, yet how
interesting is the scene which this simple mention conjures up! With
all the earnest fervour of that separated race who hoped each one to
be the honoured instrument of bringing a Saviour into the world,
Hannah, then childless, prayed that this reproach might be taken from
her. Her prayer was heard, her son was born; and in holy gratitude she
reared him, not for wealth, for fame, for worldly honour, or even for
her own domestic comfort,--but, from his birth, and before his birth
she devoted him as the servant of the Most High. She indulged herself
with his presence only till her maternal cares had fitted him for
duty; and then, with a tearful eye it might be, and a faltering
footstep, but an unflinching resolution, she devoted him to the altar
of her God.

But never did his image leave her mind: never amid the fair scions
which sprang up and bloomed around her hearth did her thoughts forsake
her first-born; and yearly, when she went up to the Tabernacle with
Elkanah her husband, did she take him "a little coat" which she had
made. We may fancy her quiet happy thoughts when at this employment;
we may fancy the eager earnest questionings of the little group by
whom she was surrounded; the wondering about their absent brother; the
anxious catechisings respecting his whereabouts; and, above all, the
admiration of the new garment itself, and the earnest criticisms on
it; especially if in form and fashion it should somewhat differ from
their own. And then arrives the moment when the garment is committed
to its envelope; and the mother, weeping to part from her little ones,
yet longing to see her absent boy, receives their adieux and their
thousand reminiscences, and sets forth on her journey.

Again she treads the hallowed courts, again she meekly renews her
vows, and again a mother's longings, a mother's hopes are quenched in
the full enjoyment of a mother's love. Beautiful and good, the
blessing of Heaven attending him, and throwing a beam of light on his
fair brow, the pure and holy child appears like a seraph administering
at that altar to which he had been consecrated a babe, and at which
his ministry was sanctioned even by the voice of the Most High
himself, when in the solemn stillness of midnight he breathed his
wishes into the heart of the child, and made him, infant as he was,
the medium of his communications to one grown hoary in the service of
the altar.

The solemn duties ended, Hannah invests her ho