Abraham was a rich, powerful, prince. As he travelled through various countries, numbers must have been desirous of attaching themselves to his fortune, and have offered themselves for his attendants. His humanity might have induced him to purchase children from unnatural parents, or captives from robbers. But all in his family were in a situation very different from that of West Indian slaves. We learn, that on the supposition of his dying childless, he intended one of them for his heir; that he intrusted a servant to chuse a wife for his son Isaac; that he put arms in his servants hands, and led them out to battle. There is nothing of West Indian slavery in all this. But a particular stress is laid on the story of Hagar, and Sarah’s ill treatment of her. Page 19. “She obtained no favourable sentence from the Divine Tribunal for leaving her mistress, nor was Sarah censured for her severity.” Sarah was not present when the angel appeared unto Hagar, therefore she is neither praised nor condemned. But that Hagar believed she had a favourable sentence, and that her conduct was not condemned, when assured that the Lord had seen her affliction, which is the scripture phrase for deliverance (Gen. xxix. 32. and xxxi. 42. Exod. iii. 7.), and that she should have a son, and that her seed should be multiplied, appears from her acknowledgment of the vision, and returning to her mistress. Nor can we imagine in what more flattering manner her affliction could have been recompensed, or how she could have been afflicted so as to have deserved a recompence, and her mistress not to have been in fault. It was necessary for her to return to her mistress, that her son might partake of the sign of the covenant, and be instructed in the true religion. Hagar’s case (p. 19.) is compared with an African female slave in the West Indies. Nothing can be more opposite. Josephus says, Pharaoh made Abraham a present of money; and the scriptures say, that he intreated Abraham well for Sarah’s sake, adding immediately, he had cattle, and men servants, and maid servants, as if Pharaoh had presented them; among whom Hagar might have been one; or, as it appears she was a worshipper of the true God, she might voluntarily have entered into Sarah’s service. Certainly she had never been cooped up in a Guinea trader, nor set to plant the sugar-cane; nor was she ordered to return and submit herself for her mistress’s profit, but for her own and her son’s sake; and when that purpose was answered she was dismissed.