to flee out of it into Syria, from the face of his angry brother, he must have begun that long and lonely journey with no enviable feelings. In addition to his dread of the revengeful Esau, a fear that by the duplicity of his conduct he had deeply offended his father's God must have thrown a gloom over his spirits, not easily to be removed; he must have felt it at least doubtful, whether what he anticipated in his first feeble expostulation with Rebekah had not come to pass, and that he had brought in reality a curse upon himself, and not a blessing. But God, who knows and pities the frailties of his servants, who saw how much of sterling piety and goodness there was in Jacob, though debased for a time by the meanness of which he had been guilty, after he had made him feel some little of the bitterness attached to sin, returned to look upon him again with favour. The fatigued and houseless wanderer, who, when the night came on, laid himself down to sleep on the bare earth, resting his head upon the stones which he had taken for his pillow, saw in his dreams a vision of his Maker, standing above a ladder which reached from earth to heaven, and on which the angels of God were ascending and descending. This representation was of itself calculated to cheer and support him, and to fill him with humble and grateful acknowledgments of the Divine providence and care; but, in addition to this, he received from his gracious Lord a solemn renewal of the blessing which he had before obtained without his sanction, and an assurance of future protection and guidance, which should never fail, till God had "done all which he had spoken to him of."* The vision, full of comfort as it was, made Jacob tremble with a holy awe-he felt that he was in the hands of a God who was ever about his path, and

* Gen. xxviii. 15.

about his bed, and spied out all his ways-he saw the magnitude of his folly and offence, in thinking that the arts of falsehood could effect any thing against the counsels of such a Being—and, humbly accepting his offered protection, he promised obedience and worship in return. As an earnest of the latter, he set up the stone, which had lain under his head, in the form of a pillar, and pouring oil on the top of it, consecrated it to be hereafter a house of God, or holy place, to which he probably intended to bring the tenths of all that the Lord should give him, as a dedicated offering. Then, with a lighter heart, he proceeded on his journey; and arriving at Haran, met first of all with Rachel, the daughter of his uncle Laban; struck with whose beauty, he entered into an engagement with her father, to serve him seven years, if he would give her him to wife. His mother, in her anxiety for his safety, had sent him away, that he might tarry a few days with her brother Laban, till Esau's fury had subsided he had now, by his own act, precluded himself from returning homeward for seven years, however friendly a reception he might meet with there. He had bound himself over to a servitude, attended, as it appears, with much responsibility and much discomfort his duty was to tend the flocks of his master, and he was expected to deduct from his wages the value of any of them which chanced either to be lost or stolen in the day the drought consumed him, and the frost by night; his sleep departed from his eyes. Thus it was that the would-be heir of all his father's possessions became first an exile, and then a servant. We shall see next how the practiser of falsehood was doomed himself to be overreached by a craftier than he. He had served seven years for Rachel, and his love for her had made them seem but a few days: how grievous, then, must have been his disappointment, when he found that Laban had, under the cover

of night, deceived him into marrying not the object of his long-tried affection, but her sister Leah; and that the price set upon Rachel was the additional servitude of another seven years: it was a harsh but a wholesome lesson, and one on which all those who think that guile and deceit are good means of thriving, will do well to ponder. We shall see now that Laban's craftiness stood him in as little stead as Jacob's had before. The latter, being now possessed of his two wives, and having served his full time of fourteen years, was desirous to depart; but Laban, willing to make some further profit of him, persuaded him to stay; and it was agreed, that his future wages should be determined by the colour of the lambs that should be born-those that were speckled to be his, those that were white to be Laban's. The apparent advantage was all on Laban's side, for the whole of his flock was white; but Jacob, by an ingenious device, which God sanctioned in a dream, procured that all the best and strongest of them should bear speckled lambs; and thus, in the course of six years during which this agreement subsisted, increased his posessions greatly at the expense of his avaricious fatherin-law, who, having several times changed the terms of the compact without effect, at length began to look upon him with envy and dislike, and gave him, by this alteration of his manner towards him, a full excuse for quitting him abruptly, without the ceremony of leave-taking, removing with him his wives, their handmaids, and his twelve children, and all the goods which he had gotten in Haran. Incensed at this, and at the loss of his teraphim, or idol gods, which Rachel had taken with her, either with the intent to wean her father from their vain worship, or with a lingering fondness for it herself, Laban pursued and overtook the fugitives: but being warned by God in a dream to do them no harm, and moreover

failing to find his teraphim, or to establish any just ground of complaint against Jacob, who had rather cause to lay blame on him, his better feelings prevailed, and he entered into a covenant with his sonin-law, to abstain in future from attempting to injure one another. An heap of stones was set up as a memorial of their covenant, called by Laban in his language Jegar-sahadutha, and by Jacob Galeed, or the heap of witness. Having escaped this danger, the patriarch now felt himself on the point of encountering another, even more formidable: the messengers whom he sent forward to Esau, announcing his approach, brought him back word, "thy brother cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him.”* Such a force, thought the terrified Jacob, could attend him with no other intent than that of mischief: and therefore, having taken such precautions as human prudence dictated, by dividing his party into two bands, that if one of them was attacked, the other might have time to escape, and by sending before him a liberal present, to appease if possible the dangerous Esau, he then betook himself to the surest refuge of all, by earnest prayer to God. His prayer is so excellent a model of what such supplications should be, that I insert it entire. "O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast showed unto thy servant for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. And

* Gen. xxxii. 6.

thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude." This frank confession of his own unworthiness, this touching appeal to the truth and mercy of his father's God, was heard, as the event shows us, in heaven; that very night a mysterious occurrence, a wrestling with an angel in human form, showed him at once the weakness of his own frail nature, and the power which through faith and persevering prayer it is permitted to obtain with God. "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me," is that which, through Christ that strengtheneth him, every petitioner is allowed to say to Him from whom all good proceedeth.

The next day Esau appeared in sight, with his four hundred men, and the brothers met: but how different was their meeting from that which Jacob had expected before his prayer! There were no angry words, no bloodshed, no slaughter: Jacob approached his brother with becoming reverence; "and Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him, and they wept." When Esau wept before, it was for sorrow and rage, that he had been defrauded by his brother; he now shed upon his neck the tears of reconciliation and joy; in the moment when he might have wreaked his vengeance, his anger was disarmed, and the spirit of brotherly affection triumphed in his bosom over the spirit of hate. plainly do we recognise in this the work of God; what an encouragement is it to fervent prayer, when we see it thus clearly and mercifully answered; when we are favoured with so marked an instance of the important truth, that "whatsoever we shall ask in prayer, believing, we shall receive!" And

* Gen. xxxii. 9--12.

Gen. xxxiii. 4.

I

+ Ver. 26.

§ Matt. xxi. 22.

How