Then followed months of prayer while the man was coming.
Samuel was born, no, farther back yet, was conceived in the atmosphere of prayer and devotion to God. The prenatal influences for those months gave the sort of man God wanted.

And a nation, the nation, the world-plan, was saved!

This man became a living answer to prayer. The romantic story of the little boy up in the Shiloh tabernacle quickly spread over the nation. His very name - Samuel, God hears - sifted into people's ears the facts of a God, and of the power of prayer.

The very sight of the boy and of the man clear to the end kept deepening the brain impression through eyeballs that God answers prayer. And the seeds of that re-belief in God that Samuel's leadership brought about were sown by the unusual story of his birth.

The answer was delayed that more might be given and gotten.
And Hannah's exultant song of praise reveals the fineness to which the texture of her nature had been spun.

And it tells too how grateful she was for a God who in great patience and of strong deliberate purpose delayed the answer to her prayer.