And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her, and moreover I will give thee a son of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be of her.- Gen_17:15-16.
1. At last Sarah is definitely named as the mother of the promised heir. When the announcement was made to Abraham he fell upon his face, outwardly worshipping, but in his heart he laughed. His feelings were mixed; he desired to believe, yet his mind at once turned to the great natural improbability of the event predicted. These natural feelings found a muffled expression in the spoken words: “O that Ishmael might live before thee!”
This slightly unbelieving petition is rebuked only in so far as the repetition of the promise can be called a rebuke. “Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac”-a name which would at all times remind Abraham of the even ludicrously unlikely means by which this child was brought into the world. At the same time his prayer for Ishmael was heard, though not precisely as he expected: “twelve princes shall he beget (Gen_25:12-16), and I will make him a great nation”-a promise which has received abundant fulfilment in the extraordinary career of the Arab conquerors of the seventh and following centuries.
One hundred years after Mohammed's death his followers were masters of an empire greater than Rome at the zenith of her power. They were building mosques in China, in Spain, in Persia, and in Southern India! The extent, the rapidity, and the method of the early Moslem conquest are a marvellous illustration of their fanatic zeal. Two hundred years after the Hegira, Mohammed's name was proclaimed on thousands of minarets from the pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, and from Northern Turkestan to Ceylon. Only thirteen centuries have passed, and to-day there are over two hundred and thirty million Mohammedans-one-seventh of the population of the globe! Fifty-eight millions in Africa, sixty-two millions in India, thirty millions in China, thirty-five millions in the Malay Archipelago, and one quarter of a million in the Philippines, not to speak of the lands that are almost wholly Mohammedan in Western Asia. It is easy enough to say that Mohammedanism was propagated by the sword. It largely was. But we may well ask, with Carlyle: “Where did Mohammed get his sword?” What fires of faith and devotion must have burned in the hearts of the early champions of Islam, to make them gird the sword and fight and die for the new religion. It swept across Syria, Egypt, Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco, like the desert simoon-swift, fierce, impetuous, irresistible, destructive-only to be curbed and cooled by the waves of the Atlantic. History tells of Akba, one of their leaders, that he rode his horse far out into the surf and cried: “Great God! if I were not stopped by this raging sea, I would go on to the nations of the West, preaching the unity of Thy name and putting to the sword those who would not submit.”1 [Note: S. M. Zwemer, Islam, 55.]
2. In the birth of Isaac, Abraham at length sees the long-delayed fulfilment of the promise. But his trials are by no means over. He has himself introduced into his family the seeds of discord and disturbance, and speedily the fruit is borne. Ishmael, at the birth of Isaac, was a lad of fourteen years, and reckoning from Eastern customs, he must have been over sixteen when the feast was made in honour of the weaned child. Certainly he was quite old enough to understand the important and not very welcome alteration in his prospects which the birth of this new son effected. He had been brought up to count himself the heir of all the wealth and influence of Abraham. There was no alienation of feeling between father and son: no shadow had flitted over the bright prospect of the boy as he grew up; when suddenly and unexpectedly there was interposed between him and his expectation the effectual barrier of this child of Sarah's. The importance of this child to the family was in due course indicated in many ways offensive to Ishmael; and when the feast was made, his spleen could no longer be repressed. This weaning was the first step in the direction of an independent existence, and this would be the point of the feast in celebration. The child was no longer a mere part of the mother, but an individual, a member of the family. The hopes of the parents were carried forward to the time when he should be quite independent of them.
The too visible pride of the aged mother, the incongruity of maternal duties with ninety years, the concentration of attention and honours on so small an object-all this was, doubtless, a temptation to a boy who had probably at no time too much reverence. But the words and gestures which others might have disregarded as childish frolic, or, at worst, as the unseemly and ill-natured impertinence of a boy who knew no better, stung Sarah, and left in her blood a poison that infuriated her. “Cast out this bondwoman and her son,” she demanded of Abraham.
“I know the king [George IV.] so well,” added the Duke of Wellington, “that I can deal with him easily, but anybody who does not know him, and who is afraid of him, would have the greatest difficulty in getting on with him. One extraordinary peculiarity about him is, that the only thing he fears is ridicule. He is afraid of nothing which is hazardous, perilous, or uncertain; on the contrary, he is all for braving difficulties; but he dreads ridicule, and this is the reason why the Duke of Cumberland, whose sarcasms he dreads, has such power over him, and Lord Anglesey likewise; both of them he hates in proportion as he fears them.”1 [Note: The Greville Memoirs, i. 223.]
