arrived, they were in full possession of the southern part of Palestine, and had formed a confederacy of five powerful cities,—­Gaza, Ashdod, Askelon, Gath, and Ekron.  In the time of the Judges they had become so prosperous and powerful that they held the Israelites in partial subjection, broken at intervals by heroes like Shamgar and Samson.  Under Eli there was an organized but unsuccessful resistance to these prosperous and warlike heathen.  Under Samuel the tide of success was turned in Israel’s favor at the battle of Mizpeh, when the Israelites erected their pillar at Ebenezer as a token of victory.  The battle of Michmash, gained by Saul and Jonathan after an immense slaughter of their foes, was so decisive that for twenty-five years the Israelites were unmolested.  In the latter part of the reign of Saul the Philistines attempted to regain their ascendency, but on the death of Goliath at the hand of David they were driven to their own territories.  The battle of Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan were slain, again turned the scale in favor of the Philistines.  Under David the Israelites resumed the aggressive, took Gath, and completely broke forever the ascendency of their powerful foes.  Under Solomon it would appear that the whole of Philistia was incorporated with the Hebrew monarchy, and remained so until the calamities of the Jews gave Philistia to the Assyrian conquerors of Jerusalem, and finally it fell into the hands of the Romans.  The Philistines were zealous idolaters, and in times of great religious apostasy they succeeded in introducing the worship of their gods among the Israelites, especially that of Baal and Ashtaroth.

Samuel did not live to see the complete humiliation of his nation which succeeded the bloody battle when Saul was slain; but he lived to a good old age, and never lost his influence over the Israelites, whom he had rescued from idolatry and to whom he had given political unity.  Although Saul was king, we are told that Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life.  He died universally lamented.  There is no record in the Scriptures of a death attended with such profound and general mourning.  All Israel mourned for him.  They mourned because he was a good man, unstained by crime or folly; they mourned because their judge and oracle and friend had passed away; they mourned because he had been their intercessor with God himself, and the interpreter of the divine will.  His like would never appear again in Israel.  “He represents the independence of the moral law, as distinct from regal and sacerdotal enactments.  If a Levite, he was not a priest.  He was a prophet, the first in the regular succession of prophets.  He was also the founder of the first regular institutions of religious instruction, and communities for the purposes of education.  From these institutions were developed the universities of Christendom.”