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We can recall a day of spring which began with a clear, bright morning, bathed in sunshine and song, and giving every promise of fair and steady weather. But ere noon the clouds gathered and grey shrouds covered all the blue and gold of the sky. And then the rain came and drenched well-nigh to drowning our last hope of a fair evening. But just as the sun was setting, the veil of cloud lifted in the west, and a sudden gleam of glory shot across the world before all was dark and drear again. So it was with the day of Eli's life. Fair promise of an early manhood was belied by the failure of later years, and we welcome with joy, which yet has its pang of regret, this one gleam of light that shows up in the sad eventide of an old man's broken day. Surely, without unduly spiritualising this simple little incident, we can see in it a parable of history. First of all, Hannah's loan of her boy to the Lord was but the outcome of the instinct of Judaism. From the very first days of the Mosaic dispensation, the children, and particularly the first-born, were dedicated to the Lord. This recognition of the claim of God on the child is, moreover, not one of the merely fugitive elements of Judaism. Much of that great system of religion has passed away — it has been superseded by Christ's more perfect system. All through the ages the Lord has called the children with a gentle voice that has sounded in the shrine of the child's own heart — surely the purest and sweetest tabernacle that God can inhabit. One thing is made very clear to us as we study the Bible in its attitude to the child, and that is that child life is of untold value in the sight of God. The position of the child in Judaism was in striking contrast to that occupied by children in the religions of the surrounding nations and of later ages. We can gauge pretty accurately the value put upon child life in Egypt by Pharaoh's edict, from the results of which Moses was so strangely preserved. Centuries later, the King of Edom sacrificed his son "for a burnt offering upon the wall." Thus men sought to propitiate their duties by offering "the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their souls." But, looking in the most favourable light at this sacrifice of children — and perhaps Tennyson's "Victim" gives us the most generous interpretation, is it not a dreadful misinterpretation of the call of Jehovah to the children? It is not their sacrifice at the hands of others that He desires, but the offering of the living sacrifice of their own hearts and service at their own hands. Children have too often been made the vicarious sufferers for others in cases where the vicarious principle does not apply. When we come to more recent times we find that even the value of a sacrifice is denied to child life. The Roman father was allowed to refuse to accept as his charge any child born to him, if he thought it physically defective or even numerically superfluous. If on its being presented to him he refused to take it in his arms, it was forthwith put out of the way. In Greece it was much the same. The caves beneath Mount Taygetus were full of the bodies of infants that had been exposed by parents, who were fully at liberty to repudiate the duties of parentage. Think for a moment of the swarming crowds of children forever playing in our streets. "The shout of happy children at their play" sounds poetic until we see the class to whom the words refer most largely, and then we wonder if they are happy. You who live in your comfortable homes, and snugly tuck your own bairns up in their warm, cosy beds at seven or eight o'clock, and would not think of allowing them out after dark, what think you of the little ones who answer your call from your doorstep five minutes later for the "Latest Edition?" And yet their souls and bodies are as important in God's sight as the souls and bodies of your own more favoured pets. Truly, the Eli of today still fails to perceive that the Lord has called the child. Our Factory Acts have vastly improved the whole matter of child labour. I remember a friend of mine in a colliery district in the North of England telling me how he was carried at the age of six (for he was too much afraid of the dark above ground to go alone) to the mouth of the coal pit in the early morning, and then, in the company of two or three other babies of the same age, he went down, clown to the dark and noisome galleries below to act as putters — that is, to open and shut the wooden doors for the trucks that passed so close to them that they dared not breathe while they passed. That is done away. Recent Temperance legislation has abolished much of the abuse connected with the serving of children with drink. But much still remains to be done before Christian England can shake off the reproach of Eli that he was so slow to perceive that the Lord had called the child The modern problem of Hooliganism is largely the outcome of dereliction of duty in this matter. We find in studying the Gospel that Jesus gives a prominent place to the child. Christ has a message for the child. Long centuries of the Christian era let that call and the child's wistful enquiry as to its meaning go alike almost unheeded. It is one of the chief glories of the Evangelical Revival that its leaders "perceived that the Lord had called the child." And one of the earliest outcomes of the great Methodist awakening of the religious life of England was the establishment of Sunday Schools. The ideal of the Christian Church as set before her by her Master and Lord will never be attained until she has thoroughly grasped as a principle, and applied in practice, our Lord's teaching regarding the child. This is twofold — subjective and objective. The subjective aspect of His teaching is that in which the child is made by Him a model in character building. "Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The objective aspect of His teaching is given us in the words, "Whosoever receiveth one of such little children in My name, receiveth Me; and whosoever receiveth Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me."

(G. Waddy Polkinghorne.)

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KJV: And the LORD called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the LORD had called the child.

WEB: Yahweh called Samuel again the third time. He arose and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am; for you called me." Eli perceived that Yahweh had called the child.