As we read the story of Abraham’s wife, we catch glimpses of ages and nations that were hoar with antiquity, and had passed away when our ancient historians began the record of the past.  Nation after nation had perished and been forgotten before the profane historian began his annals.  Yet childless, still trusting in the promise of Jehovah, Abraham wandered for many years through the land which was to be given to him, and his seed after him.  Now pitching his tent in Moreh; then building his altar at Bethel; then driven by famine into Egypt; then returning to his altar at Bethel,—­and there separating from his nephew Lot, because “the land could not bear” both, he fixes his abode in Hebron.

No pictures of pastoral life are more beautiful than those presented in Genesis; and while we contemplate the character of Abraham, we catch occasional glimpses of his household, and of the manners of his age.  We see him exercising forbearance and relinquishing the rights of a superior, that there might be no strife between him and his too worldly relative.  We see him leading out his own band as a prince, to rescue that same relative,—­who, tempted by the promise of large wealth, had chosen a location full of dangers,—­and, in the hour of victory, refusing all spoil and showing all honour to the priest of the most high God.

Again he is before us, sitting in his tent in the heat of the day, and hastening to receive strangers,—­“thus entertaining angels unawares,”—­and then interceding for that city doomed to destruction for the wickedness of the dwellers therein.

And again he appears as the prince, the patriarch, the head of his own family, and high in honour with those around him, ever observing all the decorum and proprieties of oriental life.  We see him, too, as one who walked with God; as the priest of his household, presenting the morning and the evening sacrifice; as holding high communion with God in the hours of darkness; entering into that covenant which is still pleaded by those who claim the promise, “I will be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee.”

This promise of a seed, from which was to spring a great nation, “like to the stars of heaven in number,” was frequently repeated, yet still deferred.  Youth, manhood, middle age, all had passed, and still no child blest the tents of Sarah; and while Abraham still believed, and it “was accounted to him for righteousness,” Sarah seems to have felt that not upon her was to be conferred the distinction of becoming the mother of the promised seed.  With the warm impulse of the woman, she sacrificed the feelings of the wife and the instincts of the heart, to promote what she doubtless believed to be the plan of God and the happiness of Abraham.  There is a deficiency of faith as much to be manifested in the forestalling the plans of Providence as in the denial of the promises of God:  and while Abraham still trusted and waited the fulfilment of the promise, Sarah sought, by her own device, to accomplish prophecy and insure the blessing.