Mount Sinai, in the heart of that wilderness, expressly entitled Agar in the New Testament, and popularly known by the name of Hagar, among the Arabs of the peninsula of Sinai at the present day. That it was originally so named after Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, appears incontrovertibly from the reasoning of Saint Paul; who introduces Sinai under its name of Agar, in argumentative connection with the opposition between the wife, and the concubine, of Abraham, and between the son of the bond-maid, and the son of the free-woman: "For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a free-woman. But he who was of the bond-woman, was born after the flesh; but he of the free-woman, was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar, is Mount Sinai in Arabia."* But this plain scriptural intimation, that Mount Sinai derived its name of Agar or Hagar from the mother of Ishmael, with the obvious consequence, that the wilderness of Paran, amidst which it stands (the seat of Ptolemy's Pharan emporium, and Pharanita), was peopled by his descendants, authorizes the extended conclusion, *Gal. iv. 22-25. that whatever further traces of the name of Hagar may be discoverable, whether in the ancient, or the modern geography of Arabia, are all referable to the proper-name of the mother of Ishmael, the virtual sole parent of himself, and of his race. It will be seen, as we proceed, that the Arab tribes derived from Hagar and Ishmael, like the earlier stocks descended from Cush and Joktan, were, at the same time, generically known by the common patronymic of Ishmaelites or Hagarenes, and specifically distinguished from each other by the names of their respective more immediate progenitors, the "twelve princes,” born, by divine promise, to the son of Hagar. It is needless to dwell on the high historical value of this national usage of the Arabs, which (as has been repeatedly seen in the preceding pages) doubles, in every new example of its occurrence, the evidence of the descent. I shall, therefore, without preface, adopt an order of inquiry plainly pointed out by the existence of this usage, and proceed to trace the settlements of the race of Ishmael in Arabia, 1. under the generic names of Hagarites, and Ishmaelites, and, * In one example, that of Hagar, as the name of the province otherwise called Bahrein, the derivation is demonstrable from Baruch, iii. 23., where we find the Arabs of that province styled viol "Ayap. 2. under the specific denominations derived from the twelve patriarchs, the founders of "the generations of Ishmael." The Mosaic catalogue of these generations, or tribes, is familiar to every reader of Genesis. Having recorded the names of the twelve families, in those of the twelve patriarchs, their fathers, it thus bears witness to their separate existence as nations: "These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles, twelve princes, according to their nations." The sacred historian proceeds to mark out the primitive settlements of this great patriarchal race: "And they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, that is before Egypt, as thou goest towards Assyria." In other words, the dwellings of the Ishmaelitish tribes, prior to the time of Moses, lay across the entire neck of the peninsula, from the mouths of the Euphrates, to the Isthmus of Suez.* In this direction, it *The Gulf of Suez was the scene of the most stupendous miracle of the Exode, the passage of the Red Sea. I would take this opportunity to animadvert upon the whole class of hypercritics (among whom I am sorry to include the respectable name of Dr. Robinson of New York), who would tame down this amazing display of Almighty power, into the natural effect, supernaturally timed, of an east, or north-east, wind, cooperating with the ebb tide," to drive out the waters from the small arm of the sea which runs up by Suez, and also from the end of the Gulf itself, leaving the shallower portions dry; while the more northern part of the arm, which was anciently broader and deeper than at present, would still remain covered with water." (Biblical Researches in Palestine, follows, we may expect the clearest traces of this people, under their generic names of Hagarites and Ishmaelites.* * In the Book of Judith, the race of Ishmael is noticed by their patronymic, as extending to the southern confines of Syria and Cilicia. Holofernes, moving south from Cilicia, "spoiled all the children of Rasses, and the children of Ismael, which were towards the wilderness, at the south of the land of the Chellians." (Judith, ii. 23.) The same verse makes mentions of " Phud and Lud," as inhabitants of the hill country, or Upper Cilicia; and thereby corrects the geography of Bochart and Wells, who not only carry these two Cushite nations into Africa, but confine them exclusively to that continent. The march of Holofernes is wholly inconsistent with this notion. vol. i. p. 82, &c.) According to this view of it, the miracle resolves itself into an extraordinary flux and reflux of the tide, produced by the action of the wind; and the transaction could have presented no appearance to the eye, beyond that of an unusual egress and regress of the waters. As though still more to abate its supernatural character, the aid of fords and shoals is called in; in order (it is presumed) that the wind and the Israelites might have the least possible difficulties to overcome! From these puerilities we return to the sacred narrative; where, to the plain reader, each step and circumstance of the transaction will present miracle crowding upon miracle, on a scale every way worthy of the occasion and the Author. For, 1. Such was the power of the miraculous east wind, that, instead of merely blowing aside, it "divided," literally “ cut, or clave in sunder,” the waters of the sea (D'Dn typa'): 2. Such, at the point of scission, was the depth of the sea, that, instead of the passage being cleared by secession of the tide on the southern side, the waters on both sides stood raised perpendicularly, so as to form “a wall unto the Israelites, on their right hand, and on their left : 3. In proof that the term "wall" is to be understood, not figuratively, but literally, we have its meaning cleared by two equivalent expressions,—that the waters stood as an heap,— and that they were congealed, or suspended, as though turned into ice : "And with the blast of thy nostrils, The waters were gathered together : The depths were congealed in the heart of the sea." (Exod. xv. 8.) Now, the first mention of the people called Hagarites, in the Old Testament, happily is accompanied by a decisive historical proof, that Here we have miracle upon miracle: the waters, first, miraculously severed; and, then, miraculously suspended in the air. But, if the evidence of the Song of Moses, and of the Psalms, be disallowed, as poetry, I shall dispose of the question by turning to plain prose. In the Book of Joshua, we have a second and similar occurrence, where the nature and amount of the miracle admits not of debate, the passage of the Jordan. (Josh. iii. 7-17.) Now, the very phrase used by Moses-" they stood as an heap"-to describe the miraculous suspension of the divided waters of the Red Sea, is that employed, by the author of the Book of Joshua, to describe the miraculous suspension of the upper waters of Jordan, while the lower naturally flowed off and failed. That the waters of a river, confined within its bed, and arrested in its course, must rise up into a wall, is self-evident. And the same expression being used to characterize the phenomena of both miracles, what was literally true of the waters of the Jordan, must be literally true of the waters of the Red Sea. The exactness of the two descriptions is attested by an appropriate variation: we have two walls of water in the one case; and one only in the other. The nature of the miracle, made plain to our common sense by the direct language of Scripture, is equally attested by its indirect allusions to the passage of the Red Sea. Undesigned coincidences of this kind have a value in evidence, which, since the time of Paley, is well understood. With reference to the question before us, I have specially in view two passages of Isaiah. Their bearing upon it seems altogether to have escaped notice; although, in themselves, sufficient to decide it. With these passages I would close the scriptural proof. The first, (Is. xi. 15, 16.) demonstrates the similarity of character between the miraculous passage of the Red Sea, and that of the Jordan, by its comparison, with the former, of a third miraculous passage (the theme of this particular prophecy), namely, that of the returning of the children of the captivity over the river Euphrates: "And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian Sea (the grand impediment of the Exode); and, with his mighty wind, shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod. And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria; like as it was to Israel, in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt." In the case of the river, there is no mistaking the nature of |