that he does not suffer the unworthiness of his children to
separate them from his love; that in the hour of extremity he is still
nigh; that his ear is ever open to hear and his arm ready to save.

"And God was with the lad: and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness, and
became an archer; and he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran." And his
mother still dwelt with him; and in all his wanderings, wherever his
footsteps were turned, there was her home. There is a touching
remembrance of her early life, in the fact that Hagar chose a wife for
her son from among the daughters of her own people: "She took him a wife
out of the land of Egypt." And from this union have sprung the tribes
who still fill the deserts where Hagar sought a refuge. A wild race,
dwelling in the presence of all their brethren, whose hand is against
every man, while every man's hand is against them.

Ishmael rose rapidly to rank, and Hagar lived to rejoice in his
prosperity. The life which commenced in want, privation and wandering in
the wilderness, conducted her to wealth and honour. So dark and
inscrutable are the ways of Providence, that at each step we are taught
but to seek the path of duty and obey the direction of Heaven.

The children of Ishmael seem to have long preserved the knowledge of
Jehovah. Hagar, who had received so many proofs of the being, power, and
providence of the God of Abraham, might well instruct her descendants in
the principles of the true faith. The race of Ishmael have still
preserved the rite which Abraham received as the seal of faith. Often
may Hagar have recounted the providences of God--the account she had
heard, in the tent of Abraham, of the creation, the fall, the deluge,
the re-peopling of the world; and often, in the course of their
wandering lives, she may have led her descendants to those deep waters
which covered the guilty cities of the plain, and then described them as
she knew them before the wrath of God fell upon them.

The tribes of Ishmael have ever recognised their descent from Abraham;
and the instructions of Hagar are preserved as national traditions to
this very day, though exaggerated by Eastern fancy, and mingled with
wilder romance, as they have been transmitted from one generation to
another by the children of Ishmael, who still lead their flocks in the
same valleys, and pitch their tents by the same fountains to which Hagar
resorted with Ishmael.

Hagar and Ishmael were no more members of Abra