When the conscience-struck Israelites felt that they had exposed themselves to the wrath of Almighty God, whose sovereign power, put forth at the prayer of Samuel, they then witnessed, distrusting the efficacy of their own supplication, and confiding in the intercession of that man of God, they implored him to intercede for them; and Samuel emphatically responded to their appeal, with an assurance of his earnestly undertaking to plead their cause with heaven: "And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not. And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not.... The Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name's { 25} sake.... Moreover, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you." [1 Sam. (1 Kings Vulg.) xii. 19.] Samuel is one whom the Holy Spirit numbers among those "who called upon God's name;" and when Samuel died, all Israel gathered together to lament and to bury him,--but we read of no petition being offered to him to carry on the same intercessory office, when he was once removed from them. As long as he was entabernacled in the flesh and sojourned on earth with his brethren, they besought him to pray for them, to intercede with their God and his God for blessings at his hand, (just as among ourselves one Christian asks another to pray for him,) but when Samuel's body had been buried in peace, and his soul had returned to God who gave it, the Bible never records any further application to him; we no where read, "Holy Samuel, pray for us."
Again, what announcement could God Himself make more expressive of his acceptance of the persons of any, than He actually and repeatedly made to Moses with regard to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? How could He more clearly intimate that if the spirits of the faithful departed could exercise intercessory or mediatorial influence with Him, those three holy patriarchs would possess such power above all others who had ever lived on the earth? "I am the God of your fathers; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob: and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God." "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial throughout all generations." [Exod. iii. 6. 15.] Did Moses in his alarm and dread, when he was afraid { 26} to look upon God, call upon those holy and accepted servants to aid him in his perplexity, and intercede for him and his people with the awful Eternal Being on whose majesty he dared not to look? Did he teach his people to invoke Abraham? That was far from him. When Moses, that saint of the Lord, was himself called hence and was buried, (though no mortal man was allowed to know the place of his sepulture,) did the surviving faithful pray to him for his help and intercession with God? He had wrought so many and great miracles as never had been before witnessed on earth; whilst in the tabernacle of the flesh he had talked with God as a man talketh with his friend; and yet the sacred page records no invocation ever breathed to his departed spirit. The same is the result of our inquiry throughout.