\ 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 4 
 
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THE BARTERED BIRTHRIGHT 
 
 FORTY BRIEF EXPOSITORY ADDRESSES 
 
 ON THE 
 LIFE OF JACOB 
 
 ffor tbe of Xent 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. F. A. D. LAUNT, D.D. 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. DAVID’S CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 31 West Twenty-Third Street 
 
I 
 
 Copyright, 1901 
 
 BY 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 BS5%° 
 
 J3i3 
 
 Ubc Iknfcfeerbocfccr press, , Wcw IJJorfe 
 
 7 Slpiol. 
 
To 
 
 ORLANDO CREASE 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 OTHING ages so fast as a sermon. There is a 
 
 1 N steady, if limited, demand for new Lenten Read¬ 
 ings, modern and moderate in tone and at the same time 
 loyal to the Scriptures and Creeds of the Church. 
 
 I have tried to make these addresses interesting to a 
 week-day congregation. For this, in many instances, 
 style, method, and personal preference have been sacri¬ 
 ficed ; something, it may be, of the dignity of a former 
 generation; nothing, I trust, of doctrinal soundness or 
 of spiritual earnestness and wisdom. The story helps, 
 although each address is complete in itself. I have used 
 the commentaries, ancient and modern, and several 
 monographs on the narrative. 1 Some verses not other¬ 
 wise credited are by Archbishop Alexander. 
 
 During the past fall and winter a number of type¬ 
 written copies of these addresses have been read to Sun¬ 
 day congregations by students in two of our theological 
 seminaries and the approval of these young men probably 
 has had its influence with my publishers, as it has been 
 an encouragement to me, in giving them a more perma¬ 
 nent form. 
 
 I hope that lay-readers may find the book serviceable 
 
 1 Indebtedness is acknowledged to four books by eminent English au¬ 
 thors : Isaac and Jacob, George Rawlinson, M.A. ; The Hebrew Twins, 
 Samuel Cox, D.D. ; Israel, A Prince of God, F. B. Meyer, B.A. ; The 
 Book of Genesis, Marcus Dods, D.D. For suggestions on the wrestling 
 at Peniel I owe thanks for a sermon by each of two distinguished American 
 preachers, the Rev. Charles S. Olmsted, D.D., and the Rev. Edwin B. 
 Coe, D.D. 
 
 V 
 
VI 
 
 Preface. 
 
 for other seasons as well as for Lent. A friend has sug¬ 
 gested that these expositions might be useful in parish 
 and Sunday-school libraries. I have only to add that 
 instead of finding the Scripture narrative too slight for 
 my purpose there has been difficulty in covering the 
 ground and that the chapters are specially helpful for 
 Lenten study, as may be seen from a glance at the titles 
 of the addresses, particularly of those for Holy Week. 
 
 Philadelphia, 
 
 Thanksgiving Day, 1900. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 The 
 
 Beginning 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 2 . 
 
 The 
 
 Brothers 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 3 - 
 
 The 
 
 Barter . 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 4 - 
 
 The 
 
 Birthright 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 19 
 
 5 - 
 
 The 
 
 Plot 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 25 
 
 6 . 
 
 The 
 
 Counter-Plot 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 1 
 
 7 - 
 
 The 
 
 Stolen Blessing 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 37 
 
 8 . 
 
 The 
 
 Bitter Cry 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 9 - 
 
 The 
 
 Anger of Esau 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 10. 
 
 The 
 
 Daughters 
 
 of Heth 
 
 
 
 
 
 55 
 
 11. 
 
 The 
 
 Dream 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 12. 
 
 The 
 
 Ladder . 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 67 
 
 i 3 - 
 
 The 
 
 Promise . 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 73 
 
 14. 
 
 The 
 
 Awakening 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 79 
 
 i 5 * 
 
 The 
 
 Vow 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 85 
 
 16. 
 
 The 
 
 Altar 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 i 
 
 i 7 - 
 
 Serving for Rachel 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 97 
 
 18. 
 
 The 
 
 Return . 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 103 
 
 19. 
 
 The 
 
 Pursuit . 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 109 
 
 20. 
 
 Jacob’s Prayer 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 115 
 
 21. 
 
 The 
 
 Mercies of 
 
 God 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 121 
 
 22. 
 
 Two 
 
 Bands 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 127 
 
 23- 
 
 God 
 
 Wrestling 
 
 WITH 
 
 Jacob 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 33 
 
 24. 
 
 Peniel 
 
 • 
 
 • • 
 
 
 
 
 
 x 39 
 
 vii 
 
VII1 
 
 Contents 
 
 25. The Prince of God 
 
 26. Strange Gods Put away 
 
 27. The Oak of Shechem . 
 
 28. Bethel Revisited . 
 
 29. Three Graves 
 
 30. The Sale of Joseph 
 
 31. The Famine-Time . 
 
 32. The Wagons of Egypt. 
 
 33. The Land of Goshen . 
 
 34. The Two Sons of Joseph 
 
 35. Unstable as Water 
 
 36. The Sceptre of Judah 
 
 37. Grieved by the Archers 
 
 38. Thy Salvation 
 
 39. He Yielded up the Ghost 
 
 40. The Cave of Machpelah 
 
 PAGE 
 
 J 45 
 
 151 
 
 *57 
 
 163 
 
 169 
 
 i75 
 
 181 
 
 187 
 
 I 93 
 
 199 
 
 205 
 
 211 
 
 217 
 
 223 
 
 229 
 
 235 
 
THE BARTERED BIRTHRIGHT 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE BARTERED BIRTHRIGHT 
 
 THE BEGINNING. 
 
 ASH WEDNESDAY. 
 
 “ His hand took hold on Esau’s heel; and his name was called Jacob.” 
 —Gen. xxv. 26. 
 
 I N the journal of that most human ecclesiastic, Dean 
 Swift, we find the following entry: “ Lent has come 
 again, and I hate Lent. I hate furmity and sour, devout 
 faces.” And he is quoted as saying: “ But I suppose 
 that for most of us there is, during the Lenten season, 
 a breath of God upon the air, an influence of which we 
 cannot wholly rid ourselves, and alas, the inmost reflec¬ 
 tion in our hearts from time to time is that Lent is a 
 bore. ” 
 
 In the twentieth century our Lenten dinners are sel¬ 
 dom limited to the old London dishes of “ furmity ” or 
 “ herb porridge,” and we have learned that “ sour 
 faces ” are not signs of growth in the Gospel graces of 
 faith, hope, and charity. Nevertheless there are many 
 who still hate Lent, and more, it may be, whose inmost 
 reflection is that “ Lent is a bore.” There are those to 
 whom the holy season, which they observe merely out of 
 respect for fashion or custom, means the temporary sus¬ 
 pension of the worldly gaieties upon which their hearts 
 are fixed. There are others who hear in the Ash Wed- 
 
2 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 nesday church bell the unwelcome voice of conscience; 
 they are reminded of resolutions formed in the months 
 gone by that with the coming Lent they would turn over 
 a new leaf. The habits, thoughts, negligences, compan¬ 
 ionships, which were sapping the spiritual life would in 
 Lent, they had promised themselves, be renounced. 
 Now the day is at hand, it will not wait, and the effort 
 to break away from the evil thing disquiets them; they 
 groan in spirit as they strive to force the feeble will into 
 prompt and resolute action. But it is to be hoped that 
 the great majority of those who will keep Lent realize 
 that a breath of God is on the air, and welcome the re¬ 
 tirement, the multiplied services, the inspiration of the 
 hearty companionship of a multitude throughout the 
 world who at this time endeavor to strengthen character 
 and purify and sweeten the innermost springs of the 
 spiritual life. To many such, however, there is some 
 inward dissatisfaction in the thought that there is likely 
 to be a tedious reiteration in the themes of the medita¬ 
 tions and exhortations presented at this season. The 
 best Lenten books and the best Lenten sermons seem to 
 them to follow well-beaten lines. To take up once more 
 during the earlier weeks of Lent the temptations and 
 the sins of the appetites of the body, and the physical 
 sufferings of Christ in the closing weeks, has a sugges¬ 
 tion of triteness rather than of enlivening interest, and 
 while they would not venture, perhaps, to speak of the 
 discussion of these subjects as a bore,” it does seem 
 unattractive, somehow, from its very familiarity, and 
 they have a feeling that there is room for other, if not 
 more vital, themes. 
 
 For those who have kept many Lents a fresh line of re¬ 
 ligious study may be acceptable. For beginners it may 
 
The Beginning. 
 
 3 
 
 be an encouragement to go on next year to more abstract 
 and doctrinal subjects. And so this Lent you are in¬ 
 vited to read with me the struggle which one human soul 
 made to be true to himself and to his God—to trace out 
 the steps by which Jacob, the Heel-catcher, the Sup- 
 planter, became Israel, the Prince of God. 
 
 In connection with these brief, practical, week-day ad¬ 
 dresses upon this most eventful, romantic, chequered, 
 and helpful human life, you are earnestly exhorted to 
 hear and heed the sermons preached in church on the 
 Sundays of Lent. In the time allowed for a sermon 
 your rector will have opportunity to bring before you 
 the deeper devotional and doctrinal aspects of this por¬ 
 tion of the Christian year in a style and method more be¬ 
 coming to the greater solemnities of public worship on 
 the Lord’s Day. 
 
 (Should these printed pages be read by any parishioner 
 whose clergyman uses some other course of week-day 
 readings, that parishioner must not make the private 
 reading of this book an excuse for neglecting the week¬ 
 day services of the parish church. Unless these pages 
 are an inspiration to increased faithfulness in Christian 
 duty they will be written and read in vain.) 
 
 We have said that Jacob’s history is interesting. 
 Every life-story has its fascination. “Biography,” said 
 Carlyle, “ is the most universally pleasant and profitable 
 of all reading.” The biography of one who was great 
 and good is a help, incentive, and guide for all who 
 would be true to God and to the highest ideals of man¬ 
 kind. In every true life, if we get at the secret of it, we 
 shall find that strong and beautiful character is wrought 
 out and manifested 
 
 “ In the struggle, not the prize ; ” 
 
4 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 and that the refinement of mind, the elevation of thought, 
 the tenacity of purpose, the tenderness of affection, the 
 strength of will, which result from a life of energetic and 
 well-directed effort to serve God and man, are in them¬ 
 selves the best and most satisfactory rewards of that 
 labor. A distinguished Scotch preacher (Dr. Candlish) 
 said: “ There is scarcely a mood of the mind into which 
 sin or sorrow can cast a believer that may not find a type, 
 or parallel, or example, in Jacob.” His words are true. 
 The narrative is of perennial interest. It is, moreover, 
 especially suitable for Lenten reading. In Lent we hope 
 to overcome some of our faults, to multiply our graces. 
 Jacob trod that upward road and marked the way. No 
 man in the Bible, unless it be St. Peter, started lower or 
 climbed higher. It is also to be noted that while Jacob 
 was born with the strongest inclinations towards evil, 
 while he often yielded to those inclinations, he was never 
 lured into the grosser forms of self-indulgence. His sins 
 were of the heart and of the mind. Therefore, if Jacob 
 speaks to believers by his sorrows, by his chastisements, 
 by his aspirations, he speaks especially by his sins, for 
 few of us are in danger of yielding to the coarser forms 
 of vice; our sins, for the most part, are the sins of Jacob 
 — sins of worldliness, of self-will, of presuming on the 
 mercies of God. 
 
 The series of addresses which we have outlined will 
 be chiefly expository. Now expositions of Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture are attractive to thoughtful people because they 
 necessarily eliminate many of the undesirable features 
 of modern religious discourse. The personality of the 
 speaker, local, secular, or disputed subjects must retire 
 into the background while the Holy Spirit Himself, in 
 the words which He has inspired, is permitted to speak 
 
The Beginning. 
 
 5 
 
 His own blessed and edifying message. It is generally 
 agreed that our lay-people should take more time in 
 Lent for an intelligent and prayerful study of some por¬ 
 tion of the sacred writings. We hear much of the dangers 
 which threaten the Church from the researches and 
 conjectures of the so-called “ higher critics.” As a 
 matter of fact, the deadliest foe which threatens the Word 
 of God to-day is not criticism, but neglect. It is the un¬ 
 opened Bible in Christian homes, not criticism, even the 
 most radical and faithless criticism, which should awaken 
 our fears. God will defend and keep His own. But its 
 treasures are for those that seek them. Expository 
 preaching is a reading of Scripture in the ears of the 
 people, and it often leads them to open their Bibles when 
 they reach home. It is, furthermore, the natural method 
 of enforcing Divine truth. The chief purpose of preach¬ 
 ing is to interpret Holy Scripture. Our Lord’s first ser¬ 
 mon was an exposition of a chapter from Isaiah, and on 
 the day of His Resurrection “ He expounded unto ” the 
 two disciples, on the way to Emmaus, “ in all the 
 Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” This method 
 was used in the synagogues and was transferred to the 
 early Church. Justin Martyr tells us that in the second 
 century all preaching was expository. In the fourth cen¬ 
 tury St. Chrysostom chided the people because they 
 turned their eyes to a man who lighted lamps in the 
 cathedral while he was expounding the Scriptures. Ex¬ 
 position is not the only way, nor the only good way 
 of preaching the Gospel, but surely it should not be 
 neglected. When this method is fairly employed the 
 pews usually find relief in one particular, for it is with 
 an isolated text and not with an exposition that the 
 preacher finds it so “ dangerously easy to glide into 
 
6 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 exhortation when he should be rather exercising himself 
 in explanation.” 
 
 On this day of good resolutions let us think of one 
 great fact in Jacob’s history. When God chose Jacob to 
 found a nation and institute a religious economy, He 
 did not “ find out a man with a ready-made virtue, and 
 then reward him for it.” On the contrary, he who 
 deceived his father, cheated his brother, mastered des¬ 
 tiny itself, and “ from a shelf the precious diadem stole 
 and put it in his pocket,” who vowed “ the Lord 
 shall be my God,” and yet let his heart linger on the 
 earth—such a man as this found it hard to learn to sub¬ 
 mit his will to the will of God. That was the secret 
 of all Jacob’s failures and sorrows. Is it not so with us ? 
 Said St. Augustine : “ The carnal man rises from his 
 worldliness and becomes divine when in all things he 
 prefers God’s will to his own.” To-day let us resolve to 
 make a complete surrender and say from the heart, “ Thy 
 will, not mine, be done.” “ I have but one small 
 thing—my will,” writes a holy man. “Is it a great 
 thing to surrender to Him who gives such great bless¬ 
 ings to me, and who purchased me with His own most 
 precious Blood ? ” 
 
THE BROTHERS. 
 
 FIRST THURSDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the 
 field ; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents. And Isaac loved 
 Esau, because he did eat of his venison : but Rebekah loved Jacob.”— 
 Gen. xxv. 27, 28. 
 
