It
involved an overloading, as it were, of the system with materials
which it was incapable of assimilating at once. The material
tasks imposed threatened to destroy the religious basis of the
old national life. The offensive and defensive alliances
among the tribes gradually dissolved under the continuance of
peace; the subsequent occupation of the country dispersed those
whom the camp had united. The enthusiastic _elan_ with which the
conquest had been achieved gave way to the petty drudgery by which
the individual families, each in its own circle, had to accommodate
themselves to their new surroundings. Yet under the ashes the
embers were still aglow; and the course of history ever fanned
them anew into flame, bringing home to Israel the truths that man
does not live by bread alone, and that there are other things of
worth than those which Baal can bestow; it brought ever again
into the foreground the divineness of heroical self sacrifice of
the individual for the good of the nation.
3. THE FOUNDATION OF THE KINGDOM, AND THE FIRST THREE KINGS.
The Philistines were the means of arousing from their slumber
Israel and Jehovah.
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