To her prayer-hearing Lord.
Bible Stories.
Mrs. Penrose said, “I like to read the stories in the Bible very slowly; and I like to think, as I go along, how the persons of whom I read looked, and how their houses looked, and how they felt when they did certain things of which the Bible tells us. It makes me remember the stories better, and makes me feel as if I had seen all that I read of.
“The story of Samuel always appeared to me like a beautiful picture. I seem to see the house in which pious Hannah lived.
“There were many pretty hills in the land of Syria; and perhaps her husband’s house stood on the side of one of them. Olive-trees, with their pale green leaves, and dark cedars, may have shaded the house, for they both grew in that country; and grape-vines, bearing sunny grapes, may have grown over the pleasant porch.
“But I must not indulge my fancy too much: so I will go on with my little story.
“Hannah was a good woman. She had no children: so she prayed to God to give her a child. She said if God would do so, her child should be his as long as he lived.
“God heard Hannah’s prayer. He sent her a little son, and then she was very happy.
“Some people make promises to God, and then forget them. This is wicked. Hannah did not do so. She remembered how she had promised God that her little boy should be his child. She called him Samuel; and she took great pains to make Samuel a good boy. She taught him about the true God, and about the Messiah who was to come to redeem his people. She sung him to sleep with holy songs. She taught him to kneel down and pray to the God of Israel when he was a very little boy.
“I have no doubt that she told him of all the great things that God had done for the children of Israel. How the waters of the Red Sea parted, and stood up, like high crystal walls, on each side of them, as they walked across on the dry land; and how he sent them bread from heaven, when they traveled through the dreary wilderness, and made plenty of pure, cool water gush out from the burning rock, when they were almost choked with thirst.