 I S the narrative before us a true story ? Is it history or 
 is it merely folk-lore and old-world legend ? Of many 
 answers take one. In this portion of the Bible we read 
 of little or nothing which is beyond our own experience. 
 Birth, dreams, thoughts about God, marriage, joy, sor¬ 
 row, doubt, death, burial are among the facts, and not 
 the legends of the race. The characters in the story are 
 not grotesque nor superhuman, neither entirely good nor 
 utterly bad; and the scenes and incidents brought before 
 us are in keeping with the civilization of the period desig¬ 
 nated. We must admit that these chapters, in their 
 record of the feelings, speech, and behavior of the men 
 and women whose history they relate, seem to give us a 
 natural and credible story; that at the same time their 
 representation of the being and character of God is such 
 that neither the intellect nor the moral sense is repelled 
 by what is said concerning Him. 
 
 That portion of the history which we will consider 
 during the days of Lent opens with the birth of Esau and 
 Jacob. Subsequently, each received a new name to 
 which a moral significance was attached, but when they 
 were born the twins were given names suggested by the 
 
 7 
 
8 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 act of one and the appearance of the other, Esau mean¬ 
 ing “ hairy ” and Jacob “ he who takes by the heel.” 
 
 As a rule twins cherish a deep affection for each other 
 and have similar tastes and dispositions, but the sons of 
 Isaac and Rebekah soon exhibited as marked a contrast 
 in head and heart as in outward appearance. From dawn 
 to dusk Esau roamed over the hills and valleys in pursuit 
 of the wild beasts of the field. He was the heir and 
 thought himself entitled to a youth of pleasure. But 
 Jacob, accepting the position of a younger son, gave his 
 attention to the flocks and herds, the sowing and the 
 reaping, and became a man of steady, industrious habits. 
 Rebekah loved Jacob and knew that he was God’s chosen, 
 for an oracle from heaven had declared unto her, “ The 
 elder shall serve the younger. ’ ’ But Jacob was by nature 
 crafty and ambitious, and unfortunately his mother, in¬ 
 stead of correcting this disposition, stimulated it by fre¬ 
 quently reminding him of the mysterious message from 
 heaven. And so he grew up with high notions of the 
 powers and privileges of the birthright of the family, firm 
 in the belief that somehow he would be the future lord 
 of the tribe and the inheritor of the promises, and ready 
 to aid himself by any means within reach in the work of 
 securing his rights and accomplishing the designs of 
 Providence. 
 
 Jacob differed from Esau in at least three particulars. 
 Jacob is the first man mentioned in the Bible who pos¬ 
 sessed marked intellectual strength; upon whom the gift 
 of thought and expression was bestowed with a generos¬ 
 ity which would have made him a distinguished man in 
 any calling, in any age. He used that power to master 
 men, and he mastered them. For many years he matched 
 his keen mind against the mind of God and sought to 
 
The Brothers. 
 
 9 
 
 have his own way and win his own ends by outwitting 
 his Maker. Now a strong man, a man who stands as a 
 mountain peak amid surrounding hills, is always an inter¬ 
 esting and fascinating study, for naturally we are all hero- 
 worshippers. Furthermore, Heine’s observation that the 
 men of action are after all only the unconscious instru¬ 
 ments of the men of thought is as profound as it is true. 
 Brains rule the world. But the spiritual helpfulness of 
 the story of Jacoc v mental power is to be seen in the fact 
 that while he was constantly tempted to use, and often 
 did use, his intellect in the service of the senses — not 
 grossly, for he was quite free from grossness in any of its 
 forms — God constantly withstood him in the attempt. 
 From first to last God wrestled with Jacob, for having 
 begun a good work in the soul of His servant He would 
 accomplish it unto the day of salvation. 
 
 There are two other qualities which also distinguished 
 Jacob from his brother. 
 
 One was a high appreciation of the spiritual value of the 
 birthright. He had the religious temperament. From 
 earliest childhood he thought much of the mysteries of 
 the strange world about him, of the stranger world within 
 him. “ Has the world an owner? ” he would ask; “ does 
 it belong to my father Isaac? What makes the world go 
 on, the sun rise and set, the seasons come and go? And 
 the people, too, are they governed by laws, as the world 
 seems to be? What of myself; must I leave this world ; 
 when, and whither?” And so as the sense of his own 
 personality awakes he will think of the real Owner, Law¬ 
 maker, and Governor of the world and of all its people. 
 He will become conscious of a Presence outside himself, 
 a Personality spoken of by his devout parents as God. 
 Thoughtful youth readily attains to such convictions. It 
 
IO 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 sees that every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. 
 If the body thirsts for water, its demand is amply provided 
 for. If the heart craves affection, there are fellow-beings 
 to receive and to return its devotion. If we thirst for 
 life eternal, for love eternal, it is therefore reasonable to 
 suppose that eternal life and eternal love will be given in 
 answer to the cry for them. Yes, the human heart is 
 naturally religious, naturally Christian. It is not satisfied 
 with the earth. You give a bird food and drink and a 
 safe and comfortable cage. You may think it satisfied 
 with its life in the cage. Open the door, however, and 
 you will see where its true home is when it soars forth 
 into its native air. Unthoughtful Esau was seemingly 
 content with the earth. Jacob longed to know God. 
 
 Again, Jacob was distinguished from his brother by his 
 constancy, his persistent, unwavering constancy. Esau 
 is “ to one thing constant never.” He acts upon im¬ 
 pulse, and appetite or circumstances change his pur¬ 
 pose from day to day. Inconstancy is “ that one error 
 which “ fills him with faults; makes him run through 
 all the sins.” Notwithstanding his guile, Jacob was 
 great because he was constant. His mind was set 
 on the birthright and year after year he schemed and 
 watched, and, never wavering, won the prize. Rachel 
 was the darling of his heart. For her he toiled in almost 
 servile labor fourteen years and because of his great love 
 the time seemed short. The constancy of Thackeray’s 
 Major Dobbin, over which we thrill and weep, is in Jacob. 
 Rachel died by Jacob’s side in her youth, but her image 
 remained undimmed in his constant heart, and after what 
 might be called a lifetime, when death came to him in 
 the mansion of the great king of Egypt, his thoughts were 
 of Rachel and her name was on his lips. Addison’s 
 
The Brothers. 
 
 11 
 
 strong words concerning constancy will help us to recog¬ 
 nize in Jacob’s remarkable constancy a true greatness. 
 “ Without constancy, ” says the essayist, “ there is neither 
 love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.” 
 
 • 
 
 In the Scripture before us there is a lesson for the 
 young and for those who love them. Whittier has voiced 
 this lesson,— 
 
 “We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
 Of which the coming life is made ; 
 And fill our future’s atmosphere 
 With sunshine or with shade. 
 
 The tissue of the life to be 
 
 We weave with colors all our own ; 
 And in the fields of destiny 
 We reap as we have sown.” 
 
 Or, more briefly, in Wordsworth’s familiar line, 
 
 “ The child is father of the man.” 
 
 We have here also a lesson for our own home life. 
 Isaac’s home was undoubtedly the holiest and purest on 
 the earth at that time. The Marriage Office holds it up 
 as a model even for Christians, reminding us that Isaac 
 and Rebekah lived faithfully together,— and yet there 
 was discord in that home. There was in that home both 
 want of thought and want of heart. In that home Esau 
 became a profane man. Are we doing God service in our 
 homes ? If we desire to do better and be better, here is 
 work for Lent. We read that on the night of the Pass- 
 over in Egypt “ there was not a house where there was not 
 one dead. ” In how many of our houses is there one dead 
 in trespasses and sins ? Do those I live with take know¬ 
 ledge of me that I have been with Jesus ? Do they see 
 
12 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 that my communions are making me more gentle and 
 unselfish in act and speech ? “ Let them learn first to 
 
 shew piety at home is a text for us all to ponder in our 
 hearts. 
 
THE BARTER. 
 
 FIRST FRIDAY IN LENT 
 
 “And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red 
 pottage ; for I am faint.”—Gen. xxv. 30. 
 
 HE portion of Jacob’s life-story which will occupy 
 
 1 our thoughts for some days to come is, in one of 
 its aspects, a study in temptation. To each member of 
 this household, the chosen family of God, the tempter 
 comes. Next Sunday morning the Gospel in the Com¬ 
 munion Office relates the temptation of Christ. That 
 important event in His life naturally leads us to think of 
 our own temptations and His example to us in our trials. 
 His succor and His sympathy. During these early days 
 in Lent we are therefore following the mind of the Church 
 in taking up the subject of temptation. 
 
 1 . Consider first the peculiar incident of the text. We 
 read that “ Jacob sod pottage; and Esau came from 
 the field and he was faint.” Jacob was preparing his 
 evening meal, a dish of pottage or porridge, composed of 
 red lentils, a vegetable still in common use in the East. 
 The savory odor of the pottage cooking on the fire guided 
 Esau to the spot. He was coming home wearied from 
 the hunt. We know not what unusual fatigues he had 
 endured that day, or what daring adventures he had en¬ 
 countered with the wild beasts of the field, but when he 
 reached his brother’s side he threw himself down and de¬ 
 manded the instant satisfaction of his ravenous appetite, 
 crying out, “ Feed me with that red — that red.” 
 
 13 
 
14 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 Jacob saw the hand of fate. For years he had been 
 plotting and planning to secure his brother’s birthright, 
 and although it is scarcely possible that he had ever 
 dreamed of such a chance as this, his keen mind at once 
 recognized the opportunity. He knew his brother; he 
 knew how slight a value Esau placed upon the spiritual 
 heritage, and he knew the strength of Esau’s appetites 
 and impulses; and so, seizing the opportunity, he replied, 
 “ ‘ Sell me this day thy birthright.’ On this condition 
 only you shall have the pottage.’ “ Behold,” said the 
 hungry man, “ I am at the point to die; and what profit 
 shall this birthright do to me ? ” Here we have the lan¬ 
 guage of exaggeration and unbelief. He was not starving 
 or dying, he had strength to walk and speak, and in his 
 father’s house near by, or from the hand of any servant, 
 he might in a few moments have had enough and to spare. 
 And when he declared that his birthright could profit him 
 nothing after he was dead he revealed his own want of 
 faith in what was really the very heart of the Abrahamic 
 promise. Esau is thus an idolater of the immediate, the 
 real founder of the Epicurean school—“ Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die.” His birthright is a vague 
 vision of the future, while the pottage is a “ bird in hand 
 worth two in the bush.” 
 
 But Jacob will not trust his brother’s word: “ Swear to 
 me this day,” he says ; “ we will make a bargain which 
 cannot be broken. ’ ’ Thereupon the agreement was sealed 
 with an oath. “ So Esau sold his birthright unto Jacob.” 
 
 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils. 
 And he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his 
 ^way:-ij nns Esau despised his birthright.” 
 
 2. What, then, let us now ask, was this birthright, and 
 was Jacob justified in securing it as he did ? In patri- 
 
The Barter. 
 
 i5 
 
 archal times the first-born succeeded his father as head 
 of the family, inherited a double portion of his father’s 
 goods, and had the right to act as priest for the family 
 and tribe. But the promise to Abraham declared, “ In 
 thee, and in thy seed, shall all the families of the earth 
 be blessed,” and therefore the birthright in the chosen 
 family constituted its possessor the father, after the flesh, 
 of the Messiah who was to come. From him should de¬ 
 scend “ the chief ruler,” Christ, who should be “ the first¬ 
 born among many brethren,” and “ the first-begotten 
 from the dead ” and whose Church is called “ the Church 
 of the first-born.” 
 
 Now Jacob believed this, believed, too, the revelation 
 made to his mother, “ the elder shall serve the younger,” 
 and he coveted the blessing. The narrative nowhere 
 represents Jacob as a perfect man, and here we see him 
 committing a sin which led him into other sins and em¬ 
 bittered his whole life. We are, of course, disposed to 
 view his conduct in the most favorable light possible. 
 But we must frankly admit that he treated his brother 
 unfairly and took advantage of his weakness. We must 
 remember, however, that Jacob had neither the written 
 Word, the Holy Spirit, nor the example of Christ, as we 
 have; nevertheless he had a conscience and he must have 
 known that this barter was wrong and faithless. 
 
 3. Take a third thought. Let us consider Esau’s temp¬ 
 tation and his fall. Esau was suddenly tempted to pay 
 too dear a price for the gratification of an appetite of the 
 body. So the tempter said to our Lord, “ If thou be 
 the Son of God, command that these stones be made 
 bread.” Our Saviour’s real temptation in the suggestion 
 here offered was that He should do His own will and 
 make Himself independent of the Father’s providential 
 
16 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 support. Yet He had fasted long and was an hungered, 
 and we know that He was tempted in all points like as 
 we are, and surely, in some measure, He was tempted to 
 pay too dear for bread to eat. Are we not all familiar, 
 sorrowfully familiar, with this form of temptation ? The 
 natural desires of the body are sinless in themselves, for 
 they were implanted by God, but the tempter comes and 
 lures us to gratify these desires unlawfully, prematurely, 
 instantly, and the price he asks is our birthright. 
 
 To-day let us take home two thoughts which grow out 
 of what has been said upon the subject of temptation. 
 
 Those who are endeavoring to be consistent communi¬ 
 cants of the Church and to grow in grace soon discover 
 the two chief forms of temptation which beset them and 
 the Christian method of dealing with such temptations. 
 The first general form of temptation may be called a trial 
 of faith. St. Peter in the first chapter of his first Epistle 
 teaches us that we should “ rejoice ” under such “ mani¬ 
 fold temptations, that the trial of ” our “ faith, being 
 much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though 
 it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and 
 honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” 
 The manifold temptations which are a trial of faith, the 
 Apostle seems to say, must boldly be met and conquered 
 by the help of God. He also tells us for our encourage¬ 
 ment, that they are only “ for a season,” you will soon 
 find relief; nor do they come to you without purpose, 
 needlessly, for you are assaulted by them only “ if need 
 be.” The storm of wind is good for the oak because it 
 lengthens and strengthens the roots of the oak, making it 
 more vigorous and able to withstand yet fiercer gales. 
 So temptation met and overcome by the Christian in¬ 
 creases his strength. The strength of the temptation, in 
 
The Barter. 
 
 17 
 
 a real and true sense, has been added to the strength of 
 the conqueror, has passed over into the soul of the victor. 
 In fighting manfully to maintain our Christian name and 
 calling it is our comfort to know that our Divine Helper 
 is ever with us, offering us grace to continue the conflict. 
 “ Where wert Thou, Lord, while I was being tempted,” 
 exclaimed a saint of old. “ Close by you, my son, all 
 the while,” was the tender reply. With all his mistakes, 
 Mohammed was strong because of his unwavering faith 
 in God as an ever-present help. When his trembling 
 comrade cried in despair, “ We are only two,” he could 
 confidently reply, “ There is one other, there is God.” 
 Fenelon, the devout Christian believer, said, “ The reali¬ 
 zation of God’s presence is the one sovereign remedy 
 against temptation.” 
 
