the pressure of physical want, in popular struggles, or national despondency, the spiritual agency, the moral dexterity, the pertinacious zeal, the quick perception, and poetical fervour of the Hebrew women were employed for the government or salvation of their people. Named by God "the builders of the house of Israel," marked by divine authority as "the mothers of nations," as priestesses, prophetesses, rulers, champions, stateswomen, or potentates, they were always associated with that great theocracy, which, whatever was the form of the Hebrew government, republican, aristocratic, or monarchical, was ever its spirit and its essence; till the dispersion of the wondrous people released them from all control, save that of opinion, and the laws of the nations among which they sought an asylum.

The domestic state of the Hebrew women under the Patriarchs (like that of the Arabs and other nomade tribes of all times) was one of perfect servitude. The superiority on the part of the men was supreme, and was only occasionally and temporarily repealed, under such exigencies as rendered the intellectual agency of the woman an expediency and a resource. Polygamy, though not a patriarchal institute, soon became a customary indulgence, depending on the means of supporting it; and it embittered, as it eventually degraded, the social condition of the sex, while it called forth the subtlety and multiplied the devices of the female mind.

In the narrative of Abraham's first emigration "southward from Horan in the desert," and his journey through Canaan, it is said that "he took Sarah, his wife, with him ;" and when famine obliged him to leave his mountain hold in Bethel," where, in directing his steps to more fertile regions, he had "pitched his tent, and raised his altar to the Lord," he looked to Sarah, under Providence, as his sole resource. The graphic traits of the submissive position of woman, and of the consideration in which her personal and intellectual powers were held by her master, come abundantly forth through the whole of this beautiful narration.

Abraham, at the head of his famished tribe, "for the famine was grievous in the land," went down into Egypt

(whose sovereigns had long established a regular government). Pharaoh, the reigning king, was at the head of a settled nation, which claimed an antiquity of many thousand years beyond the Mosaic date, but which had frequently suffered from the irruptions of the Shepherds. These were Nomadic tribes from the East, which had thrown down the temples of the Egyptians, and carried their women and children into captivity; so that the advance into their territories, even of so small a tribe as that of which Abraham was the pastoral chief, rendered the enterprise of the Father of the Faithful one of considerable doubt and danger.*

It may then have been on his first approach to the valley of the Nile, or within his first view of the towers of Memphis (raised, according to Egyptian record, by Menes the first mortal king who reigned in their country), that Abraham, struck with the peril that awaited him, "turned unto Sarah his wife," and invoked her aid by all that could flatter the woman, or influence the wife," that it might be well with him for her sake, and that his soul should live because of her."

The

"for

The events which followed his entrance into Egypt justified the confidence Abraham had placed in the influence of Sarah's beauty and discretion. He was received and cherished "for her sake" by the Egyptians, who "beheld the woman that she was very fair." report of her beauty spread, till "the princes of Pharaoh's house saw her, and commended her to the king." She was even taken into the royal dwelling, and her supposed brother was endowed with great pastoral property, her sake;" for he had given him "sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and men servants, and maid servants, and she asses, and camels," and finally he became "very rich in gold and in silver." The infatuation of the enamoured Pharaoh went even to the making Sarah his wife, an honour which attests her virtue, no less than the power of her personal attractions. The discovery of the relation in which she stood to Abraham caused their expulsion from Egypt; but Pharaoh sent them away so richly en

*The ravages committed in Egypt by the pastoral tribes rendered every shepherd an abomination unto the Egyptians."-Genesis, xlvi.

dowed in worldly wealth, that Abraham and his nephew Lot, on their return to Bethel, were obliged to separate their families and their people: the "land was no longer able to bear them," "for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together."

The first influx of wealth, therefore, which founded the temporal greatness of the house of Israel, and which so soon after enabled Abraham to join in "the battles of kings," to make compacts with powerful princes, and to be considered himself as "a mighty prince,"† originated, under the special permission of divine providence, in the influence produced by the personal merits and mental qualities of a woman. Although the beauty and discretion of Sarah were thus used only as instruments, yet was her instrumentality itself a distinction in favour of her

sex.

