hood before Samuel was born: after this, a prophet had been sent to warn him in such terms, that one is astonished at his callous torpitude; for still he delays till Samuel is grown up, even to his twelfth year, before he is convinced and laid low for his remiss conduct! It now therefore only remains for the reader to mark the inevitable and awful results of Parental remissness.

Third, The ruin which ensued from the hardened negligence of even a religious Parent.

As in many, if not in most cases, it does not comport with infinite wisdom and divine forbearance, that the punishment of neglect should follow immediately: so now we are to see, that "the delay of punishment is no sort or degree of presumption of final impunity." Long indeed had the Almighty been of beginning, but now he tells Eli, and by the lips of a child, "When I begin I will also make an end." After such delay, too, it is observable, that vengeance comes not by degrees, but suddenly, with violence and at once. In one day, Hophni and Phineas are slain, and thirty thousand men with them; the ark of God itself is taken, and at this intelligence, before the sun is set, at the age of ninety-eight, Eli also expires! Even his daughter-inlaw, the wife of Phineas, apparently a good woman, can live no longer. On the same day she also dies, leaving an orphan behind her, to look back on this as the day on which he was born! With her dying breath, too, she named him Ichabod, or where is the glory? for she said, "the glory is departed from Israel."

Long, however, had Jehovah borne with Eli, and long will he continue to testify to his guilt and sin.

Many, many years pass away, when "in one day" again, besides Abimelech, the great-grandson of Eli, not less than eighty-four priests of his house are slain, with their entire families! Neither man or woman, child or suckling, is spared by the cruel hand of Doeg the Edomite. "The sins of pious individuals among Eli's posterity would be pardoned, through the sacrifice of Christ for their eternal salvation; but the Lord had determined that no number of sin-offerings or oblations should prevail with him to continue that family in the priesthood." On this account, we find that even this slaughter was not the final testimony of his displeasure. On that awful day, David, in another part of Judea, was flying before the face of Saul, and though in this case, he certainly did not deserve it, yet, fortunately for his comfort, one individual ran and escaped the edge of the sword. "And Abiathar shewed David that Saul had slain the Lord's priests. And David said to Abiathar, I knew it that day when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I have occasioned the death of all the persons of thy Father's house. Abide thou with me, fear not for he that seeketh my life seeketh thy life but with me thou shalt be in safeguard." Still the eye of the Lord must follow this descendant of Eli, and as a warning to Parents, so should theirs.

Eli's sin, let it be remembered, had consisted in honouring his Sons above the Lord-in despising the sacred character and obligations of the priesthood: and,

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therefore, so far down as the days of Solomon, more than a hundred years after Eli's death, when the Jewish economy was about to shine out in all its glory; when the temple was going to be erected, and the ark, which Eli had so dishonoured, was to become stationary in that magnificent abode; then must the lineal descendant of Eli be brought into view; and though of a high character on the whole, must he be excluded from the priesthood, and banished to his own estate in the country. "And unto Abiathar the priest said the king, Get thee to Anathoth, unto thine own fields; for thou art worthy of death: but I will not at this time put thee to death, because thou barest the ark of the Lord God before David my Father, and because thou hast been afflicted in all wherein my father was afflicted. So Solomon thrust out Abiathar from being priest unto the Lord, that he might fulfil the word of the Lord which he spake concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh."-1 Kings ii. 27.

After this we read no more of Eli's posterity. They sink into oblivion; though, without doubt, all was fulfilled, to the very letter of the prophecies which went before on him and his. As his Sons had run to great excess, their posterity must, it seems, be pinched with poverty; and as they delighted to gratify a pampered appetite, their Children must another day beg for their mere sustenance: nay, come and crouch even to the priest of the day, and do so, saying, " Join me, I pray thee, to somewhat about the priesthood, that I may eat a piece of bread.”—1 Sam. ii. 36, margin.

What a contrast, then, is there between Abraham and Eli! Yet is this not a contrast between an emi

nently good and positively bad man. No, it is a contrast between a consistent or vigilant, and a negligent or over-indulgent Father of a Family. Eli's sad and melancholy case is mainly intended to admonish a Parent of the dreadful consequences resulting from his love of ease, his negligence and procrastination, or his trifling with obligations so sacred and so important to posterity.

It is granted, indeed, and with some alleviation to the feelings of the reader, it is noticed, that one solitary gleam of comfort is found towards the close of this narrative, but it serves chiefly to make the surrounding gloom more affecting and impressive. Yes, though Eli had been long most criminally indulgent to his Children, to his own guilt and folly he was at last awakened, and for nine long years, at least, he had been lamenting both. So, on the eventful day on which his Sons and himself died, his principal anxiety seems to have been about the ark of God. "When he heard that it was taken by the enemy, his reflections on the dishonour to God and to religion, and the dreadful loss to his people, which his sins and negligence had occasioned, were more than he could support. Thus his death, under divine rebuke for his sins, has been a salutary warning to Parents even to the present day. Let it not, however, be overlooked, that, in the circumstances of it, Eli distinctly testified his supreme regard to the honour of God, above all personal or relative considerations: and, notwithstanding all his faults, he died in the exercise of love to God and his ordinances, and even it should seem by occasion of this. "And it came to pass, when the messenger made mention of

the ark of God, that he fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck broke, and he died: for he was an old man and heavy."

Still, however, after all that can be said as to Eli's personal piety or ultimate salvation, such is the contrast between the success which follows from a Parent's vigilance, and the dreadful ruin which ensues from his neglect of known duty.-Such the difference between the blessing and the curse of Almighty God resting on a Parent and his posterity! This striking contrast, therefore, I again repeat, will serve to shew the reader, that there is no respect of persons with God, and that he is determined to act on the same solemn principles with his own people as with those who do not, in any degree, acknowledge his authority.

Let every man, therefore, have a care lest he imagine, that in the scheme of salvation there is the most distant approach to any thing analogous to what is called favouritism among men: and let every Parent especially learn, from the sad experience of Eli, that a man's personal interest in the divine favour will prove no security against the application of God's unalterable law, with regard to the connexion between Parents and Children. Never, for one moment, let any Parent imagine, that, in one instance, or in any age, the richness and peculiarity of the covenant of grace can be supposed to invade the established government of God over mankind: since it is actually the grand and only preparative to its universal recognition and esta

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