en she heard that she was to have a
child; Ishmael means, 'The Lord hears,' in remembrance of God's
hearing Hagar's cry in the wilderness, when Ishmael was dying of
thirst.

Especially those names of which we read that God commanded them to
be given, have meanings, and to tell the persons who bore those
names what God expected of them, or would do for them. So Abraham
means, 'The father of many nations.' So the children of both Isaiah
and Hosea had names given them by God, each of them meaning
something which God was going to do to the nation of the Jews. And
so John means, 'Given by the Lord,' which name was given to John the
Baptist by the Angel, before his strange birth, in his mother's old
age.

But we must remember that the heathens also gave names to their
children, though they did not know that their children owed any duty
to God, or belonged to God, and therefore we cannot call their names
Christian names. Yes, the heathens did give their children names;
some of them give their children names still. And there is to me
something most sad and painful in those heathen names, and yet most
full of meaning. A solemn lesson to us, to show us what the fall
means; what man becomes, when he gives way to his fallen nature, and
is parted from Christ, the Head of man.

First, these heathens had a dim remembrance that man was made in the
likeness of God, and lived by Faith in God, and therefore that men's
names were to express that, as indeed many of their old names do.
But, alas! the likeness of God in fallen man is like a tree without
roots, or rather a tree without soil to grow in. God's likeness in
man can only flourish as long as he is joined to Christ, the perfect
likeness of God, the true life and the true light of men, the
foundation which is already laid, and the soil in which man was
meant to grow and flourish for ever, and as long as he is fed by the
Spirit of God, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds--never
forget that, or you will lose the understanding both of who God is
and what man is--proceeds not only from God the Father, but also
from God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, in the
heathen, God's likeness withered and decayed, as a tree withers and
decays when torn up from the soil. And first, they began to call
themselves after the names of false gods, which they had invented
out of their own carnal fancies. Then they called themselves after
the names of their dumb animal's. S