every opportunity of making the Saviour known, nor that, in using her gifts in speaking of Him, she endured scorn, enmity, and malice. Is rest blessed to the storm-tossed voyager? Is peace sweet to the weary wanderer ? What must the "Well done, good and faithful servant" have been to her who, through much tribulation, has entered the kingdom!

PORTRAITS OF THE PATRIARCHS.

BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

I. SARAH THE PRINCESS.

ONE woman in the Christian dispensation has received a special crown of honour. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, mother of the Jewish nation, is to this day an object of traditional respect and homage in the Christian Church. Her name occurs in the marriage service as the example for the Christian wife, who is exhorted to meekness and obedience by St. Peter. "Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters ye are, so long as ye do well, and are not subject to a slavish fear." In turning to the simple narrative of the Old Testament, we are led to feel that, in setting Sarah before wives as a model of conjugal behaviour, no very alarming amount of subjection or submission is implied.

The name Sarah means "Princess ;" and from the Bible story we infer, that, crowned with the power of eminent beauty, and fully understanding the sovereignty it gave her over man, Sarah was virtually empress and mistress of the man she called "Lord." She was a woman who understood herself and him, and was too wise to dispute the title when she possessed the reality of sway; and, while she called Abraham "Lord," it is quite apparent from certain little dramatic incidents that she expected him to use his authority in the line of her wishes.

In going back to these Old Testament stories, one feels a ceaseless admiration of the artless, innocent, naïve simplicity of the primitive period of which they are the only memorial. In Abraham, we see the man whom God designed to be the father of a great sacerdotal nation; through whom, in the fulness of time, should come this most perfect revelation of Himself to man, through Jesus Christ. In choosing the man to found such a nation, the Divine Being passed by the stormy and forcible characters that command the admiration of rude men in early ages, and chose one of gentler

elements. Abraham was distinguished for a loving heart; a tender, domestic nature; great reverence, patience, and fidelity; a child-like simplicity of faith, and a dignified self-possession. Yet was he not deficient in courage when the event called for it. When the warring tribes of the neighbourhood had swept his kinsman, Lot, into captivity, Abraham came promptly to the rescue, and, with his three hundred trained servants, pursued, vanquished, and rescued. Though he loved not battle, he fought to some purpose when roused for a good cause. Over the heart of such a man, a beautiful, queenly woman held a despotic sway. Travelling with her into the dominions of foreign princes, he is possessed by one harassing fear. The beauty of this woman—will it not draw the admiration of marauding powers? And shall I not be murdered, or have her torn from me? And so, twice, Abraham resorts to the stratagem of concealing their real relation, and speaking of her as his sister. The Rabbinic traditions elaborate this story with much splendour of imagery. According to them, Abraham being obliged by famine to sojourn in Egypt, rested some days by the river Nile, and as he and Sarah walked by the banks of the river, and he beheld her won der ful beauty reflected in the water, he was overwhelmed with fear lest she should be taken from him, or he be slain for her sake, so he persuaded her to pass as his sister; for, as he says, "she was the daughter of my father, but not of my mother." The legend goes on to say, that, as a further precaution, he had her placed in a chest to cross the frontier; and when the custom-house officers met them, he offered to pay for the box whatever they might ask, to pass it free. "Does it contain silks?" asked the officers.

"I will pay the tenth as of silk," he answered.
"Does it contain silver?" they inquired.

"I will pay for it as silver," said Abraham.
"Nay, then, it must contain gold."
"I will pay it as gold."

"May be it contains most costly gems."

"I will pay for it as gems," he persisted.

In the struggle the box was broken open, and in it was seated a beautiful woman whose countenance illumined all Egypt. The news reached the ears of Pharaoh, and he sent and took her.

The falsehoods which Abraham tells are to be estimated not by the modern, but by the ancient, standard. In the earlier days of the world, when physical force ruled, when the earth was covered with warring tribes, skill in deception was counted as one of the forms of wisdom.

In a day when it was rather a matter of course for a prince to help himself to a handsome woman wherever he could find her, and kill her husband if he made any objections, a weaker

party entering the dominions of a powerful prince was under the laws of war.

In our nineteenth century we have not yet grown to such maturity as not to consider false statements and stratagem as legitimate war policy in dealing with an enemy. Abraham's ruse is not, therefore, so very far behind even the practice of modern Christians.

The Rabbinic legends represent Sarah as being an object of ardent admiration to Pharaoh, who presses his suit with such vehemence that she cried to God for deliverance, and she told the king that she was a married woman. Then-according to this representation he sent her away with gifts, and even extended his complacency so far as to present her with his daughter Hagar as a handmaid—a legend savouring more of national pride than of probability.

In the few incidents related of Sarah she does not impress us as anything more than the beautiful princess of a nomadic tribe, with about the virtues and failings that usually attend beauty and power. With all her advantages of person and station, Sarah still wanted what every woman of antiquity considered the crowning glory of womanhood. She was childless. By an expedient common in those early days, she gives her slave as second wife to her husband, whose child shall be her own. The Rabbinic tradition says that up to this time Hagar had been tenderly beloved by Sarab. The prospect, however, of being mother to the heir of the family, seems to have turned the head of the handmaid, and broken the bonds of friendship between them. In the usual naïve way, the Bible narrative represents Sarah as scolding her patient husband for the results which come from following her own advice. We see here the eager, impulsive, hot-headed woman, accustomed to indulgence, impatient of trouble, and perfectly certain that she is in the right, and that the Lord himself must think so. Abraham, as a well-bred husband, answers, pacifically, "Behold, thy maid is in thy hand, to do as pleaseth thee." And so it pleased Sarah to deal so hardly with her maid that she fled to the wilderness, where the All-Father watched over and restored her.