 Again, while some temptations must be faced and 
 beaten down, there are temptations of another sort, 
 temptations such as Esau’s, temptations which must be 
 fled from. Joseph fled and was saved. ” Watch and 
 pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” Our Lord 
 would have us turn away from the entrance of the 
 tempter’s palace of false delight. Especially should we 
 flee from a temptation which lures us to yield to our 
 besetting sin. As has been said, If a man wears gar¬ 
 ments in which powder is wrought into the texture, he 
 cannot safely go and hire out in a blacksmith’s shop.” 
 
 In Holy Scripture we are taught that Christians are 
 not ignorant of the devices of the adversary of souls. 
 Usually we do know whether a temptation is one which 
 should be fought or fled from. If it is one we should flee 
 from, we are lost if we dally with it. A prompt, resolute, 
 courageous turning away is wisdom and safety. But how 
 shall we have strength to act thus decisively and on the 
 
i8 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 instant ? Take one answer. Close your eyes and think 
 of Christ upon the Cross. Then shall you have strength 
 to turn away. For “ God is faithful.” He “will not 
 suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will 
 with the temptation also make a way to escape.” 
 
THE BIRTHRIGHT. 
 
 FIRST SATURDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ Thus Esau despised his birthright.”—Gen. xxv., 34. 
 
 E SAU sold his birthright because he despised it. His 
 appetite was stronger than his faith. For this rea¬ 
 son he is called in the Epistle to the Hebrews a “ profane 
 person.” Self-indulgence and unbelief go together, and 
 one leads to the other; and the motives which prompted 
 Esau to make this senseless, wicked bargain are still do¬ 
 ing their evil work in the world. 
 
 1. Birthrights are sold every day “ for one morsel of 
 meat.” Esau is the type of thousands who barter away 
 baptismal grace for some desire of the flesh. To make 
 this foolish exchange is a temptation which beguiles the 
 young especially. Youth should be guarded with all 
 diligence because the penalty visited upon such barter is 
 always severe, sometimes it seems terribly, even unjustly 
 severe. On every hand may be found those who suffer 
 through the years on account of one moment of lack of 
 self-control in the days of youth. Yet when we consider, 
 we are forced to admit that in the nature of things such 
 consequences are inevitable. The first bloom of purity 
 and innocence, for instance, is a birthright which once 
 lost is lost forever. Brush the bloom from the peach or 
 the plum, and the peach remains and the plum remains, 
 but the bloom is gone forever. It never comes a second 
 time. It is so with the soul. The consequences of some 
 sins remain. Some things once lost are lost forever. 
 
20 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 And so the wise man’s exhortation, “ Keep thy heart with 
 all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life,” should be 
 impressed upon the young. The heart is the source and 
 centre of the life of the body. When it is diseased, the 
 life falters; when it ceases, death ensues. In the spiritual 
 use of the word the heart signifies that which is precious 
 and necessary to the on-flowing of life. Therefore the 
 heart must be kept with all diligence. The birthright of 
 a pure, clean heart, a heart open to the influences of 
 Divine grace, Satan covets and offers for it “ one morsel 
 of meat.” And still the foolish bargain allures, seems a 
 good bargain to the eager appetite. To all, some time, 
 in some way, the adversary draws nigh, as he came to 
 hungry Esau, as he came to the fasting Christ, saying, 
 “All this indulgence, all this earthly pleasure or treasure 
 will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down but for a moment 
 and worship me.” 
 
 2. Notice, too, that Esau’s sin, like most acts of a 
 similar character, was at once the impulse of the moment 
 and the result of tendencies which had long been growing 
 in him. A flash of lightning seems a sudden thing. In 
 reality the lightning flash is only made possible by atmo¬ 
 spheric conditions and stores of electricity which have 
 been gathering for some time. This helps to explain 
 why an entire earthly career, possibly an eternal future, 
 may turn upon the act of a moment. Criminals in our 
 State prisons often tell those to whom they open their 
 hearts that they were surprised into crime; almost before 
 they knew it the guilty deed was done. If they had been 
 given time for reflection, they say, they would have over¬ 
 come the impulse which ruined them. But in all such 
 cases evil desires and tempers must have been nourished 
 in the heart for months and years; when they were full 
 
The Birthright. 
 
 21 
 
 grown some unexpected chance slipped the leash on them 
 and they passed beyond control. When we yield to a 
 sinful impulse, behind that act of the moment, there is, 
 we may be sure, a history. Character has been defined 
 as the sum of all our acts; and what any one of us would 
 do in any sudden storm of passion, in any instantaneous 
 and deadly peril, would probably depend upon our char¬ 
 acter—upon what we already are. Esau’s past thoughts 
 and acts had made him the man he was. His present 
 behavior was only the harvest of what he had sown in 
 the waiting furrows of the past. 
 
 3. Again, Esau was not a profane man because he sold 
 his birthright, but he sold his birthright because he was 
 a profane man. He is here the representative of many a 
 man who was baptized in infancy, grew up in a Christian 
 home, and from early childhood was made familiar with 
 churchly teaching, who notwithstanding this precious 
 birthright has become a man of the world ; a frank, strong, 
 generous, attractive man, it may be, but yet a man of the 
 world; a man who receives and accepts God’s most 
 coveted gifts while he neglects and forgets the Giver. 
 We hesitate to call such cultivated, successful, and pleas¬ 
 ant men profane. If they seem to lead moral lives and 
 speak respectfully of religion, we hope for the best. But 
 if we look closely into such lives we shall see that both 
 towards God and men they are selfish. A man of this 
 kind often smilingly requires his family and his friends 
 to bend to his will and minister to his comfort, his 
 pleasure, or his pride. To do his will is the price of his 
 esteem. Even his unselfish deeds are acts of expiation 
 into which he is shamed by the love of others, or his self- 
 love is gratified by placing others in his debt. To real 
 self-denial he is a stranger. The very first lesson in 
 
22 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 Christianity he knows not; and he has it not in him to 
 desire to be like Christ,—who did not His own will, but 
 gave Himself for others. It is a pitiful thing to see these 
 strong, generous, attractive, prosperous men who are 
 without God in the world. How we shrink from warn¬ 
 ing such men! Is it never a duty, your duty and mine, 
 at some God-given opportunity, to tell such men, face to 
 face, honestly and frankly, of their awful danger ? 
 
 4. Again, Esau was profane because he did not believe 
 in his birthright. He thought it would not profit him 
 then or after he died. There are many to-day in the 
 same unbelief. They do not see the value or necessity of 
 religion either for this life or for that which possibly may 
 follow. Such unbelief is a great sin because it shows that 
 the man has no inward sense of a guilt which needs par¬ 
 don, no ideals which can uplift. Surely, too, neglect of 
 God, neglect of His choicest gifts, must wound the heart 
 of a loving Father. Such sin is a grieving of the Spirit 
 of God. From those who so sin we may ask a hearing, 
 if not for ourselves, yet for one who was great and wise 
 and not disposed to be credulous. James Russell Howell, 
 in an after-dinner speech before a company of educated 
 and prosperous men, many of whom were faithless, said: 
 
 I fear that when we indulge ourselves in the amusement 
 of going without a religion, we are not, perhaps, aware 
 how much we are sustained at present by an enormous 
 mass, all about us, of religious feeling and religious con¬ 
 viction ; so that, whatever it may be safe for us to think, 
 for us who have had great advantages, and have been 
 brought up in such a way that a certain moral direction 
 has been given to our character, I do not know what 
 would become of the less favored classes of mankind if 
 they undertook to play the same game. Whatever 
 
The Birthright. 
 
 23 
 
 defects and imperfections may attach to a few points of a 
 doctrinal system which proclaims a crucified and risen 
 Christ, it is infinitely preferable to any form of polite and 
 polished skepticism which gathers as its votaries the de¬ 
 generate sons of heroic ancestors, who having been trained 
 in a society and educated in schools, the foundations of 
 which were laid by men of faith and piety, now turn and 
 kick down the ladder by which they have climbed up, 
 and persuade men to live without God, and leave them 
 to die without hope. The worst kind of religion is no 
 religion at all, but these men living in ease and luxury, 
 indulging themselves in the amusement of going without 
 a religion, may be thankful that they live in lands where 
 the Gospel which they neglect has tamed the beastliness 
 and ferocity of the men who, but for Christianity, might 
 long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea 
 Islanders, or cut off their heads and tanned their hides 
 like the monsters of the French Revolution. When the 
 microscopic search of skepticism which has hunted the 
 heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence 
 of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society, 
 and has found a place on this planet ten miles square, 
 where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and 
 security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled 
 and unpolluted, a place where age is reverenced, infancy 
 respected, manhood respected, and womanhood honored, 
 and human life held in due regard; when skeptics can 
 find such a place ten miles square on this globe where the 
 Gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and 
 laid the foundations and made decency and security pos¬ 
 sible, it will then be in order for skeptical literati to re¬ 
 move thither and there ventilate their views. But so 
 long as these very men are dependent upon the religion 
 
24 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they 
 may well hesitate a little before they seek to rob the 
 Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that 
 Saviour who alone has given to man that hope of life 
 eternal which makes life tolerable and society possible, 
 and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom/’ 
 
THE PLOT. 
 
 MONDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT 
 
 “And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, 
 so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son.”—Gen. xxvii. i. 
 
 O-DAY we reach the story of Isaac’s temptation and 
 
 his fall 
 
 Is it a sin to be tempted ? No, for yesterday’s Gospel 
 told us that our Lord Himself was tempted—tempted in 
 all points like as we are and yet without sin. He was 
 without sin in being tempted and He was without sin 
 under temptation; for He yielded not to the enticement. 
 We also know from our own experience that temptation 
 rejected is often turned into a blessing. A rejected 
 temptation becomes a blessing when it reveals to us our 
 own weakness and at the same time turns weakness into 
 strength, as it is written, “ Blessed is the man that en- 
 dureth temptation.” In the present instance, however, 
 Isaac failed to win such blessedness. He yielded to the 
 evil suggestion without the slightest resistance. He even 
 tempted himself. He was a holy man, given to medita¬ 
 tion and prayer, a beautiful example of the contemplative 
 life, one whose days were knit each to each by natural 
 piety, with scarce a trace of worldliness or self-will, and 
 yet he sinned the one great sin of his life because he de¬ 
 termined to have his own way, disregarding the known 
 will of God. That so good a man fell so grievously and 
 inexcusably seems strange at first reading and is a strik¬ 
 ing illustration of the power of sin and of the danger 
 
 25 
 
26 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 which ever shadows the believer, shadows even the oldest 
 and most loyal believer. And now let us take up the 
 interesting narrative. 
 
 i. One day Isaac decided to make his will; his failing 
 sight and bodily weakness forcing upon him the conclu¬ 
 sion that death was near. “ Behold, now,” he said, “ I 
 am old; I know not the day of my death.” Notice that 
 Isaac manifests no fear of death. There are many such 
 men. On the other hand, there are many who cannot 
 think of their last earthly moments without singular fore¬ 
 bodings. Charles Lamb was a good man, and yet he 
 said, “ I would rather set up my tabernacle here; a new 
 state of being staggers me.” Another good man, a good 
 Churchman too, Dr. Samuel Johnson, said, “ Death is a 
 terrible thing to face. I am horribly afraid.” Un¬ 
 doubtedly men of a certain temperament are naturally 
 open to the attacks of this fear; it is constitutional. 
 More than one of us can say, “ This terror have I suffered 
 from my youth with a troubled mind; every day of my 
 life has this dark shadow flitted across my soul.” Those 
 of us who are greatly disquieted by this dread must have 
 faith that God will help us to meet death, must never 
 permit ourselves to believe that these feelings are signs 
 that we are not living in a state of grace or that God has 
 not accepted and forgiven us. Our blessed Lord experi¬ 
 enced the same fear and the biographies of the saints 
 tell us that the best of Christians have trembled when 
 entering the valley of the Shadow of Death. With en¬ 
 tire fearlessness Isaac proceeds to set his house in order. 
 He will formally recognize the heir of the birthright and 
 dispose of his earthly goods. In the Office for the Visi¬ 
 tation of the Sick there is a rubric which declares that if 
 the sick man “ hath not already disposed of his goods. 
 
The Plot. 
 
 2 7 
 
 let him then be admonished to make his will. 
 
 But men should often be put in remembrance to take 
 order for the settling of their temporal estates whilst they 
 are in health.” It is not said, you will observe, that only 
 those who have large fortunes are to be thus exhorted; 
 no, the duty rests upon all who have anything to leave 
 behind. Make your will, then, if you have not made 
 one, and do so at once. If your lawyer tells you you are 
 set upon making a foolish or a wicked will he probably 
 speaks the truth; for lawyers, after all, are usually truth¬ 
 ful and conscientious men. And be sure to leave some¬ 
 thing to the Church. Even one hundred dollars would 
 yield for all time a useful income to your parish or to the 
 blessed work of missions. 
 
 2. Now, what were the terms of Isaac’s will ? “ And 
 
 it came to pass that when Isaac was old, and his eyes 
 were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his 
 eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said 
 unto him, Behold, here am I. And he said, Behold 
 now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: Now 
 therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and 
 thy bow, and go out into the field, and take me some 
 venison; And make me savory meat, such as I love, 
 and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may 
 bless thee before I die.” 
 
 Isaac has determined to hand over to profane Esau the 
 great promise of the Covenant. He could have enter¬ 
 tained no doubt that Jacob was the Divinely chosen heir 
 of the blessing. Esau had sold his birthright for a mess 
 of pottage. In many other ways he had shown that he 
 placed no value upon a spiritual inheritance. He had 
 married two heathen women of the Hittites; and Isaac 
 knew that the Covenant promise could not descend 
 
28 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 upon the sons of these aliens. By his marriage alone 
 Esau had forfeited the primogeniture. Furthermore, the 
 revelation from heaven was couched in unmistakable 
 terms: “ The elder shall serve the younger.” Isaac 
 knew that his purpose was wrong; we can read his guilt 
 in his conduct. In the first place he acts with unseemly 
 haste—“ he is seized with a panic lest his favorite should 
 somehow be left unblest.” In the second place he pro¬ 
 poses to bless Esau secretly. He knows that his family 
 and dependants would expect such a ceremony to be per¬ 
 formed at a public feast, the heir arrayed in the “ goodly 
 raiment ” of the priestly office, his chieftainship officially 
 recognized, and the whole proceeding hallowed by solemn 
 religious rites. Instead of these open and becoming for¬ 
 malities it is now arranged between father and son that 
 Esau shall assume his heirship by stealth. In the third 
 place we notice that the old man does not, after all, im¬ 
 part the blessing on the instant; he cannot screw his 
 courage to the sticking point; he feels that he must 
 
 stimulate his spirit by artificial means; the prophetic 
 ecstasy is not upon him.” The narrative also implies 
 that Isaac was accustomed to indulge himself in the 
 pleasures of the table, and knowing from past experience 
 that the exhilaration which comes from the free use of 
 meat and wine would give him strength to carry out a 
 wilful purpose, he tells Esau what he means to do and 
 sends him out to hunt and cook the savory venison which 
 he loves. 
 
