No danger of the Jewish race is more insisted on in sacred history and literature than the bad power of bad women, and the weakness of men in their hands. Whenever idolatry is introduced among them it is always largely owing to the arts and devices of heathen women. The story of Samson seems to have been specially arranged as a warning in this regard. It is a picture drawn in such exaggerated colors and proportions that it might strike the lowest mind and be understood by the dullest. As we have spoken of the period of the Judges as corresponding to the Dark Ages of Christianity, so the story of Samson corresponds in some points with the mediæval history of St. Christopher. In both is presented the idea of a rugged animal nature, the impersonation of physical strength, without much moral element, but seized on and used by a divine impulse for a beneficent purpose. Samson had strength, and he used it to keep alive this sacerdotal nation, this race from whom were to spring the future apostles and prophets and teachers of our Christianity. Like some unknown plant of rare flower and fruit, cast out to struggle in ungenial soil, nipped, stunted, browsed down by cattle, trodden down by wild beasts, the Jewish race, in the times of the Book of Judges showed no capability of producing such men as Isaiah and Paul and John, much less Jesus. Yet, humanly speaking, in this stock, now struggling for bare national existence, and constantly in danger of being trampled out, was contained the capacity of unfolding, through Divine culture, such heavenly blossoms as Jesus and his apostles. In fact, then, the Christian religion, with all its possibilities of hope and happiness for the human race, lay at this period germinant, in seed form, in a crushed and struggling race. Hence the history of Samson; hence the reason why he who possessed scarcely a moral element of character is spoken of as under the guidance of the Spirit of the Lord. A blind impulse inspired him to fight for the protection of his nation against the barbarous tribes that threatened their destruction, and with this impulse came rushing floods of preternatural strength. With the history of this inspired giant is entwined that of a woman whose name has come to stand as a generic term for a class,--Delilah! It is astonishing with what wonderful dramatic vigor a few verses create before us this woman so vividly and so perfectly that she has been recognized from age to age.