We must not be too much afraid of ridicule, but at the same time we must not be too ready to give occasion for it. This has been emphatically-too emphatically-expressed by Lord Chesterfield, “There is nothing that a young fellow, at his first appearance in the world, has more reason to dread, and consequently, should take more pains to avoid, than having any ridicule fixed upon him. It degrades him with the most reasonable part of mankind, but it ruins him with the rest; and I have known many a man undone by acquiring a ridiculous nickname. Vices and crimes excite hatred and reproach; failings, weaknesses, and awkwardnesses excite ridicule; they are laid hold of by mimics, who, though very contemptible wretches themselves, often by their buffoonery fix ridicule upon their betters. The little defects in manners, elocution, address, and air (and even of figure, though very unjustly) are the objects of ridicule and the causes of nicknames. Therefore take great care to put it out of the power of ridicule to give you any ridiculous epithets; for, if you get one, it will stick to you like the envenomed shirt.”2 [Note: Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son, ii. 273.]
3. Both for Abraham and for Ishmael it was better that this severance should take place. It was grievous to Abraham; and Sarah saw that for this very reason it was necessary. Ishmael was his firstborn, and for many years had received the whole of his parental affection; and, looking on the little Isaac, he might feel the desirableness of keeping another son in reserve, lest this strangely-given child might as strangely pass away. Coming to him in a way so unusual, and having perhaps in his appearance some indication of his peculiar birth, he might seem scarcely fit for the rough life Abraham himself had led. On the other hand, it was plain that in Ishmael were the very qualities which Isaac was already showing that he lacked.
The act of expulsion was itself unaccountably harsh. There was nothing to prevent Abraham sending the boy and his mother under an escort to some safe place; nothing to prevent him giving the lad some share of his possessions sufficient to provide for him. Nothing of this kind was done. The woman and the boy were simply put to the door; and this, although Ishmael had for years been counted Abraham's heir, and though he was a member of the covenant made with Abraham. There may have been some law giving Sarah absolute power over her maid; but if any law gave her power to do what was now done, it was a thoroughly barbarous one, and she was a barbarous woman who used it.
How many soever you may find or fancy your faults to be there are only two that are of real consequence-Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps you may be proud. Well, we can get much good out of pride, if only it be not religious. Perhaps you may be vain; it is highly probable; and very pleasant for the people who like to praise you. Perhaps you are a little envious; that is really very shocking; but then-so is everybody else. Perhaps, also. you are a little malicious, which I am truly concerned to hear, but should probably only the more, if I knew you, enjoy your conversation. But whatever else you may be, you must not be useless, and you must not be cruel. If there is any one point which, in six thousand years of thinking about right and wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon, or successively by experience discovered, it is that God dislikes idle and cruel people more than any others:-that His first order is, “Work while you have light”; and His second, “Be merciful while you have mercy.”
I said, you are not to be cruel. Perhaps you think there is no chance of your being so; and indeed I hope it is not likely that you should be deliberately unkind to any creature; but unless you are deliberately kind to every creature, you will often be cruel to many. Cruel, partly through want of imagination (a far rarer and weaker faculty in women than men), and yet more, at the present day, through the subtle encouragement of your selfishness by the religious doctrine that all which we now suppose to be evil will be brought to a good end; doctrine practically issuing, not in less earnest efforts that the immediate unpleasantness may be averted from ourselves, but in our remaining satisfied in the contemplation of its ultimate objects, when it is inflicted on others.1 [Note: Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, § 7 (Works, xviii. 35).]
4. The Egyptian and her boy passed into the desert, and soon the merciless heat of the noonday sun blazed thirst and death on the sand and stony hills, dotted with arid shrubs and bitter flowers. Winding through this desolation, the weeping figures went their way. Sorrow makes weariness and pain; the water was spent in the bottle, for a mother cannot resist her child's cry. At last the boy could go no farther, and Hagar lost all hope. Despairing surrender to fate when effort has reached a certain point-that is in the Oriental character. An Englishwoman would have struggled onward till she died, to save the lad. But Hagar laid the child in the shadow of one of the shrubs, 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. And she lift up her voice, and wept.”
That is beautiful. And it goes on with equal beauty. “And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink. And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.”
The tale is told with Oriental imagery. Voices are heard; an angel speaks from heaven. But if we do not impute objective reality to these things, the spiritual humanity of the story is none the less. It came home to Hagar's heart that God had not forgotten her, that He was the ever near. And that is a revelation which has come to thousands of men and women in this world of ours. It has come home to us who worship the Father who holds us, in our hours of trouble, to His heart; and we think, as we give thanks, of the wandering woman in the desert, and realize our brotherhood with her-that everlasting fraternity of sorrow and of joy that knits us, across the centuries, to all mankind.1 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke.]