 3. The consequences of Isaac’s sin were immediate and 
 disastrous. He brought rebuke and defeat and humilia¬ 
 tion upon himself; and he led each one of the members 
 of his family into sin. 
 
 It must be so. When a believing soul deliberately 
 
The Plot. 
 
 2 9 
 
 goes against the known will of God retribution must 
 come and must be heavy. Are none of us praying, 
 
 Thy will be done,” and at the same time copying 
 Isaac’s conduct ? You remember how God taught St. 
 Peter that the Kingdom of Heaven was open to all be¬ 
 lievers and not to the Jews only. The Apostle saw in a 
 vision a great sheet let down before him full of all sorts 
 of animals, clean and unclean, and heard a heavenly voice 
 commanding him to arise and slay and eat. But the im¬ 
 pulsive Peter refused to break the letter of the Jewish 
 Law and instantly replied, “ Not so, Lord! ” So Isaac 
 said, “Not so, Lord! I will not bless Jacob! ’’ So we 
 often say, “ Not so, Lord! ” And to this disobedience 
 all the forlorn experiences of Christians can be traced. 
 Every departure from God’s way has in it a sting that 
 we may be turned back into the right road. No doubt 
 Shakespeare recalls boyish memories and experiences 
 when he makes Petruchio ask: 
 
 “ Who does not know 
 Where a wasp doth wear his sting ? ” 
 
 By bitter experience we too have learned where the 
 wasps of sin do wear their sting. We have been chas¬ 
 tened for our disobedience. Our Heavenly Father has 
 often used His rod in order to teach us the lesson of trust 
 in His goodness and wisdom. Thus our only safe course 
 is to go to God constantly, to seek the Divine guidance in 
 all things, both great and small, yielding ourselves heart¬ 
 ily to His will, and never saying, ‘ * Not so, Lord. ” Such 
 trustful obedience is the secret of a happy and useful 
 Christian life. Fenelon has wisely said: “ We sleep in 
 peace in the arms of God when we yield ourselves up to 
 His providence in a delightful consciousness of His tender 
 
30 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 mercies; no more restless uncertainties, no more anxious 
 desires, no more impatience at the place we are in, for it 
 is God who has put us there, and who holds us in His 
 arms. Can we be unsafe where He has placed us, and 
 where He watches over us as a parent watches a child ? 
 This confiding repose, in which earthly care sleeps, is the 
 true vigilance of the heart; yielding itself up to God, 
 with no other support than Him, it thus watches while 
 we sleep.” 
 
THE COUNTER-PLOT. 
 
 TUESDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son.”—Gen. xxvii. 5. 
 
 “ T 71 70 MEN will be listening,” says an old commen- 
 V V tator who excuses Isaac and blames Rebekah. 
 In fact she is usually charged with being at the bottom 
 of all the mischief recorded in this chapter; whereas the 
 narrative itself points to Isaac as the prime mover in 
 the sin. He it was who led his wife and children into 
 the paths of evil. This does not excuse them, although 
 it explains and accounts for their conduct. 
 
 The wilful old man set his own will against the will of 
 God and determined to give to Esau the blessing of the 
 Covenant. We read, “ Now Rebekah heard when Isaac 
 spake to Esau.” Probably she was listening behind the 
 door, although it is not expressly so stated; and when 
 Esau hastened out for the hunt she suddenly realized 
 that the knowledge of this guilty secret placed her in a 
 most trying and desperate situation. Now we can hardly 
 imagine, for any woman, a more pathetic and tragic diffi¬ 
 culty. Her husband is on the point of committing a ter¬ 
 rible sin — a sin which will destroy the chief hope and 
 ambition of her own life and defeat the purpose of 
 Almighty God. Before sunset the promise of the Cove¬ 
 nant will be bestowed upon profane Esau and the sons of 
 his heathen wives. What shall she do ? Shall she go in 
 and plead with the obstinate old man; or run after the 
 selfish young man with warnings and supplications? No; 
 
 31 
 
32 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 for they would reply that she sought only her own way 
 and the welfare of her beloved Jacob. 
 
 Then the tempter came, saying to her, “Are not your 
 own well-known ingenuity and finesse equal to this emer¬ 
 gency? Can you not devise some innocent and justifiable 
 artifice in order to check this iniquity ? ” And so the out¬ 
 lines of the plot flashed upon her — the counter-plot to 
 the plot of Isaac and Esau. She saw her way clear to 
 beat them at their own game. Had she no thought of 
 the consequences; no prudent recollection of the truth— 
 
 “ O what a tangled web we weave, 
 
 When first we practice to deceive ! ” 
 
 Did no good angel whisper, “ Stand still and see the sal¬ 
 vation of God. Leave the issue with God; He will bring 
 it to pass and accomplish His own purpose in His own 
 way ? ” Closing her ears to such holy suggestions Rebekah 
 persuaded herself that the end justified the means. And 
 so the pious fraud began. At once she seeks Jacob, dis¬ 
 closes her plan and asks his help: “ Behold, I heard thy 
 father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me 
 venison, and make me savory meat, that I may eat, and 
 bless thee before the Lord, before my death. Now, 
 therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that 
 which I command thee.” Although Jacob was no longer 
 a child but a man of middle age, at least fifty-seven—ac¬ 
 cording to some authorities, seventy-seven •— Rebekah 
 lays upon him a mother’s commands. The wily woman 
 knows her influence over him and his deep love for her; 
 and while she trusts to his own self-interest to help win 
 him over to her stratagem, she appeals only to his filial 
 feelings. “ Go now to the flock and fetch me from 
 thence two kids of the goats; and I will make them 
 
The Counter-Plot. 
 
 33 
 
 savory meat for thy father, such as he loveth; and thou 
 shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he 
 may bless thee before his death.” 
 
 But Jacob has a scruple of conscience at this trickery. 
 He already knows the meaning of remorse for sin; and 
 if he has not defined it as “ the echo of a lost virtue,” he 
 at least anticipates the feelings which the great poet has 
 described in simple and deep words: 
 
 “ I am afraid to think what I have done.” 
 
 ” I fear,” said Jacob, “ that I shall bring a curse upon 
 me and not a blessing.” Rebekah, however, assured that 
 she is about to win a benediction and not a malediction 
 —in her impulsive and unselfish affection for the darling 
 of her heart—and impatient with his hesitancy, boldly 
 takes upon herself the moral responsibility, crying out, 
 
 Upon me be thy curse, my son; only obey my voice.” 
 And Jacob obeyed. Then Rebekah “ put the skins of 
 the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his 
 neck. And she gave the savory meat and the bread, 
 which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.” 
 
 Look for a moment at the first of the two motives 
 which led Rebekah into this wickedness. It was her 
 love for Jacob. As Robertson of Brighton truly says, 
 “ Rebekah desired nothing for herself, but for Jacob; 
 for him spiritual blessing, at all events temporal distinc¬ 
 tion; doing wrong not for her own advantage but for the 
 sake of one she loved. It is a touch of womanhood. 
 There are persons who would romantically admire this 
 devotion of Rebekah and call it beautiful. To sacrifice 
 all, even principle, for another — what higher proof of 
 affection can there be? O miserable sophistry! The 
 only true affection is that which is subordinate to a higher. 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 It has been truly said that in those who love little, love is 
 a primary affection,—a secondary one in those who love 
 much. Be sure he cannot love another much ‘ who loves 
 not honor more.’ ” It is unsanctified and Rebekah-like 
 love which to-day prompts the mother to conceal her 
 son’s waywardness and encourages him to seek the com¬ 
 panionship of worldly people because they are people of 
 fashion; which prompts her to teach her daughter to ac¬ 
 cept the attentions of an evil man because he has wealth 
 or social position. 
 
 Again, in Rebekah’s plot we see one of the earliest ex¬ 
 amples of doing evil that good may come. This satanic 
 suggestion that the end justifies the means still comes to 
 us all. Sometimes it is very hard to wait for God’s provi¬ 
 dence. A slight effort of our own, a trifling misrepre¬ 
 sentation, an unnoticed evasion, an ambiguous letter, a 
 little intrigue — and the prize, already so near, may be¬ 
 come our own. What are natural shrewdness and fore¬ 
 sight given us for if not to help ourselves with ? And so 
 we pluck the fruit before it is ripe. These attempts to 
 force the hand of God are faithless and foolish. God 
 had promised that Jacob should have the birthright. 
 Could not Rebekah trust His word and wait His time ? 
 We cannot declare too plainly or too emphatically that 
 however good or sacred the end in view all fraud and de¬ 
 ception and crookedness are hateful to God. As holy 
 George Herbert manfully says, “ Dare to be true; noth¬ 
 ing can need a lie.” And shall we gain any real and 
 permanent good by craft ? We are told that high eccle¬ 
 siastical honors, the temporal prosperity of parishes and 
 dioceses, liberal endowments for educational and chari¬ 
 table institutions are frequently thus secured; that the 
 fortunes of many estimable laymen can be traced back to 
 
The Counter-Plot. 
 
 35 
 
 some such turning-point. But the unanimous voice of 
 Christian experience assures us that while God brings 
 good out of evil, nevertheless, every short cut to success 
 and every fraudulent gain carries its own penalty with it. 
 And what has been our own experience ? What have we 
 gained by trickery ? Either we have failed to win by our 
 arts, or they have recoiled against ourselves, or our seem¬ 
 ing success is but temporary, and in reality a curse and 
 not a blessing. “ That which is won ill will never wear 
 well.” Thank God, the Church of the English-speaking 
 people has never failed to maintain that guile is a proof 
 of weakness; that a gentleman and a Christian must play 
 the man and speak the truth ! 
 
 Furthermore, this old narrative is clear in its morals. 
 We see that Rebekah cannot sin and go free. The pun¬ 
 ishment God meted out to her was poetical in its justice. 
 In a few days her dear Jacob, for whom she sinned, is 
 sent empty-handed away from home; and his mother 
 never sees him again in this world. 
 
 What we all want, then, is a heart that is free from 
 guile. One of the English poets tells us, “ An honest 
 man ’s the noblest work of God,” and the Psalmist said, 
 ” Truly God is loving unto Israel, even unto such as are 
 of a clean heart.” “ Blessed is the man unto whom the 
 Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no 
 guile,”—one, that is, whose daily life is quite free from 
 oblique arts and treacherous thoughts, who has no deceit 
 or craftiness in him ; who possesses his soul with patience 
 when his plans seem to miscarry, and when things turn 
 against him holds fast to his faith that God will in due 
 season “ make his righteousness as clear as the light, 
 and his just dealing as the noonday.” No other inner 
 life can please a holy God or win His reward here or 
 
36 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 hereafter. Sincerity, honesty, straightforward ways and 
 words, are therefore the ideals which we must ever set 
 before ourselves. The story of Rebekah’s guile will not 
 have been written in vain if it leads one of us to form the 
 resolution henceforth to forsake such hateful practices; 
 to be sure that we not only aim to accomplish ends that 
 are honorable, but that we also seek to bring them to 
 pass by means equally fair and open, never forgetting 
 that 
 
 “ Him, only him, the shield of Heaven defends 
 Whose means are fair and spotless as his ends.” 
 
THE STOLEN BLESSING. 
 
 WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”— 
 Gen. xxvii. 22. 
 
 T O-DAY we reach the story of the stolen blessing. 
 
 When his mother proposed the plot to Jacob, his 
 conscience for a time held him back. A philosopher has 
 said that some persons follow the dictates of their con¬ 
 science only in the sense in which a coachman may be 
 said to follow the horses he is driving. If this be a cor¬ 
 rect description of Rebekah’s present relation to her 
 conscience we might add that when she whipped up the 
 horses they started off at full speed. Jacob—to carry on 
 the illustration—might be described as a passenger who, 
 with many misgivings, has been all but thrust into the 
 coach by force of hands, yet who soon, entering into the 
 spirit of the adventure, resolves to expect a safe and 
 profitable journey. 
 
 To return to the narrative: Jacob, with the goatskins 
 upon his neck, took the savory dish in his hand and en¬ 
 tered his father’s chamber. Carefully imitating Esau’s 
 voice, he addressed Isaac with the usual Oriental saluta¬ 
 tion. Isaac failed to recognize the disguised tones; and 
 in some uncertainty the blind old eyes turned toward the 
 visitor and the feeble voice inquired, “ Who art thou, 
 my son ? ” Jacob had hoped to accomplish his purpose 
 —to secure his own—with a few “ white lies,” and with 
 no great effort. Now his keen mind is instantly awake 
 
 37 
 
38 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 to the fact that he has entered upon a hazardous under¬ 
 taking. If he would succeed he must allay his father’s 
 suspicions at whatever cost. Without a moment’s hesi¬ 
 tation he shows himself an accomplished liar; heaping 
 falsehood upon falsehood: “ I am Esau, thy first-born ” 
 — lie number one; “ I have done according as thou 
 badest me ”—lie number two; “ Arise, I pray thee, and 
 eat of my venison ”—lie number three. One lie usually 
 requires another to support or conceal it ; and Jacob 
 soon found himself “ drifting, drifting from the great 
 shore of truth, like one carried out by the tide against 
 his will.” Surprised that Esau should have returned so 
 early from the hunt, Isaac asks, with the curiosity of 
 age, ” How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my 
 son ?” With reckless blasphemy Jacob declares that 
 God has helped him, “ Because the Lord thy God 
 brought it to me,” or, more literally, ” Because the 
 Lord thy God gave me good speed.” But even in this 
 solemn assertion the sharp ear of the blind old man de¬ 
 tects an accent which arouses his suspicions afresh and 
 he determines to satisfy himself by the sense of touch. 
 
 And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, 
 that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very 
 son Esau or not;” and Jacob, with a boldness worthy of 
 a better cause, “ went near unto Isaac, his father; and he 
 felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the 
 hands are the hands of Esau ; ” and he said, apparently 
 satisfied when he had felt the hair of the goat-skins, but 
 still demanding one more positive and unqualified asser¬ 
 tion, ” Art thou my very son Esau ? ” “ Had it been 
 
 I,” says Martin Luther, “ I should have let the dish fall 
 and run away in terror.” But Jacob is ready for the last 
 lie. Each step in his downfall is marked with grosser 
 
The Stolen Blessing. 
 
 39 
 
 hypocrisy and deeper guilt — so facile is the descent into 
 Avernus—and Jacob declares, with unruffled composure, 
 
 I am. 
 
 Isaac’s doubts were dispelled. He accepted the sa¬ 
 vory meat, the bread and the wine, and bestowed upon 
 the impostor the blessing of Abraham. Both temporal 
 and spiritual dominion were imparted to Jacob. He 
 should possess “ the fatness of the land, and be lord over 
 his brethren.” Although Isaac believed that he was 
 blessing Esau his words were inspired, for unconsciously 
 he was fulfilling the will of God. Jacob was the chosen 
 heir of the Covenant, the blessing belonged to him, and, 
 in spite of his father’s sin in seeking to give it to an¬ 
 other, in spite of the fact that he secured it by tricks and 
 treachery, the blessing was duly and actually made over 
 to him in accordance with the will of God:—“And his 
 father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, 
 my son. And he came near and kissed him: and he 
 smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and 
 said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field 
 which the Lord hath blessed: Therefore God give thee 
 of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and 
 plenty of corn and wine: Let people serve thee, and 
 nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, 
 and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be 
 every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that 
 blesseth thee.” This blessing was a prophecy which was 
 fulfilled to the letter in the days to come. It bestowed 
 upon the Heel-catcher and Supplanter the primacy he 
 had long coveted and plotted for, which he finally won 
 by shameful fraud. 
 
