Will she really leave him?  Will she consent to part from her treasure and joy—­her only one?  What a blessing he has been to her!  Seven years of peace and overflowing happiness has that little one purchased for her burdened and distracted spirit.  Can she return to Ramah without him, to solitude and loneliness, uncheered by his winning ways and childish prattle?  Surely this is a sorrow which will wring her heart, as never before.  Not so.  There she stands again on the spot where she once knelt and wept and vowed, but no tears fall now from her eyes—­no grief is in her tones.  She has come to fulfill her vow, “to lend her son to the Lord as long as he liveth.”  Again she prays as she is about parting from him.  What a prayer!—­a song of exultation rather.  Listen to its sublime import.  “My heart rejoiceth in the Lord; mine horn is exalted in the Lord.”  How did we wrong thee, Hannah!  We said thy son had purchased peace and joy for thee.  Our low, selfish, doting hearts had not soared to the heights of thy lofty devotion.  We deemed thee such an one as ourselves.  In the gift, truly thou hast found comfort; but the Giver is He in whom thou hast delighted, and therefore thou canst so readily restore what he lent thee, on the conditions of thy vow.  The Lord thy God has been, and is still to be, thy portion, and thou fearest not to leave thy precious one in His house.  We thought to hear a wail from thee, but we were among the foolish.  Thy soul is filled with the beauty and glory of the Lord, and thou hast not a word of sadness now.  Thou leavest thy lamb among wolves—­thy consecrated one with the “sons of Belial”—­yet thou tremblest not.  Who shall guide his childish feet in wisdom’s ways when thou art far away?  What hinders that he shall look on vice till it become familiar, and he be even like those around him?  The old man is no fit protector for him.  Does not thy heart fear?  “Oh, woman, great is thy faith!”

Come hither, ye who would learn a lesson of wisdom; ponder this record of the sacred word.  Hannah returned to Ramah.  She became the mother of sons and daughters; and yearly as she went with her husband to Shiloh, she carried to her first-born a coat wrought by maternal love, and rejoiced to see him growing before the Lord.  How long she did this, we are not told.  We have searched in vain for a word or hint that she lived to see the excellence and greatness of the son whom she “asked of God.”  The only clew which we can find is, that Samuel’s house was in Ramah, the house of his parents; and we wish to think he lived there to be with them; and we hope his mother’s eyes looked on the altar which he built there unto the Lord, and that her heart was gladdened by witnessing the proofs of his wisdom and grace, and the favor with which the Almighty regarded him.