5. The time would fail, were we to enter as particularly into the Divine Interpretation elsewhere given of another story, apparently as little fraught with mystery as any in the Bible. _Who_ would ever have imagined that the brief narrative of Hagar's dismissal from the house of Abraham at Sarah's instance, was the ἀλληγορία of so Divine a thing as St. Paul declares;--the two Mothers setting forth the two Covenants, (one, bearing children unto bondage,--the other, the free Mother of us all: Sinai symbolized by _that_, the heavenly Jerusalem by _this_:) and even Ishmael's mockery not being without mysterious meaning?--Such however is the Divine Interpretation.--Elsewhere, when St. Paul desires to contrast the method of the Gospel with the method of the Law,--(_this_, glorious; _that_, with the same glorious features concealed;)--and also to illustrate the present unbelief of the Jewish nation;--the Apostle finds a prophetic emblem of their blindness in the veiled countenance of their great Lawgiver, as described in the xxxivth chapter of Exodus. The mystical intention of that veil, (he says,) was to symbolize the nation's inability to look steadfastly to the end of the dispensation, and to recognize MESSIAH. Nay, to this hour, while they read their Scriptures, that veil (he says) is upon their hearts. And yet, even as Moses, when he returned to GOD, is related to have taken off the veil from his face, so (St. Paul says) will it fare with the Jews, when _they_ convert and turn themselves to CHRIST. The veil will be withdrawn[482].--Now, I gather from all this, and many a hint of the like kind,--that the whole of Scripture is of the same marvellous texture, the Old Testament and the New, alike,--whether we have the eyes to see it or not.