 Jacob’s sin in all its naked hideousness is frankly set 
 down in Scripture narrative, and we have not attempted 
 
40 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 to gloss over the record. But Jacob is the hero of the 
 tale; his future course is to occupy our thoughts during 
 the days of Lent; and you will naturally ask whether 
 nothing can be said in excuse or extenuation of his sin. 
 Yes, there are excuses for Jacob. 
 
 1. In the first place, one whom he loved and regarded 
 as wiser and holier than himself led him into temptation. 
 And Rebekah was a tempter of the tempters. A woman 
 of great strength of character, of quick wit and pleasing 
 manner, she had also the advantage of the experiences 
 of age. In these days we hear a great deal of “ mag¬ 
 netic ” men and of their success as politicians, promoters, 
 and leaders; of the “ new ” woman and her ingeni¬ 
 ous, irresistible, audacious methods of accomplishing 
 her own ends. As a matter of fact, although it may 
 seem a strange thing to our ears, there is no human being 
 so difficult to resist, so absolutely sure of having her own 
 way, as a strong, shrewd, wily, determined old woman of 
 gentle blood and breeding. Age multiplies her power. 
 Of this fact the great masters of fiction are not ignorant, 
 and it is corroborated by our own experience. And if to 
 strength of will, and the lessons of past failures and suc¬ 
 cesses, and long practice in the art of persuasion we add 
 a deep religious conviction that she is called to be an in¬ 
 strument in fulfilling the designs of Providence — in such 
 hands the best of us are as wax. Jacob was outmatched. 
 
 2. We should also remember that Jacob felt a prick of 
 conscience when the wickedness was proposed to him, 
 which is more than can be said for any other actor in this 
 domestic drama; and that he had little beside that prick 
 of conscience to restrain him. Our present moral stand¬ 
 ard has been a matter of slow growth. Take the utter¬ 
 ances of two representative Church people as the best 
 
The Stolen Blessing. 
 
 4i 
 
 nineteenth-century estimate of all over-reaching, deceit, 
 and guile. Mrs. Jameson writes: “ All my own experi¬ 
 ence of life teaches me the contempt of cunning, not the 
 fear. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either 
 shallow, or, on some points, diseased.” Mr. Ruskin, 
 speaking of the same failing, says: ” It is the intensest 
 rendering of vulgarity, absolute and utter.” But in 
 Jacob’s day the race had reached no such standard of 
 manners or morals. It is more than possible that Jacob’s 
 guile was recorded, for one reason, to teach the ages all 
 along a nobler and diviner code. 
 
 3. Notice, too, that when he lied and personated and 
 blasphemed, Jacob was an unconverted man. He had 
 received the rite of circumcision, he had enjoyed a re¬ 
 ligious training, but as yet he had seen no Ladder-vision 
 nor wrestled with any nameless Friend. His sin was the 
 sin of one who has never consciously dedicated himself to 
 God’s service or felt the touch of heaven upon his heart. 
 
 4. Again, Jacob was punished for his sin. At once he 
 was banished from his home for years and from his 
 mother forever. All his life long this deceiver was de- 
 ceived; and he received the due reward of his deeds. 
 Let us pity Jacob, then, and judge him with no hard 
 judgment; for it is written of him, “ Blessed be he that 
 blesseth thee,” and we would make that blessing our 
 own. 
 
 The story of Jacob’s temptation and fall also suggests 
 two practical lessons, one of warning, one of encourage¬ 
 ment. 
 
 The fact that he was led into evil by another' may 
 admonish us to watch and pray lest we lead into tempta¬ 
 tion those who love and trust us. Holy men speak of 
 nine ways of leading others into sin, or of participating 
 
42 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 in another’s sin: by counsel, by command, by consent, 
 by provocation, by praise or flattery, by concealment, by 
 partaking, by silence, by defence of the ill done. In 
 each and every one of these ways Rebekah participated 
 in Jacob’s sin. To make a careful self-examination lest 
 in some of these ways our own influence and example be 
 evil will be work for Lent. 
 
 The lesson of encouragement is, that although Jacob 
 sinned God did not cast him off or cease to love him. 
 He brought good out of evil; and finally Jacob became 
 the Prince of God. Let us take courage. We may see 
 in ourselves much that was in fallen Jacob; but if God 
 chastened and forgave and loved him, surely there is 
 hope for us. “ Though ye have lain among the pots, 
 yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove that is covered with 
 silver wings, and her feathers like gold.” 
 
THE BITTER CRY. 
 
 THURSDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great 
 and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, 
 O my father.”—Gen. xxvii. 34. 
 
 I SAAC’S blindness made possible the deception prac¬ 
 tised upon him. Of all the ills which flesh is heir to, 
 probably few of us would, if we had the power of choice, 
 choose blindness. The thought of sightlessness brings 
 with it the chill of death. To see no more the stars that 
 gem the sky, the flowers that jewel the green robe of 
 nature, the lights and shadows dancing on the hills, in 
 helplessness to be fed and led, to read no more, nor ever 
 again to see in this world the faces that we love — this is 
 blindness. Nevertheless the blind man clings to life, 
 and does good or evil, is good or evil, even as we 
 who have sight. In blind Milton’s lament for his lost 
 sight there is a beautiful prayer which might well be 
 offered by those whose natural sight is undimmed: 
 “Thou, Celestial Light, shine inward; all mists from 
 thence purge and disperse.” 
 
 Blind Isaac was on the side of righteousness; his life 
 in its controlling purposes, in the habit of its career, was 
 a God-fearing life; but for once and for the time being 
 he has fallen into mortal sin. In the sinfulness of self- 
 will he decides to bless profane Esau; he thinks he has 
 accomplished his purpose; in reality he has imparted the 
 blessing to Jacob, who in his dissimulation and his 
 
 43 
 
44 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 disguise is, after all, the son to whom the blessing belongs. 
 But the blind old man believes that he has blessed Esau, 
 his first-born and the best beloved. When Jacob retires 
 with his blessing Isaac doubtless reclines upon his couch 
 of skin in the buoyant and blithesome contentment of a 
 man who has made his point. Notwithstanding his 
 blindness and feebleness, he has triumphed. He has out¬ 
 manoeuvred his manoeuvring wife and out-plotted his plot¬ 
 ting son. The satisfaction of his agreeable reflections, 
 however, is rudely broken into by a loud voice and a 
 heavy footfall at the door. “ And it came to pass,” we 
 read, “ as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing 
 Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the pre¬ 
 sence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother,” the real 
 Esau, “ came in from his hunting.” The startling facts 
 were soon discovered. When Isaac realized that invol¬ 
 untarily and unconsciously he had blessed the Lord’s 
 choice, “he trembled very exceedingly — he trembled 
 with a great trembling, greatly.” He did not tremble 
 with anger at the duplicity of Rebekah and Jacob, nor 
 with amazement at this unexpected defeat of his heart’s 
 desire; he trembled with alarm at the sudden retribution 
 of his sin in attempting to thwart the purpose of God. 
 H e was the heir of promise and he had the spiritual in¬ 
 sight at once to perceive the hand of God in the day’s 
 doings and grace to submit to the will of God. “ I have 
 blessed him,’’ he said to Esau, “yea, and he shall be 
 blessed. ’’ 
 
 And when Esau heard the words of his father, he 
 cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry,” literally, for 
 the expressive Hebrew words are more graphic, “ he 
 cried a cry, great and bitter exceedingly, and said unto 
 his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.’’ 
 
The Bitter Cry. 
 
 45 
 
 In this mingled cry of anger and envy and anguish 
 Esau showed that he had no discernment of spiritual 
 things. He did not recognize the hand of God in the 
 events of the day. hie looked upon his father merely as 
 a powerful chieftain who could do what he would with his 
 own. He thought the blessing of Abraham carried with 
 it some worldly advantages and that his tears and suppli¬ 
 cations might induce his father to change his mind and 
 give him a part at least of the inheritance. To this bitter 
 cry Isaac resolutely refused to yield. He acknowledged 
 Jacob’s duplicity, “ Thy brother came with subtility,” at 
 the same time declaring that he cannot recall the past, 
 for “ he hath taken away thy blessing.” In reply Esau 
 accused his brother and said, “ Is he not rightly named 
 Jacob—the Supplanter, the Heel-catcher? ” Finding that 
 this outburst of indignation failed to move his father, 
 he resorted once more to tears and entreaties, “ Hast 
 thou not reserved a blessing for me, O my father ? ” 
 When Esau thus sought a lesser or secondary blessing 
 he had in mind chiefly the “ corn and wine,” earthly 
 goods and earthly honor; he manifested nothing of 
 that spirit which animated the Syro-Phoenician woman, 
 of whom we shall read in next Sunday’s Gospel, who re¬ 
 minded our Lord that even the dogs eat of the crumbs 
 which fall from their master’s table, and who was ready to 
 accept any spiritual privilege which might in mercy be be¬ 
 stowed upon her. On the contrary Esau took the bitter 
 and envious tone of the elder son in the parable, “ Thou 
 never gavest me a kid.” But Esau will not be refused. 
 With a persistency and a pathos which touch us to this 
 day he cried again, “ Hast thou but one blessing, my 
 father ? Bless me, even me also, O my father. And 
 Esau lifted up his voice and wept.” 
 
46 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 It is to be feared that one of our hymns which contains 
 the refrain, “ Even me, even me,” is based upon an 
 erroneous interpretation of the passage before us, al¬ 
 though the hymn considered in itself may not be es¬ 
 pecially open to criticism. It is certain that much 
 harm has been done by a popular misunderstanding of 
 the New Testament reference to Esau’s present frame of 
 mind and heart. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we 
 read, “ Esau found no place for repentance, though he 
 sought it carefully with tears.” This does not mean 
 that Esau desired to repent of sins and could not. What 
 could be falser than such an affirmation ? Whenever any 
 soul anywhere truly seeks to repent, repentance has al¬ 
 ready begun. Esau did not confess that he had sinned, 
 he felt no sorrow for sin, he made no resolution of amend¬ 
 ment. His actual spiritual state is revealed by his own 
 words : “ The days of mourning for my father are at 
 hand: then will I slay my brother Jacob.” When he 
 wept before his father his tears were idle tears; they did 
 not spring from the depths of some divine despair. There 
 was nothing divine in his grief. His repentance consisted 
 in wishing to undo what had been done. His first 
 thought was of the inheritance, and he was, in fact, con¬ 
 testing his father’s will before the death of the testator. 
 It may be, too, that as he wept some sobering thought 
 came to him of the days that were no more. If so, he was 
 learning the lesson many of us know so well. The clock 
 will not strike again for us the hours that are gone. The 
 mill will not grind again with the water that is past. 
 Deeds are irrevocable. 
 
 There are three kinds of false repentance which may 
 be mentioned: 
 
 i. The first we shall call a Lent Repentance. Boswell, 
 
The Bitter Cry. 
 
 47 
 
 the biographer of Dr. Johnson, furnishes an example. 
 When his own diary saw the light we learned that he was 
 the slave of two besetting and deadly sins. Still, as Lent 
 came round, he made his vow of penitence and kept it 
 too—so long as Lent lasted. He gives us to understand 
 that he intended to wrestle with his sin and keep it down 
 only until Easter Day. “ Then,” he seems to say with 
 an older sinner, ” I will seek it yet again.” 
 
 2. A second form of false repentance is the repentance 
 of one who is found out. So little value has such sorrow 
 for sin that it seldom leads to a changed life. In fact it 
 does not deserve the name of repentance, for it regrets 
 not the deed but its detection. As some one has said, 
 “ Thou shalt not get found out,” is not one of God’s 
 commandments, and no man can be saved by trying to 
 keep it. The warning of Holy Scripture goes further 
 and deeper: “ Be sure your sin will find you out.” 
 
 3. Esau is an example of the third form of repentance. 
 He weeps not for what he has done but for what he has 
 lost. The past, however, is unalterable. Wasted oppor¬ 
 tunities, words of passion, deeds of shame, can never be 
 recalled. We must reap whatsoever we have sown. 
 
 Let us take home with us the thought of a true repent¬ 
 ance. The counterfeit coin is proof that there is a 
 genuine coinage. And if there be a false repentance we 
 know that there is a godly sorrow for sin. The marvel¬ 
 lous mercy and the inexhaustible and inexpressible love 
 revealed in the Gospel still hold out hope for us all. St. 
 Paul can rejoice that his converts are ” made sorry after 
 a godly manner.” May that ” godly sorrow,” which 
 ” worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of ” 
 be felt in our hearts and shown forth in our lives. 
 
 Remember too that from Christ our Lord comes the 
 
48 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 grace of contrition as well as the pardon of sin and the 
 strength for amendment of life. That grace enables the 
 true penitent to see and feel that he has broken his 
 Heavenly Father’s law and grieved that Father’s heart 
 of love; the thought which dominates all his thoughts 
 and never leaves him is, that he has sinned against God. 
 This is the language of his heart: “ Against Thee only 
 have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight.” And it 
 follows that the genuineness of sorrow for sin is proved 
 when our sorrows “ bring forth fruits meet for repent¬ 
 ance.” In the terse statement of St. Ambrose, “ True 
 repentance is to cease from sin.” 
 
 “ ’T is to bewail the sins thou didst commit; 
 And not commit those sins thou hast bewailed. 
 He that bewails, and not forsakes them too, 
 Confesses rather what he means to do.” 
 
THE ANGER OF ESAU. 
 
 FRIDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father 
 blessed him : And Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my 
 father are at hand ; then will I slay my brother Jacob.”—Gen. xxvii. 41. 
 
 W HAT a man says in his heart reveals the man. 
 
 The inward conversation is a spiritual barometer 
 which the Recording Angel keeps ever under his sight. 
 When Esau discovered that his brother had over-reached 
 him and won the blessing, his anger knew no bounds; 
 he “ hated Jacob,” we are told, “ and said in his heart, 
 I will slay my brother.” 
 
 The hating heart still remains upon the earth. Our 
 text, which calls attention to the sin of anger, is, there¬ 
 fore, neither obsolete nor untimely. 
 
 The word “anger ” is derived from a Latin root signify¬ 
 ing, primarily, a choking , an oppression of the throat. An¬ 
 ger has been defined as “ a strong passion or emotion of 
 the mind, excited by a real or supposed injury to, or intent 
 to injure, one’s self or others.” It has also been called 
 a temporary madness.” But we all know what anger 
 is. Derivations and definitions are superfluous. 
 