Again, in Abraham's “journey towards the south countries," Sarah came to his assistance, when "Abimelech, king of Gerar, saw, loved, and took" her. "In the integrity of my heart and the innocency of my hands have I done this," said the king, on delivering back Sarah, pure and undefiled, to him whom he had believed to be her brother and Abraham's narrative of himself, and his motives of conduct to his wife on this occasion, in his answer to the reproaches of Abimelech, prove the importance he attached to his wife's concessions to his wish. "It came to pass," he says, "when God caused me to wander from my father's house, that I said unto her (Sarah), this is thy kindness which thou shalt show to me; at every place whither we shall come, say of me, he is my brother." The effect of Sarah's influence on the king of Gerar, as on the king of Egypt, was an accession of wealth to her husband and her tribe; and it eventually produced that covenant between the "wanderer from his father's house" and the powerful king of Gerar so influential on the future fortunes and temporal consequence of her immediate posterity.‡

* Genesis, chap. 13. Ibid. chap. 21.

+ Genesis, chap. iv.

"14. And Abimelech took sheep, and oxen, and men servants, and women servants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife." "15. And Abimelech said: Behold, my land is before thee:

Sarah, however, whose "desire was to her husband," whose devotion was always resorted to in all perilous exigencies, still returned, from the palaces of kings to her own domestic tent, the submissive wife and arduous servant. Not till she beheld her handmaid, the Egyptian bondwoman Hagar, preferred to that beauty which had placed more than one sovereign at her feet, not till she saw her own son, "even Isaac," mocked by the son of the concubine, by Ishmael, who was about to usurp his inheritance through the partiality of Abraham, did her longstifled sense of wrongs find vent (for the wrongs of Sarah, however necessitated or predestined by an inscrutable providence, were still wrongs in the natural justice of things) in that beautiful and bitter outburst of indignant feeling, with which she reproaches Abraham, and protects the rights of her child. "My wrong be upon thee!" "The Lord judge between thee and me!" were proofs that she felt injuries, for which her physical inferiority left her no redress. The Lord, however, did judge between them, and pronounced in favour of Sarah! "For God said unto Abraham: In all that Sarah hath said to thee hearken unto her, for in Isaac shall thy seed be called."

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The high approbation of the wisdom and forethought of Sarah, thus expressed, was accompanied by other distinctions, equally glorious. The patronymic name of the mother of Isaac was changed into one of temporal power, as became the foundress of her people's temporal prosperity: "For not Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be" (said the Lord); "I will bless her; she shall be the mother of nations, for kings shall be of her." With this divine testimony in favour of her unquestioned motherhood of races, with this glorious prophecy in favour of her line, consecrating her life and actions, Sarah, full of years and of honour, descended into the sepulchre purchased for her by Abraham at so great a price (" with the trees that were in the field, and the borders round about"), which became in after-times the site of a great city.*

dwell where it pleaseth thee." "16. And unto Sarah he said: Behold I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver; behold he is to thee a covering of the eyes unto all that are with thee, and with all other. Thus she was reproved."-Genesis, chap. xx.

*Genesis, chap. xxiii.

Abraham married a second wife, by whom he had sons; but it was not to the children of Kiturah that the Divine promise was made, nor to his first born by Hagar, nor to "the sons of the concubines which Abraham had, and whom he sent away with gifts"—all equally his sons, (and his inheritors, for among the Hebrews there was no law of primogeniture.) It was to the fruit of Sarah's womb, to the nursling of Sarah's bosom, to Isaac, that the promise was made! To Ishmael, indeed, was promised a descent of twelve princes; "but" (said the Lord) "my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee."*

The reverential sorrow with which Abraham hovered round the remains of Sarah, and the sumptuous mausoleum in which he entombed her, are further proofs of her worth and her importance; while Isaac's grief for his mother is beautifully alluded to by the recorded fact, that it was not until he had become the husband of the fair Rebekah, that Isaac was comforted for his mother's death. The character, conduct, and influence of this extraordinary woman upon the future destinies of her people, have occupied the piety, the learning, and the controversial spirit of successive ages, down to a recent period.

The beautiful and pastoral story of Rebekah, full of graphic details of the domestic life of the Hebrew women, teems with fresh illustrations of their individual influence, their subtle contrivances, and of the social inequality inflicted on them, which originated their deep-felt wrongs.

In maiden servitude, and in the bloom of her beautiful youth, Rebekah is first presented as coming forth among the daughters of the men of the city, "with her pitcher on her shoulder," meekly administering to the thirsty demand of Abraham's servant, and when she had "done giving him drink," "drawing water for his camels also." In the moral developement of her matron maturity, and under her motherly and not unfounded partialities, she

+ Ibid. chap. xxiv.

* Genesis, chap. vii. See the controversial writings on the character and conduct of Sarah and Abraham, from Origen, to the Augustin monk, Calmut, including Josephus, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Victor, Calvin, &c.