CHAPTER XI.

ABRAM, HAGAR, ISHMAEL.

AFTER the splendid events which have been recited, Abram retired again to the quietness and privacy of domestic life; confiding, no doubt, in Divine protection, and patiently waiting the accomplishment of the promises. Then the Lord came unto him in a vision, saying: "Fear not Abram, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." This renewed declaration of divine favour, drew from Abram a dutiful, but pathetic expostulation on the condition of his family affairs. He was grown rich, but his great possesions are ready to descend to a stranger, the steward of his household.

And behold the word of the Lord came to him saying: "This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth of thine own bowels shall be thine heir." We may conclude it was before daylight in the morning, that He brought him forth

abroad, and said: "look now toward heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them ;" and he said unto him: "so shall thy seed be.”

Abram's doubts are now entirely removed; he believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness. The patriarch being thus answered, and encouraged, entreats some present token of the certainty of the promises made to him: "And he said, Lord God, whereby shall F know that I shall inherit it? And he said unto him, take me a heifer of three years old, and a shegoat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another; but the birds divided he not."

"And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and lo! a horror of great darkness fell upon him; and he said unto Abram, know of a surety, that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them 400 years. And also that nation whom they serve will I judge; and afterward shall they come out with great substance. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. And it came to pass when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold!

a smoking furnace, and a burning lamb, that passed between those pieces. In that same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt, unto the great river, the river Euphrates."

This is the first sacrifice we read of which ap pears to have been divinely instituted; and it is remarkable, that it includes the different kinds of victims which were, afterwards, directed to be offered under the law.

The making of covenants became customary in succeeding ages; and controversies and quarrels of every sort, issued at length in a covenant between the contending parties.

The word which is translated, "to make a covenant," in all the three learned languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; that is according to the uniform application of it in the Old Testament, and the constant phraseology of the most approved Greek and Roman Authors, signifies, to cut, to separate by cutting asunder.

We see Moses, the prince of sacred writers, describing a religious sacrifice performed more than nineteen hundred years before Christ; which Homer, the prince of heathen poets, so exactly describes as the practice of his country, more than a thousand years afterwards; and which Titus

Livius, the Roman Historian, relates as in use among his countrymen, in the time of Tullius Hostilius, the third king of Rome, before Christ about six hundred and sixty-eight years.

We learn from thence, that in excuting solemu covenants, the contracting parties, having passed between the divided limbs of sacrifice, and expressed their full assent to the stipulated terms of the covenant in solemn words, which were pronounced with an audible voice, imprecated upon themselves a bitter curse, if they should violate it: As I strik down this heifer, or ram, so may God strike me with death, if I transgress my word or oath. As the limbs of this animal are divided asunder, so may my body be torn to pieces, if I prove perfidious.

The covenant was ratified with Abram, in the most solemn manner. Under the sanction of an awful manifestation, a son is promised, the future father of a numerous offspring; and an inheritance allotted that chosen seed, by Him who has all things in heaven and in earth at his disposal.

Abram had now dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan; and, notwithstanding his advanced period in life, we do not find that he discovered any impatience for the fulfilment of the pro

mise. It was now put beyond a doubt that Abram should become a father; but it had not yet been explicitly declared that Sarai should become a mother.

We may therefore suppose, that her feelings as a wife, gave way to her concern about her husband's glory and happiness, when she devised an intemperate expedient for arriving at the accomplishment of the promise: "And Sarai took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife."

Projects formed and executed in haste are generally repented of at leisure; when we fly in the face either of nature or religion, we shall infallibly find both the one, and the other, too powerful for us. Hagar becomes vain and insolent; Sarai is thoroughly mortified. Into what disorder has one ill advised measure thrown a happy and well regulated family. Abram's ill judged compliance with the precipitate advice of his wife, embroils him in contention with herself; constrains him to connive at her cruel treatment' of an unhappy woman, and renders the prospect of the promised seed a heavy affliction, instead of a blessing. Sarai is betrayed by the eagerness of her spirit, first into an absurdity; then into undutifulness, in imputing blame to her