Saul had broken with his God on the score of an intense self-will, and he did not repent. The prophet Samuel had announced wrath, and threatened final rejection, but no humiliation and no penitence followed. In this mood of mind, when his fear came as desolation, all the avenues of knowledge or aid which belonged to God's children were closed upon him, and he voluntarily put himself in the hands of those powers which were his declared enemies. The scene as given is so exactly like what is occurring in our day, like incidents that so many among us have the best reason for knowing to be objectively facts of daily occurrence, that there is no reason to encumber it with notes and comments as to the probability of the account. The woman was a medium who had the power of calling up the spirits of the dead at the desire of those who came to her. She is not represented at all as a witch after the Shakespearean style. There is no "eye of newt and toe of frog," no caldron or grimaces to appall. From all that appears, she was a soft-hearted, kindly, cowardly creature, turning a penny as she could, in a way forbidden by the laws of the land; quite ready to make up by artifice for any lack of reality; who cast her line into the infinite shadows, and was somewhat appalled by what it brought up. There is a tone of reproof in the voice of the departed friend: "Why hast thou _disquieted_ me, to bring me up?" And when Saul says, "God hath forsaken us, and will not answer," the reproving shade replies, "Wherefore come to _me_, seeing God hath become thine enemy?" In all this is the voice of the true and loyal prophet, who from a child had sought God, and God alone, in every emergency, and ever found him true and faithful. This story has its parallel in our days. In our times there is a God and Father always nigh to those who diligently seek him. There is communion with spirits through Jesus, the great High-Priest. There are promises of guidance in difficulties and support under trials to all who come to God by Him. In our days, too, there are those who propose, for the relief of human perplexities and the balm for human sorrows, a recourse to those who have familiar spirits, and profess to call back to us those who are at rest with God.