1 Samuel 4:22 And she said, The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of God is taken. It is certainly something that we are perfectly familiar with that precious memorials become popular idols, and come in course of time to be bound up of necessity with the ideas of safety and of progress and even of spiritual liberty and truth. When the flame of the temple of Vesta went out upon the Roman Forum, those who had known that it had been in existence for centuries said, "The glory has departed from Rome;" and when it has happened from time to time that some central ceremony has been suspended or some special relic has been destroyed, there have always been at once certain people to arise and to utter some despair of the Divine Commonwealth, and to suppose that just in the existence of a material and perishable object there lies some sort of guarantee of the Divine favour and of the Divine help. The great days in the history of religion are the days when God teaches us the failure and illusion of all this, that God rests nothing upon the perishable and upon the material, only on faith in Him and obedience to His will in righteousness. (Silvester Horne, M. A.). Parallel Verses KJV: And she said, The glory is departed from Israel: for the ark of God is taken.WEB: She said, "The glory has departed from Israel; for the ark of God is taken." |
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