veniences, of her early recommendation, — and, taught by better experience, she now says, "Cast out the bondwoman." Abraham hesitated; it was painful to do so; but he was told by God that it was right before Him, and his doing so was not cruelty to Hagar, but a legal necessity, in order to exclude Ishmael from the inheritance, that Isaac, the son of promise, who was the right inheritor, might possess that inheritance. He, therefore, gives to Hagar bread, and a bottle of water, or, as it in all probability was, a sheepskin of water, being the skin of an animal, that was then used instead of modern glass; and, in a sultry climate, and to travel over a long desert, a larger quantity of water than any sized bottle that we can imagine could hold, was necessary for her.

The poor mother, thus driven forth, set out toward the wide wilderness, without the utterance of a murmur or complaint, taking the lad with her. The water in the bottle was soon spent; the pangs of hunger and thirst came on; she laid the child, or the lad, under the shrubs. He was a youth, a stripling, probably fourteen years of age. "And she went, and sat her down over against him, a good way off, as it were a bowshot; for she said, Let me not see the death of the child." The lad began clearly to faint first. It is not the strongest that endure the longest fatigue and the greatest exhaustion; for she remained strong, when the lad, probably from his rapid growth, from his constitution not being formed, and settled, and vigorous, fainted from hunger and thirst in the midst of the sultry desert. I think the picture is worthy of a master's pencil; that sketch, that beautiful picture, where she hid her eyes, and sat at a distance, that she might not gaze at the expiring agonies of the son for whom she had suffered so much, and whose exile and banishment she pitied so truly.

But, in this state, "God heard the voice of the lad." How beautiful is this, that in that desert the cry of that lad

reached the ear of the Lord of hosts! God was watching over him. We think a desert is destitute of Deity because it is destitute of civilization; but it is not so. God is as much in the desert, and sees and hears every sound amid its silence, as he is in the throng and the bustle of the populous city. You recollect the beautiful instance in the history of Mungo Park. When travelling in a parched and sunburnt and scorched desert, after he had given up all for lost, and felt that he must lie down and die, just on the spot where he sat down, he saw a little flower, with its tints as beautiful as under the shelter and the shadow of his own Scottish hills, and as fragrant and sweet as if it had grown in the most beautiful garden in the choicest spot of his own land. ` Gazing at it, he thought, if God condescends to feed with his dews this flower, and to pencil these tints, and to give it life and vitality here, where few eyes can see it, then there is a God in the wilderness; also, He that takes care of a little flower will not forget and forsake me. And he took heart again, and set out on his march, and was strong to do and to dare, because the thought of a present and protecting God was realized by him.

I need not refer to the promise that God made to Ishmael, as I have explained it already: "I will make him a great nation;" and he grew in the wilderness, and became, as you are aware, the founder of the Arabs. It appears that at this time Abraham was in the kingdom of Abimelech, and that Abimelech and his subjects had done some mischief to Abraham, because of a well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away, and Abraham came to him and reminded him of this act, and asked for such compensation as was proper; and Abimelech made the right apology, and explained that it was not done with his consent. Wells of water, in eastern and hot climates, are of course of very great importance; and hence, to stop the wells of a country, or to

lead away the water from the wells of a country, is an act of the greatest hostility to its population.

We read that Abraham made a grove, after this expression of amity with Abimelech, and called there on the name of the Lord. It is very curious to notice how the first sanctuaries seem to have been woods, forests and groves. And it is equally remarkable to notice how, after they were used for true and spiritual worship, they came to be employed exclusively for idolatry; so much so, that in the rest of this blessed book you will hear God often commanding them utterly to pull down the groves, because those groves had been made places where idols were worshipped. The brass serpent was made by God's command, its healing virtue was given by God himself, and the people were divinely told to look at it. But after it had served its purpose, the same people tried to make a god of it. In this instance men took that which was true and good originally, and made such a bad use of it, that God commanded it to be ground to powder as ne-hushtan, "a thing of vanity, and as nothing." These grove sanctuaries came to be desecrated, and therefore he commanded them all to be pulled down. One can see in these groves the first idea of a cathedral. Let any one stand in a lofty avenue of oaks, with their branches intertwining and interlacing, and he will see the nave of a Gothic cathedral. The tracery on the roof, the groined arches, the columns, and the pillars with their picturesque capitals, all is but man trying to embody in the stone what nature has so magnificently developed in her forests, and to perpetuate a grove of stone as a memorial still of the first sanctuaries in which men worshipped.

"Against the clouds, far up the skies,

The walls of the cathedral rise,

Like a mysterious grove of stones."-Longfellow.

Hence, also, the Druids and the Druid temples all were instances of the early purpose to which groves and forests were applied, that is, for worship; and when one thinks of the silence and the solemnity of primeval forests, one can see how naturally man would have recourse to them to worship; but when we see how sadly they were abused, one feels how easily the best things may be perverted, and God's own divine institutions turned into objects of sin and of folly.

But, blessed be God, neither in this mountain nor in that, neither in grove or cathedral only, is worship acceptable to God. He is worshipped truly, and the worship is accepted, wherever he is approached in spirit and in truth.

GOD'S COMMAND-THE PATRIARCH'S OBEDIENCE THE JOURNEY TO MORIAH-THE LAMB SLAIN FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD.

I WOULD offer a very few remarks upon the intensely interesting sketch which is contained in this chapter; a sketch, however, that is a shadow of a far greater and more glorious event, consummated in the fulness of the times, when "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have eternal life."

Let us ponder how painful to Abraham, and unexpected, must have been the command addressed to him here by his God: "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering." It was after, you recollect, he had been told that in old age there should be born to him a son, and after he had thought for a season that Ishmael was that son, and, disappointed in him, had received Isaac as the son of promise, his only son, and the only one that was born to him, and the only apparently possible channel through whom and by whom might be sent the Messiah, in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed. After disappointment on disappointment, after darkness deepening into darkness, at last Isaac the son of promise is born. The patriarch's joy is perfect, his expectancy is at its highest pitch; all is sunshine without and brightness within. But, in the midst of this, the voice of Him who made him leave the land of Ur, and go to the land that He would show him, sounds