A new and more advanced period in the history of the nation was at hand, and the supremacy of the Judges was about to close. Samuel, who came like Numa after Romulus, did not fail to prepare the people for the new epoch. At Ramah, at Bethel, at Mizpeh, at Gilgal[230] he gathered together _Schools of the Prophets_, and was the great reformer of the prophetical order, a work of such importance that he is even classed with Moses, the great Lawgiver of the nation. (Comp. Ps. xcix. 6; Acts iii. 24; xiii. 20.) The title, indeed, of “prophet” has occurred already more than once, and is applied to Abraham (Gen. xx. 7), to Moses (Deut. xviii. 15–18), to Aaron (Ex. vii. 1), to Miriam (Ex. xv. 20), to the seventy elders (Num. xi. 24–30), to Deborah[231] (Judg. iv. 4). But these were isolated cases. It was the work of Samuel to give permanence and effectiveness to the prophetical functions. Promising youths were gathered by him into Schools or Colleges of Prophets, where they lived together in a society or community, under a head or leading prophet, whom they called their _Father_ (Comp. 1 Sam. x. 12; xix. 20), or _Master_ (2 K. ii. 3), while they were termed his _sons_. Here they employed themselves in studying the Law of Moses; practised the composition of sacred poetry; and became skilled in sacred music, _the psaltery, harp, tabret, pipe, and cymbals_ (1 Sam. x. 5; 2 K. iii. 15; 1 Ch. xxv. 1, 6). They also preserved and copied historical records, and “gathered up the traditions of their own and former times.” Their calling was not merely, sometimes not at all, to predict future events. They were to be forth-speakers for God, to commune with God, to speak of God, to teach His truth, to declare His will, and that not only in words, but sometimes in action. Studying the Law of Moses, and the records of God’s past dealings with their nation, they were to see the earnest of His presence for rebuke or consolation in the present. Their vocation required of them to preach morality and spiritual religion, to denounce oppression and covetousness, injustice and profligacy, cruelty and idolatry. And while called to reveal God’s will in each successive crisis of the nation’s history, they were also specially raised up to fix the eye of their countrymen on the future, to keep alive the belief in God’s promises of Redemption, and to foretell the incarnation of Him, in whom all nations were to be blessed. If they often typified Him, whose appearance they announced and whose Spirit dwelt in them, in His humiliation, being despised and rejected by the generation in which they lived, yet from time to time they typified Him also in His exaltation, for the Lord, whose messengers they were, stood by them, frequently confirmed their word by miracles, and punished those who injured them[232].