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are two stories in the Old Testament which excite our sympathy by their description of purely human sorrow and suffering: the story of Hagar and Ishmael, and the story of Esau. Who has not felt for the poor bondwoman when, as the Bible tells us, 'she went and sat down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot; for she said, Let me not look on the death of the child'? The water in the bottle was spent, and they were wandering in the desert of Beersheba. Then followed the angel's miraculous aid, and the promise of God: 'I will make him a great nation. And God was with the lad, and he grew; and he dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.'

We remember, too, the story of Esau. 'When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry: "Bless me, even me also, O my father! Hast thou but one blessing, my father?" And Isaac, his father, answered and said unto him, "Behold thy dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; and by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck."' Long after, Esau married the daughter