Expulsion of Hagar From the House of Abraham

    In her design of expelling Hagar from the house of Abraham, Sarah was excited and influenced by her own private feelings and interests alone. She uttered her own sentiments in her own language. Yet she uttered the truth of God, in God's words, in a figure. What she said with respect to Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac, and herself, was all providentially adapted to express the gospel in an allegory. The Spirit of God by Paul, in the Epistle to the Galatians, expounds this transaction in this sense. The words of Sarah, with respect to her own private affairs, are quoted as the words of inspiration with respect to the nature of the gospel. "Nevertheless," says the apostle, "what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman." Gal. iv. 30. Here the words of Sarah are expounded as referring to the gospel, as fully as if they had no primary reference. It is not said, "What saith Sarah ?" but " What saith the Scripture?" The words employed providentially by Sarah in her own affairs are, in another point of view, the words of Scripture with reference to the way of salvation. In the inscrutable wisdom of God, the words are the words of Sarah and of God —of Sarah, in her own sense, of the Spirit, as a symbolical expression of the gospel. Men who receive the truth of God no further than they can comprehend the nature of the thing testified, cannot believe that the allegorical meaning taken out of the expression by Paul, was really in the design of the Holy Spirit when the words were used by Sarah, and recorded by Moses. They view the historical document as merely casually adapted to illustrate the point in hand, and, as such, ingeniously employed by the apostle. But these men wrest the Scriptures, and deny the palpable testimony of the Holy Spirit. Paul does not use the historical fact as casually adapted to illustrate the gospel, hut expressly expounds it as the testimony of the Spirit in the ancient Scriptures.. "What saith the Scripture?" It is used as an argument to convince, and not as an illustration to explain. "Tell me," says he, "ye that desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law?" Is not this proof from the law? After this introduction he proceeds to relate the history in its allegorical meaning. "For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that bearest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But, as then, he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what saith the Scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So, then, brethren, we are not the children of the bondwoman, but of the free." What a wonderful combination of providential events was necessary to fit this history to the shadowing of the gospel! Abraham must have a wife a freewoman; he must have also a wife who was a slave. He must have a son by this slave, and a son in a peculiar manner by his wife. The slave and her son must be cast out; and not only excluded from the inheritance, but from a residence in the family. The wife must express, with regard to her own affairs, in her own language, language that the Holy Spirit adapts to an allegorical declaration of the gospel. This surely is Divine wisdom. And this both illustrates and proves the inspiration of the Scriptures. The very words of Scripture, with respect to historical details and circumstances which, in themselves, have no direct concern with the gospel, are adapted, in the most wonderful manner, to express a secondary meaning, known at the time only to the Holy Spirit. The unfeeling demand of Sarah, with regard to her domestic concerns, is, in another point of view, the language of the Spirit figuratively expressing the nature of the gospel.