There is a great principle in all this. It is not officialism that counts with God, but piety. Not through the great ecclesiastics of Christendom is God pleased to speak today to His people's hearts and consciences, but through far humbler souls, who walk before Him, trembling at His word, and who seek to learn His mind and will.
A man may be “on the oversight” (as some express it) and yet not be one through whom God can speak in the spirit of the prophet to His saints. Shall not both reader and writer seek to be a Samuel?
Samuel seems to have made some preparations for the new order that the Lord meant to introduce when the Kingdom was established, for he dedicated treasure to maintain the house of the Lord, as David did soon after him (1 Chron. 26:2828And all that Samuel the seer, and Saul the son of Kish, and Abner the son of Ner, and Joab the son of Zeruiah, had dedicated; and whosoever had dedicated any thing, it was under the hand of Shelomith, and of his brethren. (1 Chronicles 26:28)). It is interesting to observe also that from him sprang some of those who led the praises of Israel when the service of song was set up in the temple (1 Chron. 6:3333And these are they that waited with their children. Of the sons of the Kohathites: Heman a singer, the son of Joel, the son of Shemuel, (1 Chronicles 6:33)).
We have thus a pious soul, entering with spiritual intelligence into the circumstances of the times, standing apart from the evils which disgraced the people, maintaining his own soul in blissful touch with God, and making ceaseless intercession for his failing brethren. What an example is here! Need we wonder that this singularly devoted servant of the Lord has his name recorded by the Spirit in the list of worthies in Hebrews 11. The memory of such a one is imperishable.