desired him to take her servant Hagar as his second wife,
that there might be the expected issue.* But the assuming
and contemptuous conduct of the maid on her elevation,
towards her former mistress, occasioned her expulsion from
the family.t

She went into the wilderness, and dwelt at a fountain
of water on the way to Shur, and there brought forth Ish-
mael, who was destined to be the chief ancestor of the
Arabians, whom we have before considered, and, therefore,
of the founder of the Mahommedan system.‡ Abraham re-
ceived Ishmael into his family, on whom that divine bene-
diction was pronounced, in answer to his petition on his
behalf, which our last Letter noticed. The father and
husband's eye had therefore accompanied Hagar in her re-
treat, and provided for her comfort.

The Deity was pleased to keep Abraham in a state of edu-
cation and discipline for 25 years, before he enabled him to
have the promised son; and when the designed period ar-
rived, the event was marked to be a special donation and a
preternatural effect, by a personal communication of distin-
guishing kindness and solemnity. When he was a hun-
dred years old, and not before, his son Isaac was born. T
Ishmael, then a lad, was separated from him.** But this pre-
vious son still remained under the peculiar care of the divine
Providence. When he settlea in the wilderness, and be-
came an archer, and married an Egyptian wife,†† the prom-
ised blessing accompanied him, and twelve sons, as had
been foretold, became the progenitors of the most important
portion of the Arabian population, from whom, in a direct
genealogy, that military prophet descended who led the off-
spring of Ishmael to be the great antagonist of both the
Jews and Christians; continually oppressing and despising
the former, and contending for ages strenuously with the
latter for the religious empire of the world. This contest
has been, in our days, at length fully and finally decided.

The fierce and spurious seed of Abraham is now shrink-
ing into settled inferiority and irrecoverable decline; while
the predictive assurance that was attached to the patriarch,

* Genesis, xvi. 1-3.
Genesis, xvi. 7-16.
Gen. xviii. 1-15, 16-33.
** Gen. xxi. 9-16.

t Genesis, xvi. 4-6.

See before, note ‡ p. 399.
Gen. xxi. 5.
tt Gen. xxi. 17-21.

through his legitimate descendants, is every year becoming more and more expansively accomplished: "In thee and thy seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." I feel this prophecy to be felicitatingly fulfilled personally to myself.

The greatest present happiness of my life arises expressly from what has resulted to the world from Abraham's chosen seed; and all my anticipations of future benedictions must follow from the same source.

But what is true as to me will be equally so to you and to all; and hence both my reason and my experience bear testimony to my judgment, that in Abraham and his seed all the families of the earth have been blessed, or have the means presented to them for their being so, if they choose to profit by the offered, the ever-inviting, and the earnestlypressed benefaction-now diffusing into the regions which had hitherto disdained it, or remained in ignorance of it.

Having thus explained the principles on which the Jewish nation was planned and formed, I will leave it to you to apply them in all the series of events which successively occurred to it, and in the divine communications with it, from the birth of Isaac, the first child of promise, to the GREATER BEING issuing humanly from him in whom all the predictions centred, and in whose life and tuition, death and resurrection, all have been thus far fulfilled that as yet could be effectuated; and in whose future advent, or in the period introducing it, all that remains not yet realized, will be finally and completingly accomplished.

Then indeed the GLORY of God will be universally diffused and established among our order of beings, by every human spirit feeling, confessing, and expressing it. At present it is but partially existing and imperfectly recognised among us; for this tribute of the admiring and grateful intelligence to him must, like fame amid ourselves, arise from the conviction of the human reason, and be the spontaneous tribute of the human sensibility. It is this circumstance which should recommend the study of divine philosophy more forcibly to us; for it is from our cultivation of this, that glory to God will ascend most truly from the human spirit, and be as natural a feeling of life and nature as all the other productions and effusions of its thinking and sensitive capacities.

For when we say, Glory to God-glory be to the Father

glory to the Lord Almighty-we mean that intellectual glorification which arises to him from the feelings, the reason, the adoration, and the convictions of his intelligent creatures in all his orbs of being; and in this world, from the human judgment and affections. We commonly use the term without any distinct discernment or appropriation of its varying import; and it may not therefore be amiss to close our correspondence with a few remarks on this sublime subject.

The glory of God may be distinguished into three kinds : 1st, Its reality; 2d, The sensations and impressions which his actual glories produce in our spirit and in other intelligent natures; and, 3d, The convictions and opinions which from these we, on our present earth, and they in their respective spheres, form and express of it.

