obedience_.

<u>That More Might be Given and Gotten.</u>

Now let us look a bit at the second of these, the portrait of Hannah the
Hebrew woman. First the broader lines for perspective. This peculiar
Hebrew nation had two deep dips down morally between Egypt and Babylon;
between the first making, and the final breaking. The national tide ebbed
very low twice, before it finally ran out in the Euphrates Valley. Elijah
stemmed the tide the second time, and saved the day for a later night. The
Hannah story belongs in the first of these ebb-tides; the first bad sag;
the first deep gap.

The giant lawgiver is long gone. His successor, only a less giant than
himself is gone too, and all that generation, and more. The giants gave
way to smaller-sized leaders. Now they are gone also. The mountain peaks
have been lost in the foothills, and these have yielded to dunes, and
levels; mostly levels; dead levels. These mountains must have had long
legs. The foothills are so far away, and are running all to toes. Now the
toes have disappeared.

It is a leaderless people, for the true Leader as originally planned has
been, first ignored, then forgot. The people have no ideals. They grub in
the earth content. There is a deep, hidden-away current of good. But it
needs leadership to bring it to the surface. A leaderless people! This is
the niche of the Hannah story.

The nation was rapidly drifting down to the moral level of the lowest. At
Shiloh the formal worship was kept up, but the very priests were tainted
with the worst impurity. A sort of sleepy, slovenly anarchy prevailed.
Every man did that which was right in his own eyes, with every indication
of a gutter standard. "There was none in the land possessing power of
restraint that might put them to shame in anything." No government; no
dominant spirit. Indeed the actual conditions of Sodom and her sister
cities of the plain existed among the people. This is the setting of the
simple graphic incident of Hannah. One must get the picture clearly in
mind to understand the story.

Up in the hill country of Ephraim there lived a wise-hearted religious
man, a farmer, raising stock, and grain; and fruit, too, likely. He was
earnest but not of the sort to rise above the habit of his time. His farm
was not far from Shiloh, the national place of worship, and he made yearly
trips there with the family. But the woman-degrading curse of Lamech was
over his home. He had two wives. Hanna