AN ANCIENT COMMENT ON SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR by Dudley Marvin Canright

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 4, 1868

AN ANCIENT COMMENT ON SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

HIPPOLYTUS, a Christian father and a bishop, who wrote about A. D. 220, among other things, has a few words of comment on the above-named subject. I think that he takes a correct position on it; at least it shows how those early fathers regarded the case of the Witch and Samuel: they believed it to be all a deception of the Devil. Thus he says:

“The question is raised, whether Samuel arose by the hand of the sorceress or not. And if, indeed, we were to allow that he did rise, we should be propounding what is false. For how could a demon call back the soul, I say not of a righteous man merely, but of any one whatever, when it had gone, and was tarrying one knew not where? But he [an objector] says, how then was the woman dismayed, and how did she see in an extraordinary way men ascending? For if her vision had not been of an extraordinary kind, she would not have said, I see gods ascending out of the earth. She invoked one, and how did there ascend many? What then? Shall we say that the souls of all who appeared ascended, and those, too, not invoked by the woman, or that what was seen was merely phantoms of them? Even this, however, will not suffice. How, he urges further, did Saul recognize what appeared, and do obeisance? Well Saul did not actually see, but only, on being told by the woman that the figure of one of those who ascended was the figure he desired, and taking it to be Samuel, he consulted it as such, and did it obeisance. And it could be no difficult matter for the demon to conjure up the form of Samuel, as it was known to him. How, then, says he, did he foretell the calamities that were to befall Saul and Jonathan at the same time? He did foretell, indeed, the end of the war, and how Saul would be overcome, drawing that as an inference from the wrath of God against him. Just as a physician, who has no exact knowledge of the science, might yet, seeing a patient past cure, tell of his death, though he made an error as to the hour, so, too, the demon, knowing the wrath of God by Saul’s deeds, and by his very attempt to consult the sorceress, foretells his defeat and his death at the same time, though in error as to the day of his death.”—Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vol. vi, pp. 423, 424.

Just so are the demons working now through mediums. D. M. CANRIGHT.