Had Israel absorbed the vices of these nations instead of destroying them, try to think what the world would have lost! The one channel through which God was giving His Book to man would have become so choked and polluted with vice that in its turn it also would have become a source of infection and not of health. [1] This king's name is also spelt Hammurabi. CHAPTER IV THE HISTORY BOOKS [Illustration: (drop cap T) Assyrian idol-god] Thus little by little the Book of God grew, and the people He had chosen to be its guardians took their place among the nations. A small place it was from one point of view! A narrow strip of land, but unique in its position as one of the highways of the world, on which a few tribes were banded together. All around great empires watched them with eager eyes; the powerful kings of Assyria, Egypt, and Babylonia, the learned Greeks, and, in later times, the warlike Romans. How small and unimportant the Israelites appeared to the world then! Yet we know that in reality they were greater than any people the world had ever seen. God's words have been fulfilled; through the Children of Israel all the nations of the world are blessed. The old empires have crumbled into dust; the great conquerors of ancient days are forgotten; few people to-day remember the names of the wise men of Greece and Rome, but our lives and thoughts are daily influenced by the thoughts, words, and deeds of the Jews of old. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, David, Elijah--their very names are nearer and dearer to us than those of the heroes of our own land. When Queen Victoria was asked the secret of England's greatness, she held up a Bible. Their Sacred Book was all that the Jews possessed. Their whole greatness was wrapped up in it. As the heathen truly said, they were 'The People of the Book.' And now let us glance at the history books of the Bible. The first and second Books of Samuel have been put together from several other records. Most likely Samuel himself did part of the work. In Shiloh, where he was educated, the old documents were kept, and Samuel, the gifted lad, who so early gave his heart to God, was in every way fitted to write the story of the Lord's chosen people during his own life-time. The Bible mentions several other histories that were written in these days besides those which we know. '_Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the book of Gad the seer._' (These last have disappeared.) (1 Chronicles xxix. 29.) Stores of books were being gathered. When, for instance, Saul was chosen king, Samuel '_wrote in a book and laid it up before the Lord._' (1 Samuel x. 25.) These books were most likely written on a rough kind of parchment, made from the skins of goats, sewn together, and rolled up into thick rolls.