Its REALITY consists in his possessed omnipotence; in his all-pervading omnipresence; in his marvellous consciousness of all the movements of his creations, and of all the thoughts and feelings of his sentient and reasoning beings; in his mysterious faculty of influence, impulse, and operation on individual mind wherever it is existing; in his effulgent Majesty and Godlike state; in the personal appearances in which he is awfully and splendidly visible when he chooses to be so; in his essential nature, which no inferior being can adequately comprehend, and in those transcendent perfections of every kind, passing again in their infinitudes far beyond all mortal conceptions, which compose and characterize his wonderful and indescribable Being. Whatever he is in any respect, is perfection in that respect; and we can have no notion of what is of this description in its completeness, except as we find it in him. All other species of what we call perfection, is but the best of what human nature has attained to be, or may be imagined to possess or to be acquiring. But the idea, as it is thus confined to ourselves, will be human, both in its origin and extent, and therefore never can be absolute perfection. The plenitude of this can reside in the Deity alone, and must always be what he is. There is no other standard and no other model for it.

These views seem to me to represent to us the real and inherent gloriousness of God; and this he undivestingly possesses, whether any of his creatures perceive or recog VOL. II. -Oo

nise it or not. These glories exist in him like his eternity and almightiness. He is this glorious Being at all times and in all circumstances, whether ten or ten millions of worlds and spirits exist to become conscious of his being so or not. This reality of glorious nature appertains to himself, as he is, independently of every thing else. But the other species and sources of his glory must arise to him from what is external to himself, and depend upon the impressions, perceptions, and opinions of his sentient and reasoning creatures; and it is with these forms and kinds of glory to him, that we are concerned, and to which the sacred history of the world naturally and necessarily leads us, as its noblest study and most rational result.

For this glorious reality in himself, like genius or power of any sort in man, is not known to others until it makes such impression on them as will cause them to form some related or correspondent conceptions of it. Thus the Deity is always what he is; but what he is must be unknown by us, and we must remain unconscious of him, until by such ways or means as he shall think proper, he makes himself to be felt, perceived, and understood by us.

No great or glorious beings have really any sensation in themselves of their own perfections. They are what they are. It is natural for them to be so. They cannot be otherwise. Their feelings must therefore in this respect be the same as they would be if they were little or ignoble. The elephant is what he is, without any more sensation of his own greatness than the ant has of her petty size. Each is every thing to itself, and feels itself to be what it is; nothing more and nothing less. It is only by artificially comparing themselves with others, that they have any sensations or ideas of their greatness or superiority. We shall find this to be true if we compare ourselves with what we have been; we did not feel our mind or our natural self to be less as a child, than it is after we have become of mature age. No mind in itself and of itself feels at all greater in its manhood than it did in its play-ground or school-room. It is only by the com parison of memory that we discern, or rather infer that dif ference, of which we have really no positive sensation. Natu rally, therefore, and abstractedly, from the factitious comparison which we may choose to make of ourselves with others, no one has any interior sense of his being either great

or small, either in mind or body, or of being superior to any other; although the deductions of our experience or selflove may soon begin to raise within us ideas and feelings of this description.

But the moral perfections of God are equal to all his other glorious qualities, and therefore in him, and in him alone, all that is most grand and transcendent is for ever subsisting without altering his magnanimous equanimity and prideless excellences. In him is all the fulness of the most glorious nature, but without any selfishness, egotism, arrogance, or vanity. He makes no ostentatious display. He creates, preserves, and governs in imperceptible quietude, silence, and chosen invisibility. Man loves parade. The Deity abstains from it.

But such a being cannot act or exist without effects, and operations, and intimations of his glorious nature becoming impressive in some mode or other, and in numerous ways, to his percipient creatures wherever they may be residing. If he creates, his power, skill, and goodness must be manifest in his creation. The sun cannot appear in the heavens unclouded, without our perceiving that he is shining, or without our receiving impressions from his radiance. A Napoleon or a Wellington cannot have great military talents without displaying them by his actions when in military commands. Thus impressions of the divine glory, and ideas of it from these impressions, must arise in the human mind as its senses become affected by the manifestations which nature, revelation, and daily providence make to us of it.

These impressions will be of two sorts, sensorial and intellectual. The sensorial will chiefly arise from the effulgence in which light is capable of appearing, and in which the noonday sun in a transparent sky causes it to appear; and from ethereal agencies on our other senses.

The Deity displays his sensorial glories to us, those of which we can have impressions by means of our bodily senses, in these ways:

1st. By effulgent light. This, however, he does not display by his own personal appearance with it, as that would annihilate our sense and life. But he displays it circuitously to us by the splendour of the stars, by the nearer and more diffused silver brightness of the moon, and by the overpowering radiations of the sun. It is from these sensorial