 It is true that there are times and occasions when we 
 have a right to be angry. There is a righteous indigna¬ 
 tion. Our Blessed Lord Himself knew such anger, for 
 he fiercely rebuked oppression and hypocrisy, and with 
 bitter words and blows drove the money-changers from 
 
 the temple. The Epistles recognize this aspect of the 
 4 
 
 49 
 
50 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 subject: “ Be ye angry and sin not; let not the sun go 
 down upon your wrath ; ” If it be possible, as much as 
 lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” 
 
 These, and other similar passages, teach us that there 
 are times when we cannot keep down our anger, and that 
 there are some things against which it would be a sin not 
 to feel the keenest anger. And what is it that justifies 
 anger ? In plain, unmistakable words, when and where 
 is wrath a Christian virtue ? Let a holy man of old give 
 us the answer: ” He that would be angry and sin not, 
 must not be angry with anything but sin.” 
 
 On the other hand do we not all know to our sorrow 
 that there is an anger like Esau’s, an anger which is not 
 righteous, which is evil from its inception, or, if justified 
 at first, soon develops into the blackest guilt ? That sin 
 the Church has placed in the list of the seven deadly sins. 
 And like other sins, this sin of anger passes through the 
 three phases of thought, word, and deed. Almost irre¬ 
 sistibly, and sometimes with astonishing rapidity, anger 
 proceeds from thought to word and from word to deed. 
 
 In a Lenten sermon we expect plain-speaking. Now, 
 the truth of the matter is that we Americans are an irri¬ 
 table and short-tempered people. One of the first things 
 we notice in travelling abroad is the universal good- 
 temper of the natives; even the surly Briton seems to us 
 a model of pleasantness and amiability. A young 
 American once journeyed direct from a southwestern 
 frontier town to London. In that frontier settlement 
 one room was the post-office, hotel parlor, department 
 store, saloon, and only place of general assemblage. 
 And every night a company of desperadoes came in from 
 the hills and took possession. Finally a quiet, slender 
 young man, who thought he could maintain order, was 
 
The Anger of Esau. 
 
 5i 
 
 installed behind the bar. He used the only effective 
 measures and soon was master of the place. But it was 
 noticed that whenever this quiet young man shot to kill, 
 he first turned pale with anger. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 somewhere says that when the fighting boy of his school 
 met the village bully, the issue ceased to be doubtful as 
 soon as the students’ champion turned pale. But in 
 London, during his stay of several months, our traveller 
 did not see a single man turn pale with anger. Neither 
 can it be denied that the American woman has a temper 
 of her own. Are not sharp words, sullen looks, and 
 angry actions, on the part of women of station and refine¬ 
 ment, frequently to be observed in our streets and cars 
 and shops ? In the old country, on the contrary, such 
 manifestations, as many witnesses bear record, are very 
 rare. And what shall we say of our homes ? We may 
 cast the blame upon our dry climate, which is doubtless 
 bad for the nerves. Still the fact remains that in multi¬ 
 tudes of our Christian homes angry women’s voices rise, 
 frightening happiness away. Do sweet and sunny tem¬ 
 pers really reign in your home ? Then you need envy 
 none, and you have much to be thankful for. I have 
 sometimes thought that if one of those ingenious instru¬ 
 ments invented by Mr. Edison, which receives and repro¬ 
 duces all that is said before it, were placed in all our 
 homes and opened on Sunday morning in a general gath¬ 
 ering of the family, so that each one of us could hear 
 every word we had spoken in the home during the week, 
 and catch the actual tone and accent, we might, when we 
 reached church, pray with a far deeper sense of need, 
 “ Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.” Real, 
 practical, every-day Christianity often turns upon this 
 yery question of temper. And the more we think of it 
 
52 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 the more truth there seems to be in that somewhat start¬ 
 ling saying attributed to a well-known English bishop, 
 “ Temper is nine tenths of Christianity.” 
 
 It is also to be noted that temper, good and bad, is 
 catching. In an old letter, James Freeman Clarke de¬ 
 scribes a journey from his home in Boston to Kentucky. 
 He travelled by stage-coach, and he noticed that one 
 cross and complaining and ill-natured passenger could put 
 all the others out of temper. “ But once,” he says, 
 
 when journeying through the Cattaraugus woods, 
 where the road was mostly deep mire or rough corduroy, 
 and there was every temptation to be cross and uncom¬ 
 fortable, one man so enlivened and entertained our party? 
 and was so accommodating and good-natured, that we 
 seemed to be having a pleasant picnic, and the other in¬ 
 mates of the coach took the same tone.” What was true 
 of that old stage-coach is true to-day of the shop, the 
 office, the mill, the school, and the home. 
 
 But alas! the evil of which we are speaking does not 
 end in the miseries of social unpleasantness. What a 
 brood of malignant passions and fiendish deeds springs 
 from this one root-sin. Every student knows the sig¬ 
 nificance of words. Let us take a partial list of the words 
 in our own tongue, in common use, which express some 
 of the phases of this sin of anger: Prejudice, false judg¬ 
 ment, envy, malice, spite, antipathy, displeasure, enmity, 
 abhorrence, animosity, aversion, detestation, dislike, 
 grudge, hostility, ill-will, malevolence, malignity, rancor, 
 repugnance, revenge, choler, exasperation, ire, irritation, 
 offence, impatience, fretfulness, indignation, passion, 
 peevishness, pettishness, petulance, acrimony, acer¬ 
 bity, asperity, bitterness, unkindness, virulence, caustic¬ 
 ity, harshness, moroseness, severity, sourness, tartness, 
 
The Anger of Esau. 
 
 53 
 
 churlishness, crabbedness, crustiness, doggedness, gloomi¬ 
 ness, gruffness, ill-humor, snappishness, sulkiness, sullen¬ 
 ness, surliness, abusiveness, quarrelsomeness, savageness, 
 vindictiveness, hatred, wrath, rage, fury, cruelty, murder. 
 This list is not exhaustive, and yet what a catalogue of 
 unlovely human characteristics do these words reveal! 
 We must admit, too, that these words were not coined 
 needlessly, and that each one of them really does describe 
 some manifestation in men and women of this root-sin of 
 anger. 
 
 Take hatred alone. If ever you hated any one, you 
 know what unhappiness is. Hannah More said, If I 
 wanted to punish an enemy, it would be by fastening on 
 him the trouble of constantly hating somebody.” And 
 hatred soon passes into a longing for revenge. “ I will 
 get even with him.” Does that thought come to you 
 from time to time ? Banish it, for it comes straight from 
 hell. In our text Esau declared that he would have re¬ 
 venge— “ I will kill my brother.” Truly says the 
 Apostle of love, “ He that hateth his brother is a mur¬ 
 derer.” “ And ye know,” he says again, “ that no 
 murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” 
 
 As Christians we are pledged to follow the example of 
 our Saviour Christ, who, when He was reviled, reviled 
 not again; and forgave and prayed for those who did the 
 wrong. To cherish hatred, to be unforgiving, to long 
 for revenge, is to be un-Christlike. All who have ever 
 been close followers of the Master have been forgiving. 
 Of Cranmer it was said, “ If you want him to do you a 
 good turn you must do him a bad one.” 
 
 And now comes the practical question, how shall we 
 overcome this sin ? Jeremy Taylor’s rule is a good one: 
 “ If anger arises suddenly and violently, first restrain it 
 
54 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 with consideration, and then let it end in a hearty prayer 
 for him who did the real or seeming injury. The former 
 of the two stops its growth; the latter quite kills it.” 
 
 To forgive is Christlike. Not to forgive unfits us to 
 receive the Holy Communion or to say the Lord’s Prayer. 
 Wherefore ” let all bitterness and wrath and anger and 
 clamor and evil speaking be put away from you, with 
 all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tender¬ 
 hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s 
 sake hath forgiven you.” 
 
THE DAUGHTERS OF HETH. 
 
 SATURDAY AFTER THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And Rebekah said unto Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the 
 daughters of Heth.”—Gen. xxvii. 46. 
 
 W HAT was the cause and occasion of this character¬ 
 istic utterance of the text ? It was the quarrel 
 between Esau and Jacob. Jacob had deceived his father 
 and gained the blessing of promise. Esau had received a 
 lesser blessing — a fat land and a roving life — the career 
 for which he had prepared himself. And so his name 
 henceforth became “ Edom ” and his children were called 
 the Edomites. Later on Jacob’s name also was changed 
 and he became “ Israel ” and his descendants were the 
 children of Israel. And there was enmity between the 
 two. 
 
 The blessings of Isaac were, therefore, prophecies as 
 well as blessings, as the commentators have pointed out, 
 and were not limited to the personal histories of the twin 
 brothers, but prefigured also the destinies of the nations 
 of which they were the founders. In this sense we are 
 to interpret the words of a later Scripture, “ Jacob have 
 I loved but Esau have I hated.” Edom was for cen¬ 
 turies the foe of Israel and then became the synonym of 
 evil, while Israel represented the cause of God in the 
 world and foretold the Church of Christ. Jacob was the 
 spiritual man and to him belonged the spiritual heritage; 
 Esau was the natural man and could be the legitimate 
 heir only of the things of the world. In this larger sense 
 
 55 
 
56 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 they were pictures and prophecies, for an age which re¬ 
 quired such concrete conceptions, to represent the prin¬ 
 ciples of good and evil and the conflict between them. 
 Neither was the representation marred by the fact that 
 one brother was not wholly good nor the other wholly 
 bad. One believed in the earth, and the other believed 
 in the things above his head. Here was a distinction, 
 vital, unmistakable. The rudest tribesman would in¬ 
 stantly grasp the significance of that distinction. 
 
 And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing where¬ 
 with his father blessed him ”— a hatred that lasted as 
 long as the nations of Edom and Israel lasted, a hatred 
 that still lasts. “ And Esau said in his heart, The days 
 of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay 
 my brother Jacob.” In these words we see that while 
 Esau stands for the principle of evil he was not himself 
 entirely devoid of good natural feelings and dispositions. 
 He loved his father. He would not embitter his father’s 
 dying hours with the horror of bloodshed. He would 
 wait until his father died in peace, was decently buried, 
 and dutifully mourned for; then he would murder Jacob. 
 
 We are told that Esau “ said in his heart I will slay my 
 brother! ” As the days passed, however, he probably 
 took some of his dependants or hunting companions into 
 his confidence, for his mother was in some way informed 
 of his determination and at once devised a plan to pre¬ 
 vent his crime. “ And she sent and called Jacob, her 
 younger son, and said unto him, Behold, thy brother 
 Esau, as touching thee, doth comfort himself, purposing 
 to kill thee. Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice; 
 and arise, flee thou to Laban, my brother, to Haran; and 
 tarry with him a few days, until thy brother’s fury turn 
 away.” She knows that Esau is an impulsive man. If 
 
The Daughters of Heth. 
 
 57 
 
 Jacob will keep out of his sight for a few days she is con¬ 
 fident that Esau’s anger will subside. “ Then I will send 
 and fetch you from thence; for why should I be deprived 
 of you both in one day ? ” 
 
 Jacob realized his danger and eagerly agreed to this 
 temporary banishment from home. But Jacob could not 
 go away without his father’s knowledge and consent. 
 To win that consent Rebekah resorted to a subterfuge. 
 She wished to conceal from Isaac the dreadful tragedy 
 which brooded over his house — surely it could not be 
 wrong to let the old man die in peace; and so she once 
 more employed those subterranean methods in the use of 
 which she was by no means a novice. She went at once 
 to Isaac’s chamber and set up a great weeping and lamen¬ 
 tation over the shortcomings of Esau’s heathen wives: 
 “ I am weary of my life because of the daughters of 
 Heth!” The modern querulousness which likewise de¬ 
 clares its weariness of life and asks, “ Is life worth liv¬ 
 ing ? ” if not as insincere as Rebekah was, would do well 
 to ask itself if Rebekah’s sin is not at the root of that 
 inner dissatisfaction and disappointment which prompts 
 such utterance. Rebekah craftily continues her passion 
 of weeping, will not hear a word of comfort, holds on 
 with her assumed grief, and keeps it up until she sees that 
 her husband also is very weary of the little life that re¬ 
 mains to him. At this point she is ready for another 
 move. And so, calming herself somewhat, she shrewdly 
 suggests, without seeming to do so, a remedy for her dis¬ 
 tress: “ If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, 
 which are the daughters of the land, what good shall my 
 life do me ?” Man-like, Isaac walks straight into the 
 trap. So long as his wife wailed over the faults of her 
 daughters-in-law he was as helpless as any man in similar 
 
58 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 circumstances, but when Jacob is mentioned he sees his 
 way clear. “ Jacob is still single,” he says, ‘‘and I will as¬ 
 sert my authority in his case. The boy shall do as I did. 
 He shall go at once to Padan-aram and get a wife. I 
 found a good and beautiful wife there and so may Jacob. 
 Call him, and I will start him on his journey. We will 
 hear no more of the daughters of Heth. ’ ’ Thereupon Re- 
 bekah dries her tears and goes away in search of Jacob. 
 
 When Jacob enters the chamber his father immediately 
 gives him his command: “ Thou shalt not take a wife of 
 the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-aram, to 
 the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father; and take thee 
 a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother’s 
 brother.” Then he voluntarily and deliberately bestows 
 upon Jacob once more the blessing already secured by 
 fraud: “ God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruit¬ 
 ful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude 
 of people; and give thee the blessing of Abraham.” 
 Thus blessed, Jacob departs upon his eventful journey. 
 
 The narrative before us this morning suggests three 
 thoughts which we shall do well to carry home and 
 remember. 
 
 i. See, first, how short-sighted men and women are. 
 Isaac supposed that death was near. Esau said, “ My 
 father will die in a few hours; then I will slay my brother. ’ ’ 
 But they were mistaken. Isaac lived forty-three long 
 years more, and Esau never slew his brother. Rebekah 
 thought Jacob would return to her in a few days, and 
 Jacob imagined that when his father died he would take 
 his place and be reunited to his mother; but they, too, 
 were mistaken. Rebekah never saw Jacob again, and 
 Jacob’s absence was not for a few days only, but for 
 twenty years. How true it is that man proposes and 
 
The Daughters of Heth. 
 
 59 
 
 God disposes! How true is the Scripture saying, “ Boast 
 not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a 
 day may bring forth.” 
 