5. No longer the voice said: “Return, submit”; for Hagar had learnt that lesson. Her character, strengthened by the submission, was fit to do her work in liberty. Besides, she had her boy, and his fate was to be great. Her motherhood had the fine duty of making him worthy of his destiny. And moreover, she knew within her that this was the work of God, and she loved Him for it. Wherever she looked, whatever she did, she saw the Divine Master of life, the All-seeing, whom she had met in her first exile to rebuke her and to command the right; the Ever-near, whom she had met in her second flight to comfort and to strengthen her; and, seeing Him, life became Divine, being filled with the consciousness of love. So the Oriental heart was at peace at last. And with peace, forgiveness and loving-kindness crept in. The families were reconciled. Ishmael and Isaac often met, and at last stood together round their father Abraham's grave. The education of Hagar was complete. The story is rounded to its close in charity.
The things we think the bitterest are often the sweetest at their core. Had Hagar remained in Abraham's tents, her life would have grown into greater misery. Sarah, now exultant, would have made her feel her slavery in a thousand ways her passionate heart could not have borne. She might have worn herself out with indignation, or sunk into apathy; her eager heart grown grey within, all the interests of life decayed into a withered common-place; the slave might have become a slave in heart. So God removed her and made her the free woman of the desert. The stain of slavery slipped away from her for ever. She became her own. Her soul drank the fresh air of a new life. Every hour her interests grew and multiplied. Her whole character expanded, and she thanked the Lord in joy.1 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke.]
6. St. Paul uses this incident in order to represent the impossibility of law and gospel living harmoniously together. Hagar, the slave, who may even have been born in the Sinaitic Desert, with which she seems to have been so familiar, is a fit representative of the spirit of legalism and bondage, seeking to win life by the observance of the law, which was given from those hoary cliffs. Hagar is the covenant of Mount Sinai in Arabia, “which gendereth to bondage,” and “is in bondage with her children” (Gal_4:24-25). Sarah, the free woman, on the other hand, represents the covenant of free grace. Her children are love, and faith, and hope; they are not bound by the spirit of “must,” but by the promptings of spontaneous gratitude; their home is not in the frowning clefts of Sinai, but in Jerusalem above, which is free, and is the mother of us all. Now, argues the Apostle, there was no room for Hagar and Sarah, with their respective children, in Abraham's tent. If Ishmael was there, it was because Isaac was not born. But as soon as Isaac came in, Ishmael had to go out. So the two principles-of legalism, which insists on the performance of the outward rite of circumcision; and of faith, which accepts the finished work of the Saviour-cannot co-exist in one heart. It is a moral impossibility. As well could darkness co-exist with light and slavery with freedom. So, addressing the Galatian converts, who were being tempted by Judaizing teachers to mingle legalism and faith, the Apostle bade them follow the example of Abraham, and cast out the spirit of bondage which keeps the soul in one perpetual agony of unrest.
Paul would have each of us apply, allegorically, the words, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son,” that is, cast out the legal mode of earning a standing in God's house, and with this legal mode cast out all the self-seeking, the servile fear of God, the self-righteousness, and the hard-heartedness it engenders. Cast out wholly from yourself the spirit of the slave, and cherish the spirit of the son and heir. Nothing but being the child of God, being born of the Spirit, can give the feeling of intimacy, confidence, unity of interest, which constitutes true religion.
Have you often thought of how the whole Bible is a Book of Liberty, of how it rings with liberty from beginning to end, of how the great men are the men of liberty, of how in the Old Testament, the great picture which for ever shines is the emancipator, leading forth out of imprisonment the people of God, who were to do the great work of God in the very much larger and freer life in which they were to live? The prophet, the psalmist, are ever preaching and singing about liberty, the enfranchisement of the life of man, that man was not imprisoned in order to fulfil himself, but shall open his life, and every new progress shall be into a new region of existence which he has not touched as yet. When we turn from the Old Testament to the New Testament, how absolutely clear that idea is! Christ is the very embodiment of human liberty. In His own personal life and in everything that He did and said, He was for ever uttering the great gospel that man, in order to become his completest, must become his freest, that what a man did when he entered into a new life was to open a new region in which new powers were to find their exercise, in which he was to be able to be and do things which he could not be and do in more restricted life. It is the acceptance of that idea, it seems to me, that makes us true disciples of Christ and of that great gospel, and that transfigures everything.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Addresses, 80.]
Phew! 'T 'is a stuffy and a stupid place,
This social edifice by Custom wrought-
This fenced enclosure wherein all are caught,
The great and small, the noble and the base,
And squeezed and flattened to one common face.
Air, air for springing fancy, errant thought!
Scope to make something of the seeming nought!
Room for the fleet foot and the open race!
Break out, O brother, braver than the rest,
Lover of Liberty, whose arm is strong!
Buttress our independence with thy breast,
And fight a passage through the stagnant throng.
Many will press behind thee, but they need
The stalwart captain, not afraid to lead.2 [Note: Ada Cambridge, The Hand in the Dark (1913), 110.]
