Believing evil to be as real as good and matter to be the basis of life, mankind have tended through the ages to peer ahead anxiously in their endeavor to outwit or avoid the inevitable consequences of this belief. Either they have been ignorant of their inherent ability to make the moral and spiritual effort necessary to challenge and reject the belief itself, or they have been unwilling to do so.
The Old Testament seers, in terminology adapted to the people of their time, repeatedly urged the children of Israel to turn from the worship of false gods, from accrediting power to evil and materiality, and to obey the one intelligent God, good. Saul had originally approached Samuel, the prophet or seer of good, for guidance. He was subsequently selected by Samuel to be king over a people who clamored for personal leadership, a people unwilling to accept the self-discipline involved in the higher form of government supported by their prophets, namely individual obedience to the one God, or Mind.
Saul, however, proved little better than his people. Often unwilling to live up to God's commands, he was all too inclined to yield to impulses of greed, envy, or fear. He may have obeyed Samuel literally and "put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land" I Sam. 28: 3;; but he obviously had not ceased to believe in them, for the first moment of crisis after Samuel's death he immediately turned back to them and found—all that ever is to be found from such sources—his own worst fears confirmed. Indeed, his experience can best be described in Job's words, "The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me." Job 3: 25;
