VI.

JACOB.

BRAHAM was a hero, Jacob was 'a plain man, dwelling in tents.' Abraham we feel to be above ourselves, Jacob to be like ourselves." So the distinction between the two great patriarchs has been drawn out by a celebrated theologian. "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." So the experience of Israel himself is summed up in the close of his life. Human cares, jealousies, sorrows, cast their shade over the scene -the golden dawn of the patriarchal age is overcast; there is no longer the same unwavering faith; we are no longer in communion with the "High Father," the "Friend of God;" we at times almost doubt whether we are not with his enemy. But for this very reason the interest attaching to Jacob, though of a less lofty and universal kind, is more touching, more penetrating, more attractive. Nothing but the perverse attempt to demand perfection of what is held before us as imperfect could blind us to the exquisite truthfulness which marks the delineation of the patriarch's character.

Look at him as his course is unrolled through the long vicissi tudes which make his life a faithful mirror of human existence in its many aspects. Look at him as compared with his brother Esau. Unlike the sharp contrast of the earlier brothers of sacred.

I Newman's Sermons.

history, in these two the good and evil are so mingled that at first we might be at a loss which to follow, which to condemn. The distinctness with which they seem to stand and move before us against the clear distance is a new phase in the history. Esau, the shaggy, red-haired huntsman, the man of the field, with his arrows, his quiver and his bow, coming in weary from the chase, caught as with the levity and eagerness of a child by the sight of the lentile soup" Feed me, I pray thee, with the red, red pottage"-yet so full of generous impulse, so affectionate toward his aged father, so forgiving toward his brother, so open-hearted, so chivalrous, who has not at times felt his heart warm toward the poor rejected Esau, and been tempted to join with him as he cries with "a great and exceeding bitter cry," "Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father!" And who does not in like manner feel at times his indignation swell against the younger brother? "Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he hath supplanted me these two times?" He entraps his brother, he deceives his father, he makes a bargain even in his prayer; in his dealings with Laban, in his meeting with Esau, he still calculates and contrives; he distrusts his neighbors; he treats with prudential caution the insult to his daughter and the cruelty of his sons; he hesitates to receive the assurance of Joseph's good will; he repels, even in his lesser traits, the free confidence that we cannot withhold from the patriarchs of the elder generation.

But yet, taking the two from first to last, how entirely is the judgment of Scripture and the judgment of posterity confirmed by the result of the whole! The mere impulsive hunter vanishes away, light as air: "He did eat and drink, and rose up and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright." The substance, the strength of the chosen family, the true inheritance of the promise of Abraham, was interwoven with the very essence of the character of the "plain man dwelling in tents"-steady, persevering, moving on with deliberate settled purpose, through

years of suffering and prosperity, of exile and return, of bereavement and recovery. The birthright is always before him. Rachel is won from Laban by hard service, "and the seven years seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her." Isaac and Rebekah and Rebekah's nurse are remembered with a faithful, filial remembrance; Joseph and Benjamin are long and passionately loved with a more than parental affection, bringing down his gray hairs, for their sakes, "in sorrow to the grave." This is no character to be contemned or scoffed at; if it was encompassed with much infirmity, yet its very complexity demands our reverent attention; in it are bound up, as his double name expresses, not one man, but two; by toil and struggle, Jacob, the supplanter, is gradually transformed into Israel, the prince of God; the harsher and baser features are softened and purified away; he looks back over his long career with the fullness of experience and humility: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant." Alone of the patriarchal family his end is recorded as invested with the solemnity of warning and of prophetic song: "Gather yourselves together, ye sons of Jacob, and hearken unto Israel your father." We need not fear to acknowledge that the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac was also the God of Jacob.

Most unworthy indeed should we be of the gift of the sacred narrative if we failed to appreciate it in this its full, its manysided aspect. Even in the course of the Jewish history, what a foreshadowing of the future! We may venture to trace in the wayward chieftain of Edom the likeness of the fickle, uncertain Edomite, now allied, now hostile, to the seed of promise; the wavering, unstable dynasty which came forth from Idumæa; Herod the magnificent and the cruel; Herod Antipas, who "heard John gladly" and slew him; Herod Agrippa, "almost a Christian"-half Jew and half heathen. "A turbulent and unruly race"-so Josephus describes the Idumæans of his day

"always hovering on the verge of revolution, always rejoicing in changes, roused to arms by the slightest motion of flattery, rushing to battle as if they were going to a feast." But we cannot mistake the type of the Israelites in him whom, beyond even Abraham and Isaac, they recognized as their father Israel. His doubtful qualities exactly recall to us the form of character which, even to a proverb, we call in scorn, "Jewish." By his peculiar discipline of exile and suffering, a true counterpart is produced of the special faults and special gifts known to us chiefly through his persecuted descendants in the Middle Ages. In Jacob we see the same timid, cautious watchfulness that we know so well, though under darker colors, through our great masters of fiction, in Shylock of Venice and Isaae of York. But no less, in the nobler side of his career, do we trace the germs of the unbroken endurance, the undying resolution, which keeps the nation alive still even in its present outcast condition, and which was the basis, in its brightest days, of the heroic zeal, long-suffering and hope of Moses, of David, of Jeremiah, of the Maccabees, of the twelve Jewish apostles and the first martyr Stephen.

We cannot, however, narrow the lessons of Jacob's history to the limits of the Israelite Church. All ecclesiastical history is the gainer by the sight of such a character so delineated. It is a character not all black nor all white, but checkered with the mixed colors which make up so vast a proportion of the double phases of the leaders of the Church and the world in every age. The neutrality (so to speak) of the Scripture narrative may be seen by its contrast with the dark hues in which Esau is painted by the Rabbinical authors. He is hindered in his chase by Satan ; hell opens as he goes in to his father; he gives his father dogs' flesh instead of venison; he tries to bite Jacob on his return; he commits five sins in one day. This is the difference between mere national animosity and the high impartial judgment of the sacred story, evenly balanced and steadily held, yet not regard

less of the complicated and necessary variations of human thought and action. For students of theology, for future pastors, for young men in the opening of life, what a series of lessons is opened in the history of these two youths, issuing from their father's tent in Beersheba! The free, easy, frank good nature of the profane Esau is not overlooked; the craft, duplicity, timidity, of the religious Jacob is duly recorded. Yet, on the one hand, fickleness, unsteadiness, weakness, want of faith and want of principle, ruin and render useless the noble qualities of the first; and on the other hand, steadfast purpose, resolute sacrifice of present to future, and fixed principle, purify, elevate, turn to lasting good even the baser qualities of the second. And yet again, whether in the two brothers or their descendants, we see how in each the good and evil strove together and worked their results almost to the end. Esau and his race cling still to the outskirts of the chosen people. "Meddle not," it was said in after times, "with your brethren the children of Esau, for I will not give you of their land, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau for a possession." Israel, on the other hand, is outcast, thwarted, deceived, disappointed, bereaved-"all these things are against me;" in him, and in his progeny also, the curse of Ebal is always blended with the blessings of Gerizim. How hardly Esau was condemned! how hardly Jacob was saved! We are kept in long and just suspense; the prodigal may, as far as human eye can see, be on his way home; the blameless son, who "has been in his father's house always," may be shutting himself out. Yet the final issue to which, on the whole, this primitive history calls our attention, is the same which is borne out by the history of the Church even in these latter days of complex civilization. There is, after all, a weakness in selfish worldliness for which no occasional impulse can furnish any adequate compensation, even though it be the generosity of an Arabian chief or the inimitable good nature of an English king. There is a nobleness in principle and faith which cannot be wholly destroyed, even though it