[151] So in their insolence they neglect the mistress to whom the lordship really belongs, to whom is due the firm foundation of their studies. And she, conscious of their neglect, will rebuke them and speak with all boldness. “I am wronged and betrayed, in so far as you have broken faith with me.
[152] For ever since you took to your arms the lower forms of training, the children of my handmaid, you have given her all the honour of the wedded wife, and turned from me as though we had never come together. And yet perhaps, in thinking this of you, I may be but inferring from your open company with her my servant a less certain matter, your alienation from me. But to decide whether your feelings are as I have supposed, or the opposite, is a task impossible for any other,
[153] but easy for God alone,” and therefore Sarah will say quite properly, “God judge between you and me” (Gen. 16:5). She does not hastily condemn Abraham as a wrongdoer, but expresses a doubt as though perhaps his heart may be true and upright. That it is so is shewn unmistakably soon after, when he makes his defence and thereby heals her doubts. “Behold,” he says, “the servant girl is in thy hands. Deal with her as is pleasing to thee” (Gen. 16:6).
[154] Indeed in calling her a servant girl he makes a double admission, that she is a slave and that she is childish, for the name suits both of these. At the same time the words involve necessarily and absolutely the acknowledgment of the opposites of these two, of the full-grown as opposed to the child, of the mistress as opposed to the slave. They amount almost to a loud and emphatic confession: I greet the training of the schools, he implies, as the junior and the handmaid, but I have given full honour to knowledge and wisdom as the full-grown and the mistress.
[155] And the words “in thy hands” mean no doubt “she is subject to thee,” but they also signify something more, namely that while what is implied by the slave belongs to the domain of the hands in the bodily sense, since the school subjects require the bodily organs and faculties, what is implied by the mistress reaches to the soul, for wisdom and knowledge and their implications are referred to the reasoning faculties.
[156] “And so,” says Abraham, “in the same degree as the mind is more powerful, more active and altogether better than the hand, I hold knowledge and wisdom to be more admirable than the culture of the schools and have given them full and special honour. Do thou then, who both art the mistress and art held as such by me, take all my training and deal with it as thy handmaid, ‘even as is well-pleasing to thee.’ And what is well-pleasing
[157]to thee I know full well is altogether good, even if it be not agreeable, and profitable even if it be far removed from pleasant.”
Yes, good and profitable. And such to those who need convincing of their errors is the admonishing which the holy text indicates under its other name of affliction.