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- 439 answer to his mother's prayer; how, out of gratitude to God, she consecrated him from his infancy to the Tabernacle service; how he grew up there into the favor of the aged Eli; how his mother came every year to see him, bringing him a new coat; and how, on the occasion to which the picture refers, the Lord called him, and gave him a message full of terrible forecast to the venerable High Priest. But that which interested me most was the statement that “Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child girded with a linen ephod”; and as I go back upon that now, I think it may fitly suggest the topic of early religion.
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441 For one thing, it tells us that it is possible for a child to serve the Lord. It is not uncommon for young people to put off the matter of religion until they have grown older; but over and above the danger thereby incurred, there is no need for such delay. True, we cannot expect that piety will show itself in a child in the same way as it does in those who are
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444 grown up, but it may show itself just as really, for all that; and wherever there is the spirit of trust in God, the willingness to learn out of His Word, and the determination to obey Him in everything, there true piety is. No matter, therefore, how young we are, we can still, like Samuel, “minister before the Lord.”
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446 And then the case of Samuel proves that there is no necessary connection between early piety and early death. It has somehow come to be believed that these two things are inseparable. The very good children are said to be too good for this world, and children themselves dislike the idea of early piety because of their love of life. We have all heard of the little boy who, on recovery from a dangerous illness, said, “If I had been one of them pious, I’d have been a goner, sure!” But Samuel lived to be an old man and full of years. Nor was he an exception in this particular. The same thing is seen in the histories of Joseph and Moses and Daniel, and, in modern
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449 days, some of the ripest old saints who have lived to fourscore years and more feared the Lord from their youth.
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451 Neither, again, does early piety prevent one from becoming distinguished in after-life. Samuel became Judge of Israel, which was, for the time, something similar to President among ourselves. Daniel was Prime-minister at the court of Babylon. Joseph rose to the second place in Egypt, and in general it holds good that godliness has the promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come.
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453 Once more, Samuel was not a nambypamby boy. He was, as we think of him and his life at the Tabernacle, a manly little fellow. He did not whimper continually after his mother, but was always glad to see her when she came with the new coat; and when he had to give that awful message to Eli, he did not quiver in the least, but gave it faithfully, though sadly. He was no milksop, nor tied to his mother's apron-strings. It is untrue
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