I called the people together in Mizpeh again, the place where they had seen the Lord save them Himself, and yet even there they would not yield. Then I prophesied against them, because they had cast aside Him who had delivered them out of all their adversities and tribulations; and I caused all their tribes to assemble before me. Saul the son of Kish was taken, and the fools shouted God save the king. I did my best for them. I wrote laws for them to protect them against him, and I put them in a book and laid them up in the sanctuary. Henceforth I was in a measure more solitary than before. Saul was a brave man, and led the people to war, and they were pleased with his success, but he was not single in his service of the Lord, and he had for a wife a Horite, one Rizpah, who worshipped false gods. He believed he could make Israel a nation by battles, and he saw not what I saw--that the one thing necessary for our salvation was to keep ourselves pure and separate. The people complained that the Law was a burden, but it was their safeguard: it was the Law which marked them off from the heathen, who were doomed to fall by their sins. I toiled daily to preserve the Law, and to insist upon the observance of its ceremonies, knowing full well that if the people let them go, they would let go the commandments from Sinai; would let go the sobriety and the chastity of their bodies; would mix in the worship of Baal, and be lost. Saul was no observer of ceremonies, and considered them naught, the idiot, who forgot that they were ordained of God, with whom there is no small nor great, and that through them the people are taught. More solitary than ever I was, I say; but I sought the Lord more than ever, and kept closer to me the memory of the Voice which first called me. If Israel is to live, it will not be because Saul overcame the Amalekites and Philistines, but because the Lamp of God in my hands has not been extinguished. When the Philistines came against us at Michmash, Saul was in Gilgal, and I went to meet him there. Because I came not at the time appointed, he, the impious one, took upon himself to offer the sacrifice, pleading that the people were leaving him, and that the Philistines were encamped against him. He forgot the thunder and lightning at Mizpeh, and that it was his duty to obey the least word of the Lord, whatever might happen. It was a surer way to save Israel than to teach it by the king's example that the ordinances of the Lord could be set aside because it was convenient. I cared not for myself: how can he who is His messenger care for aught save His honour? But I saw by this act of Saul what was in him--that it was an example of his heart--that if he could conquer the Philistines he cared not for the Law. His victories without the Law would have melted away like snow in summer. They would have been as the victories of Philistines over Amalekites, or Amalekites over Philistines. It was one of the