 2. Again, what was it that broke up that old home and 
 embittered the life of all its inmates ? Each one of us 
 knows to his own shame and sorrow what it was; it was 
 what Amiel, who has so deeply impressed himself upon 
 the present generation, calls “ an instinct of revolt, an 
 enemy of law, the savage within us, seditious, impious, 
 insolent, refractory, opposed to and contemptuous of all 
 that tries to rule; ” what Byron calls 
 
 “ That pang, where more than madness lies, 
 
 The worm that will not sleep and never dies ; ” 
 
 what the New Testament calls sin; that burden on 
 the soul which no son or daughter of Adam ever wholly 
 escapes. Nor can we escape the consequences of sin. 
 As the shadow follows the body so the conscious¬ 
 ness of guilt follows sin. When you walk toward the 
 rising sun the shadow lurks behind you; as the day 
 advances the shadow reaches your side; at high noon, 
 small, faint, but visible, it is beneath your feet; as the 
 day hastens into the west, the shadow boldly goes before 
 lengthening, darkening. As long as you have a body 
 and the light lasts the shadow goes with you. So sin 
 shadows the soul. Can we look within ourselves, steadily, 
 honestly, and wonder that there should be a Good Friday 
 and a Cross on Calvary ? Beholding that Cross, realizing 
 the need of that Sacrifice, with true faith in its power to 
 make atonement for sin, shall we not fall upon our knees 
 and cry, “ O Lord Jesus Christ, pardon what I have been, 
 sanctify what I am, and order what I shall be, that Thine 
 may be the glory and mine the eternal salvation ? ” 
 
6 o 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 3. The narrative before us also recalls that blessed pro¬ 
 phecy contained in one of our Holy Week Epistles. Isaiah 
 there speaks of the conflict between sin and holiness pre¬ 
 figured in the enmity between Edom and Israel, and he 
 foresees its end. “ Who is this that cometh from Edom 
 with dyed garments from Bozrah ? ” And the Divine 
 One replies, “ I that speak in righteousness, mighty to 
 save, I have trodden the wine press alone, and the year 
 of My redeemed is come.” All that Esau or Edom sym¬ 
 bolized was overthrown on Calvary. It remains for us 
 only to make that victory our own. Good and evil will 
 not contend forever. The issue is not uncertain. The 
 struggle is not unending. On which side are we to-day ? 
 Can we say, “ Thanks be to God which giveth us the 
 victory through our Lord Jesus Christ ?” 
 
THE DREAM. 
 
 MONDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because 
 the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for 
 his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed.”— 
 Gen. xxviii. ii, 12. 
 
 J ACOB’S sin has found him out. He is banished from 
 home. Banishment is the first fruit of his blessing. 
 Nominally he is going away to find a wife; in reality, and 
 first of all, he is leaving his childhood’s home to escape 
 his brother’s murderous purpose of revenge. His heart is 
 heavy as he plods on alone through unfamiliar scenes; 
 and he is forced to acknowledge to himself that he is 
 suffering the due reward of his deeds. But, although he 
 knows it not, God’s love is seeking him out in his pun¬ 
 ishment and preparing the providences through which he 
 is to be trained for a larger benediction. 
 
 Jacob’s journey led him northward over tracts known 
 in later times as the highlands of Judea and Samaria — 
 historic ground for the future. On the second or third 
 day, towards evening, he reached a certain hill-top “ and 
 tarried there all night.” Modern travellers give us vivid 
 descriptions of this rugged elevation. As Jacob looked 
 about before composing himself to sleep he would notice 
 that he was almost entirely surrounded by the rocky 
 peaks which stood near by like sentinels keeping watch 
 upon the place. In one direction only was there an open¬ 
 ing among the heights, and through this his eye would 
 
 61 
 
62 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 take in a long stretch of open country and, beyond it, the 
 hills and valleys “ gradually receding and reaching in a 
 long succession to Mount Moriah and the hills which in 
 later times stood round about Jerusalem. ” Yes, fourteen 
 miles in the distance he could see Mount Moriah, where, 
 on an altar, his father Isaac had once lain with the sacri¬ 
 ficial knife gleaming over him—a type of that true Isaac 
 who in the fulness of time should offer Himself upon 
 that same Mount Moriah and suffer death upon the Cross 
 for our redemption; making there, by His one oblation 
 of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient 
 sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the 
 whole world. We do not know whether he recalled the 
 past or foresaw the future. Probably never before had 
 he been so far from the level plains of Beersheba, and 
 the grandeur of the strange, new panorama stretching 
 before him must have quickened and brought to a 
 climax the serious and solemn thoughts which had ac¬ 
 companied him on his journey. As the darkness falls 
 he finds a stone for his pillow. Alone, helpless, going he 
 knows not whither, his sin rises before him, torments 
 him, convicts him ! The blessing for which he has sinned, 
 what is it ? Now that it is his own, will it bring him 
 comfort or protection ? With his head on the stone and 
 his eyes turned upward to the stars, in the loneliness and 
 silence of the mountains, we may believe that his soul 
 lifted itself up to God in repentance for the past and in 
 faith for the future. It must have been so. The vision 
 of that night was not disclosed to a heart unprepared for 
 the gracious revelation. 
 
 At length he slept, and in that sleep, he dreamed his 
 Dream. He fell asleep— 
 
 “A sleep full of sweet dreams.” 
 
The Dream. 
 
 63 
 
 Dreams have a literature of their own. In all our 
 classics there are allusions to them. The Old Testament 
 contains the record of many dreams. In this way God 
 often spake to His servants of old. Dreams are also 
 recognized in the New Testament as channels of Divine 
 communication to the soul. In “ a dream which was not 
 all a dream ” Pontius Pilate’s wife suffered many things 
 concerning Jesus. 
 
 And we all dream. Usually our dreams are suggested 
 or inspired by the events of the day. They seem a 
 faint, often a distorted, or broken, or weary repetition 
 of our waking thoughts and acts. Hood’s “ Song of 
 the Shirt ” is immortal because the common heart rec¬ 
 ognizes in the poor, worn-out, and hungry woman who fell 
 asleep over her task and sewed on buttons in a dream, 
 the pathetic interpretation of its own experience. So, 
 often, with all our tasks; in a dream the driver speaks 
 to his horse, the mother cares for her babe, the business 
 man buys and sells, the teacher gives instruction, and the 
 preacher expounds and exhorts. But there are dreams 
 of another sort, wild and wicked dreams, dreams not in¬ 
 spired by any waking act or thought. Have you never 
 been shocked and horrified by your own dreams ? an¬ 
 noyed that there is within you, somewhere, so much that 
 is violent, impure, or dishonorable ? Probably, however, 
 we cannot sin in our sleep. “ I talk of dreams,” says 
 Shakespeare, “ which are the children of an idle brain, 
 begot of nothing but vain fantasy.” Yet holy men have 
 taught that frightful dreams and restless sleep may be the 
 Spirit’s warnings of sinful ways of life and calls to repent¬ 
 ance. Does some one say, “ It is indigestion, and not sin, 
 that gives people bad dreams ? ” But remember that Jesus 
 Christ came to save your body as well as your soul ; that 
 
64 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that, 
 therefore, the self-indulgence, the worry, the over-work, 
 which causes broken sleep, may be as much a sin as the 
 lie or the hating heart that stings the conscience and 
 gives you frightful dreams. And so the day that has 
 been passed soberly, temperately, and in the fear of God, 
 usually ends in a night of peaceful sleep or beautiful 
 dreams, watched over by the holy angels who keep guard 
 against the hosts of evil thoughts and evil memories. 
 
 While Jacob slept he dreamed and in that dream there 
 came to him a revelation : “ And he dreamed, and behold 
 a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to 
 heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and de¬ 
 scending upon it;” and from the heavenly heights he 
 heard the voice of his father’s God promising him pro¬ 
 tection and guidance, and blessings, both temporal and 
 spiritual. 
 
 Heretofore Jacob has had no personal knowledge of 
 the unseen world and there has been no touch of heaven 
 upon his soul. Now he begins to understand the mean¬ 
 ing of the birthright and the blessing; now he learns that 
 the other world is as real as this one and that there is a 
 way from earth to heaven and from heaven to earth. 
 From this night forward Jacob is a believer. The Vision 
 of the Ladder was the turning-point in his spiritual his¬ 
 tory. He rises up a changed man. 
 
 In studying the life of Jacob our chief purpose is to 
 trace the steps by which a human soul possessing the 
 strongest inborn love of self, with the intellectual strength 
 to bend other wills to its will, and to form long purposes 
 of personal advancement, and to adhere to them, under 
 the discipline of a loving Heavenly Father, develops 
 nobler aims, a sensitiveness of conscience, a habit of 
 
The Dream. 
 
 ^5 
 
 fervent prayer, an intelligent faith, and a readiness to 
 submit that masterful will to the will of God. We are 
 trying to see how it was that the Heel-catcher became 
 Israel, the Prince of God. The narrative before us shows 
 when the change began. 
 
 To-day let us confine our attention to one feature of 
 Jacob’s conversion; I mean the fact that he was alone 
 when God spake to his soul. Each human soul comes 
 into the world alone and leaves it alone. While it lives 
 here it dwells in solitude. Nothing is stranger or more 
 solemn than the loneliness of the soul. We are told 
 that there are layers of air between the atoms of the 
 most closely compacted bodies. Each soul is such an 
 atom, distinct, separate; or better still, we are islands 
 all in an unbounded sea. The infant has never thought 
 “ this is I,” but in a few years he learns the use of “ I ” 
 and “ me,” and finds “ I am not what I see; and other 
 than the things I touch; ” and one day, as the seasons 
 pass, “ his isolation grows defined.” When that solitude 
 of the soul is felt, God speaks. With more or less dis¬ 
 tinctness each Christian recalls the day or days when for 
 the first time the soul became conscious of its isolation, 
 and, in that conscious solitude, heard the Voice Divine. 
 Jacob’s separation from human companionship was, 
 therefore, providential. And so God in mercy arranges 
 solitudes for us. We are shut up in a sick room, we are 
 called upon a journey, the companions almost always with 
 us are separated from us by the changes and chances of 
 life and death. Then, when we are alone, the thought 
 of personality flashes upon us and God speaks. Is it not 
 so ? When you made the great choice between God and 
 self you were alone with your Saviour. Each succeeding 
 forward movement in the life of grace also dates from a 
 
66 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 season of private prayer. Let us, then, not shrink from 
 that solitude, but rather seek and love it. The New 
 Testament saying, “ Many were coming and going and 
 there was no leisure,” is an alarmingly accurate descrip¬ 
 tion of the life of our own day. Let us make the most 
 of the Church’s seasons of retirement, and frequently se¬ 
 cure some hour in which we can be alone on the mountain- 
 top to behold the Vision of the Ladder that joins earth 
 to heaven. 
 
THE LADDER. 
 
 TUESDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top 
 of it reached to heaven : and behold the angels of God ascending and de¬ 
 scending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it.”—Gen. xxviii. 12, 13. 
 
 T HE Vision of the Ladder brought with it a conviction 
 which never departed from Jacob’s soul. We 
 know, too, that it fastened itself upon the memory and 
 imagination of his descendants. No Jew ever forgot, 
 ever will forget, that his great ancestor saw heaven and 
 earth joined together. And Christians from childhood 
 have loved and meditated upon that vision. 
 
 In speaking of the ladder our text first tells us when 
 the vision came to Jacob, when he was asleep and in 
 dreams, and continues the narrative in three descriptive 
 clauses, each of which begins with the word “ behold.” 
 These natural divisions we will follow to-day. 
 
 1. “ And he dreamed, and behold.” Notice the sig¬ 
 nificance of this statement. The narrative is entirely free 
 
 «/ 
 
 from anything which might awaken suspicion as to its 
 veracity. It is not said that Jacob saw the ladder in 
 broad daylight, or that he really looked upon it at all. 
 We are told that it was a dream. The story of Jacob’s 
 life runs along almost without exception in the same 
 natural way. To be sure, the great facts, the great 
 mysteries of mortal life are never concealed; the folly, 
 the pathos, the adventure, the tragedy of his career are 
 freely and frankly set before us; the miraculous element, 
 
 67 
 
68 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 however, is almost entirely wanting. There is nothing 
 improbable in the whole story, nothing which faith or rea¬ 
 son need question. Yet how often do we hear it said that 
 the Old Testament is a mass of myths and marvels, that 
 its strange and impossible and unbelievable miracles, the 
 record of which almost entirely fills its pages, nullify 
 themselves, and that, consequently, these ancient writings 
 are obsolete as sources of legitimate ethical and spiritual 
 instruction! The present sad neglect of the Old Testa¬ 
 ment is probably due, in a large measure, to some such 
 miserable mistakes. True, it is an old book, dealing with 
 the childhood of the race, relating the beginnings of 
 God’s revelation of His will and character, requiring the 
 light of the New Testament for its interpretation; but all 
 this does not warrant its neglect or misrepresentation. 
 If it has its miracles, its obscurities, its difficulties, so has 
 the New Testament; and the Church from which we re¬ 
 ceive the sacraments of Christ binds both Testaments 
 together as the Word of God. In any case it will be safe 
 to assume that no doubting criticism can object to the 
 statement of the text that Jacob saw his ladder in a 
 dream. We may even admit that the framework of his 
 dream was suggested by the blocks of sandstone on the 
 slopes of the hills where his eyes rested before he slept; 
 that “ his surroundings wove themselves ” into the fabric 
 of his dreams and that the slabs of stone on the sloping 
 ascents of the hills “ built themselves up into a gigantic 
 staircase, reaching from the spot where he lay to the 
 starry depths above him.” It may have been so. At 
 least all was natural as well as supernatural. But in that 
 dream God spake to Jacob’s soul. 
 
 2. “ And behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the 
 top of it reached to heaven.” In Jacob’s ladder we have 
 
The Ladder. 
 
 69 
 
 the first clear intimation of the world to come. It was a 
 revelation of the fact of a future life. He saw an open 
 heaven and a way of ascent to that blessed abode. 
 Henceforth Jacob knew that death does not end all. 
 The vision also showed him that reconciliation is possible 
 between God and sinful man. The gulf his sin had 
 placed between himself and his God could be bridged 
 over. 
 
 The many rounds or steps, one above another, in the 
 long ascent would teach him that the upward way is toil¬ 
 some and trying—that “ heaven is not gained at a single 
 bound.” Furthermore, the vision of earth joined to 
 heaven could not fail to keep ever before him through 
 the years to come high and pure ideals of a daily life 
 that “ slopes through darkness up to God.” 
 
 3. “ And behold, the angels of God ascending and de¬ 
 scending upon it.” It is easy to believe in the angelic 
 world of which the Bible speaks. The seraphim and the 
 cherubim and their radiant companions are a glorious 
 creation readily pictured by the imagination and gladly 
 welcomed by faith. It would be abnormal and contrary 
 to all the laws of creation were the great spiritual space 
 between God and man left tenantless and unbroken. In 
 ordered and ever-ascending ranks of beauty, holiness, and 
 power they rise from humanity to the Source of all crea¬ 
 tion ; their nature and their loving occupation making 
 them objects of the reverent admiration of every in¬ 
 structed and faithful Christian heart. An Apostle tells 
 us that they are ministering spirits sent forth to minister 
 unto the heirs of salvation; and our Lord said that the 
 angels of His little ones do always behold the face of the 
 Father in heaven. Accordingly in every age the Church 
 has encouraged her children to believe in guardian angels 
 
70 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 who are set apart for each of the baptized, to lift upwards 
 our confessions and our prayers, to bring back our par¬ 
 dons and our blessings, guiding, guarding, encouraging 
 us on earth, and at last bearing away the soul to God 
 who gave it. “ He shall give His angels charge over 
 thee to keep thee in all thy ways.” The Collect for the 
 Feast of St. Michael and All Angels dwells especially 
 upon the thought that the angels are the ministers of 
 the providence of God in the government of this world, 
 and that, in answer to our prayers, they succor and de¬ 
 fend us on earth even as they always do God service in 
 heaven. Jacob in his loneliness and banishment and 
 misery would recognize in the angel host an assurance of 
 the providential care of the Lord his God. 
 