Then comes the beautiful idyll of the three angels, who come to announce the future birth of the long-desired son. We could wish all our readers, who may have fallen out of the way of the Old Testament, to read again the 18th chapter of Genesis, and see the simple picture of these olden days. Notice the beautiful hospitality of reception. The Emir rushes himself to his herd to choose the fatted calf, and commands the princess to get ready the meal, and knead the cakes. Then comes the repast. The announcement of the promised blessing, at which Sarah laughs in incredulous sur

prise-the grave rebuke of the angels, and Sarah's white lie, with the angels' steady answer-are all so many characteristic points of the story. Sarah, in all these incidents, is, with a few touches, made as real flesh-and-blood a woman as any in the pages of Shakspeare-not a saint, but an average mortal, with all the foibles, weaknesses, and variabilities that pertain to womanhood, and to womanhood in an early age of imperfectly developed morals. Finally, the domestic broil adjusts itself. The Divine Father, who watches alike over all His creatures, sends back the hot-headed slave from the wilderness, exhorted to patience, and comforted with a promise of a future for her son.

We are to infer from this story that Sarah, like most warmhearted and passionate women, was, in the main, a kindly, motherly creature, and that, when her maid returned and submitted, she was reconciled to her. At all events, we find that the son of the bondwoman was born and nurtured under her roof, along with her own son Isaac. It is in keeping with our conception of Sarah, that she should at times have overwhelmed Hagar with kindness, and helped her through the trials of motherhood, and petted the little Ishmael till he grew too saucy to be borne. The Jewish mother nursed her child three years. The weaning was made a great fete, and Sarah's exultation at this crisis displayed itself in festal preparations. We hear her saying, "God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me. Who would have said unto Abraham that Sarah should have given children suck, for I have borne him a son in his old age?" In the height of this triumph, she saw the son of the Egyptian woman mocking, and all the hot blood of womanhood, and motherhood, and princess flushed up, and she said to her husband, "Cast out this bond-woman and her son; for the son of this bond-woman shall not be heir with my son, even Isaac." We are told "the thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son." But a higher Power confirms the hasty, instinctive impulse of the mother. The God of nations saw in each of these boys the seed-forms of a race with a history and destiny apart from each other, and Abraham is comforted with the thought that a Fatherly watch will be kept over both.

Last of all we come to the simple and touching announcement of the death of this woman, so truly loved to the last. "And Sarah was a hundred and seven-and-twenty years old, the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her."

II. HAGAR THE SLAVE.

A striking pendant to the picture of Sarah the Princess is that of Hagar the Slave.

In the Bible narrative she is called simply Hagar the Egyptian; and, as Abraham sojourned some time in the land of Egypt, we are to suppose that this acquisition to the family was then made. Slavery, in the early patriarchal period, had few of the horrors

which beset it in more modern days. The condition of a slave more nearly resembled that of the child of the house than a modern servant. The slave in default of children was looked upon as his master's heir, as was the case of Eleazar of Damascus, the confidential servant of Abraham; as, when speaking to God of his childless condition, he says, "Lo! one born in my house is mine heir." In like manner there is a strong probability in the legend which represents Hagar as having been the confidential handmaid of Sarah, and treated by her with peculiar tenderness.

When the fear of being childless seized upon her, Sarah was willing to exalt one who was as a second self to her to the rank of an inferior wife, according to the customs of those early days, intending to adopt and treat as her own the child of her handmaid. But when the woman found herself thus exalted, and when the crowning honour of prospective motherhood was conferred upon her, her ardent tropical blood boiled over in unseemly exultation; "her mistress was despised in her eyes."

Probably under the flapping curtains of the pastoral tent, as under the silken hangings of palaces, there were to be found flatterers and mischief-makers ready to fill the weak, credulous ear with their suggestions. Hagar was about to become mother of the prince and heir of the tribe; her son one day should be their chief and ruler, while Sarah, childless and uncrowned, should sink to a secondary rank. Why should she obey the commands of Sarah ?

Our idea of Sarah is that of a warm-hearted, generous, bountiful woman, but with an intense sense of personal dignity and personal rights-just the woman to feel herself beyond measure outraged by this unexpected result of what she must have looked upon as unexampled favour. In place of a grateful, devoted creature, identified with her interests, whose child should be to her as her own child, she finds herself confronted with an imperious rival, who lays claim to her place and position.

The struggle was one that has been witnessed many a time since in families so constituted and with such false elements. Abraham, peace-loving and quiet, stands neutral, confident, as many men are, of the general ability of the female sex to find their way out of the troubles they bring themselves into, by inscrutable ways and methods of their own. Probably he saw wrong on both sides; yet Hagar, as the dependant, who owed all the elevation on which she prided herself to the good-will of her mistress, was certainly the most in fault of the two; and so he dismisses the subject with"Thy maid is in thy hand; do with her as pleaseth thee."

The next we hear, the proud, hot-hearted, ungoverned slave girl flees to the wilderness in a tumult of indignation and grief, doubtless after bitter words and hard usage from the once indulgent mistress. But now comes into the history the presence of the Father God, in whose eye all human beings are equal, and who looks down on the boiling strifes and hot passions of us all below as a mother on the quarrels of little children in the nursery. For this was the world's infancy, and each character in the drama represented a future nation for whom the All-Father was caring.

So when the hot-hearted, violent, desolate creature had sobbed