---

Ishmael was born after the flesh; and he was first in order, as being "born of blood, and of the will of the flesh, and of the will of man." He was, nevertheless, a gift of God, and, perhaps, a gift of faith; but he was not the one to whom the promise was made. Ishmael, therefore, stands for the promise of this earth, of the world, and of this present life. I do not mean that he represents our sin, nor those evil passions which haunt and afflict us, nor the low, gross life of carnal men: for Abraham, his father, was a man of faith and a servant of righteousness before Ishmael was born; but he stands for the fair good promise of this earth, before a better thing is born in the soul. While the world lasts, it is the gift of God; for He created it, and "the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." Our desire for it, our love of it, our pleasure in it, are natural, and would not be subject to reproof, had we never known of another state and a higher life. And there is a time, in the history of God's servants, when they might fairly be likened to Abraham, content in Ishmael, and devoted to that child which Hagar bare to him. What Ishmael was to his father, such was once, to many a man and woman now consciously and resolutely alive in Christ, the first and native wish and passion of the undisciplined will, the first love of the mere worldly life. The child of the heart was there, beloved, and to all appearance, secure, yea, moreover, sufficient to every desire and wish. The thirteen years had established that dominion; and, in the still possession of that dear object of a natural desire, the conscience had grown torpid, and the earlier hours of life had slipped away. Consider if it be not so. The history of many a life, perhaps the history of every life led apart from God, is this: that some prevailing tendency, some dominant motive, exists there, having the influence and gentle lordship of a child of the heart, the offspring of the desire and will. Of offspring thus engendered, naught can come but anxiety and pain. Ishmael's pedigree was fated and banned from the very first; it is so with everything that springs out of the human heart without the prominent grace of God. Whenever a man permits some one desire to get the better of him, or, at least, to exert a wide and general influence over his actions; and when he finds, as the result, that he is growing nervous and uneasy, that a feverish solicitude pervades his thoughts, that he frets himself continually, that the dignity of a well-balanced character is slipping from him; or else, when it is come to this, that he feels as if with one deep draught of that soul desire, every day, he could be content to live on here, interminably; or when, for the want of such gratification, the day is tedious, and the hours are long, and hunger and thirst grow and burn within; when signs like these appear, he must be blind indeed who cannot read the story of his life; who knows not that he is fast in the world's net; that another Lord besides his own has dominion over him; that the fierce and untamed Ishmael is in his tent; that his life is bound up in a temporal promise, and that he has ceased to care for the promise of the world to come. So is it with you, who are not consciously and lovingly in Christ: and so was it once with you, who, now changed and altered from the pattern of your former selves, can yet look back upon days when you were wandering, and either thought wrongly, or thought not at all, of God. And here the allegory meets us once again, and shows the marvellous dealings of the Holy Ghost with the souls of those whom He brings forth and fixes in the Lord. As Ishmael represents the promise of the earth, so Isaac stands for the promise of heaven. The new promise comes, not in the natural course of things, not in the common order of this monotonous world, but in another way, known to God. Marked religious changes are sometimes the result of strange and bitter disappointment; but it is not always so. They often come, simply, of some word of the Lord, which carries a promise, and yet breaks in upon a repose in which we would fain have continued without even His most holy intrusion. The object proposed is above this world, and beyond it; faith discerns, resignation accepts, the "old man" dies hard. Slowly and with reluctance hath many an one cast forth the bondwoman and her son, to give place to the intruder who "cometh in the name of the Lord." It should not be thus with reasonable men when they lay hold of the promises of God. Those promises are unearthly, distant, and somewhat shadowy; they are calculated, not to add a piquancy and zest to the banquet which we have already spread for ourselves, but to sweep all from the board and lay the table anew. They demand, on man's part, submission and resignation; they tell him that it is time to leave off playing with petty conceits, and that the hour has come to go to the rigorous school of Christ, where men may not seek their own, nor mind earthly things, but bend themselves bravely to duty, and let pleasure go for a time. Who can hear these things without trembling? Who can rebuke the rising wish that it might be otherwise? Who can wonder that men should try to keep as much of the old life as they can, when they attempt the higher life of grace? Such emotions appertain to that weakness of ours in which God's grace must be made perfect; and the victory is to be sought, by accepting what may look like a dubious favour and setting faith in its rightful lordship over sight. Then, if the trial seem too hard to bear, reflect once more upon the allegory; there is comfort in it, if you read it intelligently. Ishmael lived. The natural gifts and blessings of God are not destroyed by His supernatural graces: they are remanded to their own place, allowed to work out their determined ends, to yield increase after their proper law. Nothing can be lost forever, which God's grace can hallow; the Son of Man cometh to save, not to destroy; and that, in us, which God saw and pronounced to be good, when He created us, may be refined in fire, purified, and may be a part of our eternal treasure.

(M. Dix, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.

WEB: God said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but her name will be Sarah.