1. Ishmael was the fruit of Hagar's marriage, and for the fourteen years in which the boy was growing up to manhood he may have been regarded as the promised seed; but at length, God breaks the silence again, and declares that Sarah, not Hagar, shall be “a mother of nations,” and that “kings of people shall be of her.” At first it seemed as though Abraham was tempted to question this, for he ventured to suggest an alternative, when he said unto God, “O that Ishmael might live before thee!” And God said, “Nay, but Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son.” And when Sarah heard the same promise from the lips of the angel who visited them on the plains of Mamre, “she laughed within herself” at the apparent impossibility of its fulfilment. But the Lord reproved her unbelief, and met her doubts with the convincing question, “Is any thing too hard for the Lord?”
2. Upon her heart these words left a painful reminder of her sin in doubting God's merciful and powerful interposition in her history, as well as of the all-knowledge and almightiness of Him with whom she had to do. And Sarah believed. At length, in the faith of both his parents, there was present the prerequisite condition for Isaac's supernatural conception. Sarah believed God, and the hope that sprang from His promise was to her “a tree of life,” and did not make her ashamed. She believed God, and His word was her evidence that as He had spoken so it should come to pass. Her faith had its reward. “Because she judged him faithful who had promised,” she became the mother of the seed from which He was to spring “in whom all families of the earth should be blessed.”
3. There was a different tone in Sarah's laugh when the promise had been fulfilled. Cruel though she had been-unreasonably so-towards Hagar, God kept His promise to Abraham through her, and she became the mother of the heir to all the promises. When Isaac was born, her heart was filled with laughter, and the sound of it was so pleasant to hear that all who heard it laughed with her. The child of hope had come, the child of high destiny and marvellous anticipations.
He is the child of laughter; there is merriment at hearth and board. But the laughter is not all joy; the jeer of scorn mingles with it. Hagar, the bondwoman, beheld with sorrow of heart the frustration of the hopes she had cherished respecting her son as the future heir of Abraham. This feeling strengthened into jealousy and dislike, which she seems to have imparted to Ishmael, who was about fourteen years old at the birth of Isaac. Sarah also, on her part, was, by the birth of a son of her own, freed from the considerations which had probably hitherto restrained and regulated her conduct towards them. Nor is it difficult to account for this; for from one so much the senior of Isaac as Ishmael, and of a resolute and intractable character, she might reasonably apprehend some danger to the heritage, and even to the person, of her son, in case Abraham should depart from life during his nonage. Such feelings on both sides came to an explosion on the occasion of a public festival, held three years after the birth of Isaac, to celebrate his weaning. The hostility and rancour of Hagar and her son were so undisguisedly manifested on this occasion, that Sarah cast off all restraint, and insisted with Abraham that both mother and son should be forthwith sent away. She stood up in her majesty before her husband-princess-like-and said with an emphasis that could not be mistaken, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.” And every right-thinking wife and mother will take the side of Sarah. Scripture itself does; God does; for although the matter was grievous to Abraham on account of his son, God said, “In all that Sarah saith unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall thy seed be called.”
Love and respect Woman. Seek in her not merely a comfort, but a force, an inspiration, the redoubling of your intellectual and moral faculties. Cancel from your minds every idea of superiority over woman. You have none whatsoever. Long prejudice, an inferior education, and a perennial legal inequality and injustice have created that apparent intellectual inferiority which has been converted into an argument of continued oppression. Consider Woman, therefore, as the partner and companion, not merely of your joys and sorrows, but of your thoughts, your aspirations, your studies, and your endeavours after social amelioration. Consider her your equal in your civil and political life. Be ye the two human wings that lift the soul towards the ideal we are destined to attain.1 [Note: Mazzini, Life and Writings, iv. 284.]
