Hagar and Ishmael were no more members of Abraham’s household, yet the relationship of father and son was ever recognised.  Doubtless Abraham imparted of his wealth to his first-born; and as Abraham often sojourned afterwards in Beer-sheba, probably not far from the spot where Hagar and Ishmael so nearly perished, the father and son may have often met; and Isaac and Ishmael may have held kindly intercourse, when the bitter feelings of rivalry and of conscious wrong had subsided.  The ties of kindred were still allowed, and Esau sought a wife from the family of his own kindred, as a means of conciliating his father and mother; thus showing that a purer morality and a higher religious feeling were cherished than those among surrounding tribes.  And when Abraham died, having attained a full age, his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, both far advanced in years, buried him.  The strifes, the bitterness, the hate of early life seem to have been forgotten, and they united in the last offices of filial love and duty.

The son of the bondmaid had attained, during the life of Abraham, a distinction beyond that of the son of the wife; and his immediate descendant rose to wealth and honour, while, if one branch of Isaac’s family tasted prosperity, those recognised as the heirs of that mysterious blessing were long known as wanderers, and then despised as slaves.  Their long line of descent has run parallel, side by side, distinct, unmingled; recognising a common origin, but never acknowledging a common brotherhood.  The oldest nations of the earth,—­the one exiled from the land given them, dwelling as outcasts and strangers among all the nations of the earth, yet still separate, apart, a peculiar people; the other living at this day in the deserts where Hagar wandered, and where she fainted—­a never-conquered people.  And while Assyrian, Greek, and Roman have swept the world and exacted tribute of the nations around them, and other tribes have been swept with the besom of destruction, the sons of Ishmael have still dwelt in the presence of their brethren, ever enforcing, but still refusing to pay tribute—­free and wild as the lad who first became an archer in the wilderness.  Unconsciously confirming prophecy, and still attesting the truth of a revelation which they contemn and deny,—­thus strangely dwelling so different from all other nations,—­preserving the initiatory rites and the mystic symbols of the faith of Abraham, the customs and traditions of the age of the patriarch,—­these nations dwell distinct, separate from each other and from all other nations, awaiting the day when blindness shall be removed from the eyes of the children of promise, and the descendants of Sarah and of Hagar shall be both gathered with the fold of Christ.