LECTURE VI.

THE MATERNAL RELATION.

And the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not, for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation.GENESIS 21: 17, 18.

THIS is a portion of one of those simple and pathetic narratives which are peculiar to the Bible, and which cannot be equalled in the whole range of literature. Thrust from the patriarchal tent, with her domestic ties crushed and her heart bleeding, the Egyptian woman went forth into the wide and unknown world. There was one bond, however, that could not be severed, and whatever was to be

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her lot, her child must share it And as hand in hand they wandered through the wilderness of Beersheba, all her solicitude was for him. In this she forgot her exile and her want. So long as she could minister to him she was not hopeless, and her weary pilgrimage had some object. But when absolute destitution came, and he gasped for drink, and she looked in vain around the dry desert, and up to the burning sky, and he drooped and fainted, then despair rushed in upon her soul. Tenderly she laid him under the scanty shade, and retired a little distance from him; for, to quote that touching language of nature," she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lifted up her voice, and wept." God, who listens to the mother's prayer, and who hears the faintest cry of anguish, sent her deliverance; and lo! she found that he whom she had laid down to perish was to be the founder of a great people, and that she was leading through the wilderness the destinies of a nation.

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The text, then, strikingly illustrates a subject which I have reserved for this concluding discourse, containing some of the most important suggestions as to female duty and influence. This adventure of Hagar and Ishmael shows us the strength, extent, and beauty of the Maternal Relation. The heart of the Egyptian woman, away back in that dim patriarchal age, in that lonely desert of Beersheba, lacerated with anxiety, sacrificing and suffering, pouring out its grief for the boy, throbbed with the common sentiment of maternity, was the same as the heart of any mother to whom is committed the nurturing, the education, the destiny of her child. Though no domestic tie is severed, and she remains amid the sanctities of home, yet she, too, leads that child onward in an unknown way. She, too, must absorb her own cares in solicitude for him, and minister to his necessities, drawing cheerfulness and hope from the pleasing though solemn duty, and watch him in his feebleness and languishing. Alone must she

do this, for there is no other to perform it, no one who is so intimately linked with him. But in her grief and perplexity, God will help her, the means she requires will always appear for her, and she may find that he whom she has thus led forth in his weakness, and watched in his unconscious ills, contains in himself the destinies of a people, the changes of a world; at least, certain may she be that from him will go out influences of incalculable weal or woe.

The Maternal Relation! A topic so important as this has, of course, been thoroughly exhausted; and I would not venture to allude to it, were it not necessary in order to give completeness to this series of discourses. I promise, however, that as I can say nothing new upon this point, I will be brief. I would simply reiterate and urge the considerations that spring so spontaneously out of the subject.

And, as the first of these simple and apparent truths, I would mention the fact that the mother wakens earliest in the child the sentiment of love. It is her embrace that first un

locks his heart, and opens its mysterious and unfathomable issues. To her is given his first smile. His first sense of want is relieved by her ministrations. To her he clings with his first idea of dependence. To her he looks for protection, and with her he feels safe from every harm. As there is no conscious opposition to prevent the inlet of this love, as it comes when his nature is impressible and open, so it often remains there when all other sympathies are barred out, when all other loves have departed. Wherever he wanders, this tie clings around his spirit, drawing him back to the memories of childhood. Hardened though he may become, we are confident that with this talisman we can touch the springs of his better nature, petrified though it is by the sin of years. The face that bent above his infancy looks in through the shadows of his dungeon, and lingers amid his dreams, once more as the expression of unutterable affection, and the signal of healing and benediction. Certainly we feel that he who casts