ng to her:

"Hagar, what is your trouble? Do not be afraid. God has heard your cry
and the cry of your child. God will take care of you both, and will make
of your boy a great nation of people."

It was the voice of an angel from heaven; and then Hagar looked, and
there, close at hand, was a spring of water in the desert. How glad
Hagar was as she filled the bottle with water and took it to her
suffering boy under the bush!

[Illustration: _Learned to shoot with the bow and arrow_]

After this Hagar did not go down to Egypt. She found a place where she
lived and brought up her son in the wilderness, far from other people.
And Ishmael grew up in the desert and learned to shoot with the bow and
arrow. He became a wild man, and his children after him grew up to be
wild men also. They were the Arabians of the desert, who even to this
day have never been ruled by any other people, but wander through the
desert, and live as they please. So Ishmael came to be the father of
many people, and his descendants, the wild Arabians of the desert, are
living unto this day in that land.

THE STORY OF ABRAHAM AND ISAAC

You remember that in those times of which we are telling, when men
worshipped God, they built an altar of earth or of stone, and laid an
offering upon it as a gift to God. The offering was generally a sheep,
or a goat, or a young ox--some animal that was used for food. Such an
offering was called "a sacrifice."

But the people who worshipped idols often did what seems to us strange
and very terrible. They thought that it would please their gods if they
would offer as a sacrifice the most precious living things that were
their own; and they would take their own little children and kill them
upon their altars as offerings to the gods of wood and stone, that were
no real gods, but only images.

God wished to show Abraham and all his descendants, those who should
come after him, that he was not pleased with such offerings as those of
living people, killed on the altars. And God took a way to teach
Abraham, so that he and his children after him would never forget it.
Then at the same time he wished to see how faithful and obedient Abraham
would be to his commands; how fully Abraham would trust in God, or, as
we would say, how great was Abraham's faith in God.

So God gave to Abraham a command which he did not mean to have obeyed,
though this he did not tell to Abraham. He said:

"Take now your son, your onl