch the heart. To know God is to have now the root of eternal life within us; not to know God is to have the seed of eternal death growing in us now, and in the world to come to be altogether defiled.
II. Not knowing the Lord may comprise and account for every degree of immaturity in the spiritual life. There is a sinful ignorance, as we have seen; and now we have the ignorance of immaturity, of the childlike state. Of this state Samuel the child is the illustration. Samuel had had the preparatory training of his mother’s love, the reverent guiding of his life along the way that literally leads to God; but still the moment of intelligent revelation of God to him had not yet come. His love to the Lord had grown like a little seedling plant; now it was to be transplanted into fuller soil, freer air--to have snore root room, more life room altogether. Stronger and more vigorous and bracing winds were to breathe their blessing upon it; hotter sunshine was to stimulate it; elements snore maturing were to lie about the roots. Soon the day of revelation, the night of the opening of heaven in solemnity to his young soul, came; but in prospect of that visitation by which his life was fixed forever, Samuel did not know the Lord. He rested till then as in the arms of God; he lived on God as once he had hung upon his mother’s breast--not knowing the love that held him though he lived in it and by it; not seeing clearly the face that bowed over him in unspeakable affection, though his own features bore the same lines and carried the same marks. He did not yet know; but this was the ignorance of imperfect growth, of incomplete development. To some there may be a special need of considering this aspect of Samuel’s life, and a particular advantage in noting its obvious meaning. For this certainly means that there may be life in God before there is intelligent recognition of it. The father sees his image in the child before the little one recognises it. The Lord was in our life, and we knew it not; nor did we know Him till He Himself drew aside the veil. Or, as it seemed at times, we rambled, as a child might in the tabernacle, into that which is within the veil, into the very Holy of Holies, and there, instead of mighty glory and awful power, we found One gentler than any of earth, a voice speaking more softly than a loving woman, saying, “My son, give Me thy heart!” and, as to presences, we could not see in the Holy Place, “This is My beloved Son.” We knew not God, but he knew us as His. “I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known Me.” “Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord.” It may be Chat we are all involved, to some extent, in blame, for we have not attained that knowledge which depends on earnest seeking after God. God will not teach the souls that will not wait on Him. God cannot show His beauty to eyes that are turned away from Him. He can reveal His secret only to those that fear Him. If we give up life’s strength, and all the power of our days, to one or to many inferior earthly things, giving to the Lord none of our strength, how can we expect the Lord’s light and knowledge, with the consequent blessing of our advance in holiness, to be ours? (G. B. Ryley.)