 4. “ And, behold, the Lord stood above ” the ladder. 
 While no man with his bodily eyes has seen God at any 
 time, in his dream Jacob saw Him, saw Him above the 
 ladder in an attitude of forgiveness and benediction. 
 Thus the vision in full taught Jacob, first of all, that there 
 was a Providence which would keep him in all his ways. 
 That is the very first step in religion. To believe in One 
 greater and higher than we, One who has the power and 
 the will to save, to whom it may be said, Take me, for 
 I am travel-stained and tired—that is the beginning and 
 the ending also of all spiritual attainment. Jacob applied 
 to himself the vision; it was for him; and from above he 
 seemed to hear a voice pledging and promising him all 
 blessedness which the dream ladder pictured out of the 
 heavenly providence and the heavenly love. 
 
 If we, too, have learned the lesson of faith in Providence 
 blessed are we, for to-day, as of old, it distinguishes the 
 carnal from the spiritual, the believer from the unbeliever. 
 That loving Providence makes all things work together 
 
The Ladder. 
 
 71 
 
 for good for all who love God. Oftentimes it does not 
 seem so, and then we are tempted to murmur, tempted 
 to take the familiar lines, “ There is a Providence that 
 shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will,” and, 
 with the schoolboy, read over the punctuation mark, thus 
 turning truth into falsehood, ” There is a Providence 
 that shapes our ends rough , hew them how we will.” 
 But God is our father and we are His children. He will 
 take care of us. He provideth for all meat in due season. 
 We are His jewels. We are as the apple of His eye. 
 
 5. There is something more. Jacob's ladder has a 
 deeper meaning. Whether that deeper meaning was re¬ 
 vealed to him in full or in part we know not; later on, 
 however, devout Jews understood that the ladder was a 
 type of the Messiah; and at length, in his conversation 
 with Nathanael, the guileless man, as it is recorded in the 
 closing verses of the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel, 
 our Lord Himself interpreted the ladder as prefiguring 
 the Incarnation of the Son of God. Christ is the true 
 ladder that joins earth to heaven. By His two natures 
 in One Person He is God and man — a ladder resting on 
 earth and reaching heaven. In the opening of St. John’s 
 Gospel we have the inspired definition of the Incarnation, 
 The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us;” 
 while St. Paul declares that like a ladder He bridges over 
 the separation between earth and heaven, for there is 
 “ One mediator between God and men, the man Christ 
 
 J y y 
 
 esus. 
 
 All, then, that Jacob’s ladder meant for him it means 
 for us. There is a heaven and its gates are open ; angels 
 come and go from earth to that heaven ; there is a Father 
 above who cares for us; and under His providential care 
 we are safe; Christ is the one Mediator between men and 
 
72 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 God. This old symbol of Christ shows Him to be per¬ 
 fect man and perfect God. Because He is man He is our 
 brother and He can feel for us and we can follow His ex¬ 
 ample ; because He is God the Cross is an Atonement, 
 and the open grave an Easter; and so an Apostle can say, 
 “To you which believe He is precious." 
 
THE PROMISE. 
 
 WEDNESDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac : the 
 land whereon thou best, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed, . . . And 
 in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, 
 behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, 
 and will bring thee again into this land ; for I will not leave thee.”—Gen. 
 xxviii. 13, 14, 15. 
 
 I N his dream Jacob saw the Lord, or, according to an¬ 
 other reading, the Glory of the Lord, revealed above 
 the ladder. Then from the heavenly heights there fell 
 upon his listening ear the gracious message from which 
 the text is taken; a promise shaping all the after life of 
 the listener, the Great Promise of the Old Testament and 
 of the Jewish Covenant. 
 
 It was a four-fold promise. 
 
 1. In the first place it assured Jacob that he was the 
 recognized heir of the birthright blessing. “ I am the 
 Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac/’ 
 Hereafter the Covenant God will be known as the God 
 of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, 
 the same Jehovah who is called in the New Testament 
 the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom 
 all the promises are yea and amen. 
 
 2. Again, he was promised a land, “ the land whereon 
 thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.” And 
 we know that this land did become the possession of the 
 chosen family and of the chosen people, the Holy Land of 
 the past and of the present, a picturesque and significant 
 
 73 
 
74 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 type of the Promised Land beyond the grave and gate of 
 death. 
 
 3. “ And,” continued the promise, “ in thee and in 
 thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” 
 This is the Great Promise. The Promised One is here 
 foretold. The Messiah shall be Jacob’s son. 
 
 4. This clears the way for a somewhat fuller examina¬ 
 tion of the final promise of the text. In the plainest 
 words a personal promise is now bestowed upon Jacob. 
 ” And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all 
 places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into 
 this land; for I will not leave thee. ’ ’ When Jacob reached 
 the hill-top whereon he should sleep, banished from 
 home, in his loneliness, and fear, and sin, he may have 
 felt that he was forsaken of God and man. He knew 
 not his future and there seemed no present help in time 
 of trouble. The thought of another despairing heart 
 may have been his own, 
 
 “ I am as a reed 
 
 Flung from the rock on ocean’s foam to sail 
 
 Where’er the surge may sweep, the tempest’s breath prevail.” 
 
 Now, however, with this blessed promise his own, all was 
 changed. Despair gave way to confidence and courage. 
 
 I am with thee; I will keep thee; I will not leave 
 thee.” Was this word of the Lord made good ? Jacob 
 himself bears witness to the faithfulness of the promises. 
 Twenty years afterwards he says, ” The God of my 
 fathers hath kept me.” ” That testimony,” says an 
 eminent modern preacher, ” I have read with great joy.” 
 Later on Jacob declares, ” I will make an altar unto God 
 who answered me in the day of my distress and was with 
 me in the way where I went.” When, on his dying bed, 
 
The Promise. 
 
 75 
 
 he blessed the two sons of Joseph the same testimony 
 was repeated, “ The God which fed me all my life long, 
 the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the 
 lads. ” 
 
 This personal promise made to Jacob the Scriptures 
 warrant us in applying to ourselves. The same promise 
 was afterwards made to Joshua, to Solomon, to all Israel; 
 in the book of Isaiah it is repeated to the poor and 
 needy; while in the last chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews the Apostle takes up the words, “ I will never 
 leave thee nor forsake thee,” and gives them in all their 
 fulness of comfort and hope to every troubled Christian 
 heart. Everywhere in the Word of God the promises are 
 emphasized and repeated. Under a thousand vivid 
 images and in the plainest words we are assured over and 
 over again that the Lord is faithful. The remarkable 
 emphasis placed upon the promises of Holy Scripture is 
 an evidence that they are in danger of being neglected; 
 accordingly we find it to be a fact that the human heart is 
 naturally distrustful of the promises of God. Neverthe¬ 
 less, Revelation assures us that the promises are founded 
 upon the attributes of God. His promises are made 
 voluntarily. Can He ever be reluctant to fulfil them ? 
 They were not given hastily or unadvisedly. No new 
 circumstances can arise which are unforeseen, or which 
 could on any account lead Him to wish to repeal them or 
 to see that they should be repealed. He cannot be 
 powerless to keep His word, for He is omnipotent. He 
 can never promise beyond the limits of His power, be¬ 
 yond the scope of the laws by which His providence is 
 governed, for He knows all and He cannot forget. The 
 Lord must be faithful; and He is. He cannot deny 
 Himself. He is not a man that He should lie, nor the 
 
7 6 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 son of man that He should repent. His goodness faileth 
 never; and Christian experience in every age and race 
 and clime corroborates our faith. Every day it is put to 
 the test that God is a prayer-hearing and a promise-keep¬ 
 ing God. Multitudes of living men and women, some, 
 if not all of us here this day, can testify that the Lord is 
 faithful. All such believe in what are called special 
 providences; but it is to be noticed that the promises of 
 the text are equally fulfilled in the uneventful days. 
 The young are usually eager for something to happen. 
 As we advance in life, however, we gain the clearest and 
 sweetest evidence of promises kept in the season when 
 nothing happens. To awake after refreshing sleep and to 
 see the brightness of the sun, to remember that all be¬ 
 neath our roof are well and happy, the children safe and 
 in their places, no sickness, no harrowing cares, no sepa¬ 
 rating ways, no crisis, no special anxiety for us or any of 
 our own—on such mornings we should most devoutly 
 acknowledge the blessed fulfilment of the old promise, 
 
 I will keep thee; I will be with thee; I will not leave 
 thee,” and exclaim, with all thankfulness and sincerity, 
 
 “ Oh, blest are uneventful days ; and blest are uneventful years ! ” 
 
 But it will be strange if some of us are not now meeting 
 the eventful days. For those days will come. Some¬ 
 times the believer’s faith never wavers, carrying him 
 safely through the period of changes and chances; most 
 of us though, as we must admit, are besieged by doubts 
 when the trial comes upon us and are prone to distrust 
 the promise of God. Either our sins create the doubt, 
 or to try us God hides His face, or else we fully realize 
 the strength of our carnal nature only when it rebels 
 against the heavenly discipline — from one or all of these 
 
The Promise. 
 
 77 
 
 causes distrust seizes upon us; we doubt whether we have 
 ever truly given our hearts to God. Gustav Flaubert, 
 assigned by the literary critics a foremost place among 
 the great modern masters of style, once said of himself, 
 at the summit of his power, “ I am growing so peevish 
 about my writing, I am like a man whose ear is true but 
 who plays falsely upon the violin,—his fingers refuse to 
 reproduce precisely those sounds of which he has the 
 inward sense. Then the tears come rolling down from 
 the poor scraper’s eyes and the bow falls from his hand.” 
 Where is the Christian who has not sometimes felt a sim¬ 
 ilar despair ? The great gap between the real and the 
 ideal, both in faith and practice, tempts us to question 
 our natural and sacramental endowment, even as the 
 writer who cannot express his thought doubts his 
 thought, or as the musician who cannot reproduce the 
 sweet sounds within him doubts that inward sense and 
 weeps over his doubt; just so the Christian who cannot 
 live the life of Christ in bearing the Cross of Christ is 
 sometimes tempted to doubt himself as well as the God 
 above him. But Flaubert never gave up, and won suc¬ 
 cess. And the Christian who holds fast to the promises 
 in the day of darkness will see them fulfilled in the light. 
 For the Lord is faithful. He will not suffer us to be 
 tempted above that we are able; neither should we for¬ 
 get that the goodness and faithfulness of God in keeping 
 His word is, as Bishop Butler has most profoundly ob¬ 
 served, “ a truth full of terror for the wicked. Malice,” 
 he says, “ may be wearied or satiated. Caprice may 
 change; but goodness is a steady, inflexible principle of 
 action.” 
 
 “ I am with thee; I will keep thee; I will not leave 
 thee.” This was the promise which caused the desert of 
 
78 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 Jacob’s hopelessness to rejoice and blossom as the rose. 
 Let us make that promise our own. He who hath begun 
 a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus 
 Christ. Believing that, and looking unto Jesus the 
 author and finisher of our faith, knowing that He is 
 faithful who has promised, we will fight the good fight, 
 thankful for every promise fulfilled in the past, hopeful 
 in present discouragements, brave and cheerful under 
 temporary defeat, staying ourselves for every experience 
 of life, death, and that vast forever, on the sweet assur¬ 
 ance which evermore comes down the ladder of Divine 
 love: “ I am with thee; I will keep thee; I will not 
 leave thee.” 
 
THE AWAKENING. 
 
 THURSDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in 
 this place ; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dread¬ 
 ful is this place ! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the 
 gate of heaven.”—Gen. xxviii. 16, 17. 
 
 D REAMS,” says Charles Dickens, ** are the bright 
 creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth 
 in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of 
 the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their 
 daily pilgrimage through the world.” But Jacob’s dream 
 did not fade away. When he awoke the hard, cold light 
 of early morning was uncovering the distant heights, the 
 rock-strewn fields, and the wild brier of the wilderness; 
 faded was the heavenly stairway, and faded the ascend¬ 
 ing and descending host, and faded the vision and the 
 voice of God; but the memory of it, the touch Divine 
 upon his soul remained. His first feeling is one of holy 
 fear. “ How dreadful is this place! The Lord is in this 
 place and I knew it not.” There is nothing in these 
 words to warrant the conjecture that hitherto Jacob had 
 thought of God as a local deity, confined to his father’s 
 habitation, and that his exclamation is an utterance of 
 astonishment at the discovery that God was here and 
 might be found anywhere. Jacob always knew that God 
 was omnipresent. His words mean simply that that feel¬ 
 ing was strong upon him which humanity has ever felt 
 when it is brought near to the Creator and to the world un- 
 
 79 
 
8o 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 seen. The creature, since Adam’s sin, and because of it, 
 instinctively hides itself, as Adam did, from the approach 
 of the Creator. And so the hill-top upon which he had 
 slept seemed holy ground and a hushed awe fell upon 
 Jacob. The reverence and godly fear of which the 
 Apostle speaks filled his heart. 
 
 To-day, therefore, reverence shall be our theme. It 
 will scarcely be denied that this is an irreverent age, or 
 that we are an irreverent people. The subject may be 
 an unwelcome one, but it is timely, and the duty of 
 preaching upon it is imperative. 
 
 Now, what is reverence ? In the text we see a fellow- 
 man in a reverential mood, a sight better than the defini¬ 
 tions which are not altogether satisfactory. We are told 
 that reverence is a word by itself and that it has no syn¬ 
 onym. It is not respect or fear or honor; awe is the 
 nearest word; and yet it is more than awe. Dean 
 Vaughan has well said, “ We feel reverence only for the 
 sacred—for that which is, or has touched, the Divine.” 
 Now the feeling to which Jacob gave expression on 
 awakening will have, of course, its ebbs and flows. No 
 attitude of the mind or heart is free from this law of 
 change. But if we truly and rightly believe in God we 
 must maintain a real reverence towards Him. If there 
 is One in whom we live and move and are; to whom 
 our hearts, our minds, and our consciences are an open 
 book; upon whom we are absolutely dependent for all 
 we have and love and hope for; who made us and not 
 we ourselves — what innermost thought can we have of 
 Him save this: Holy and Reverend is His name! Any 
 serious consideration of the person and attributes of 
 God, as revealed by Christianity, must force from us the 
 prayer, “Hallowed be Thy name.” Nevertheless, as we 
 
The Awakening. 
 
 81 
 
 look about us, we find that it is not so. Irreverence 
 toward God may be charged against three classes of 
 people. 
 
 There are those who openly scorn to pay Him rever¬ 
 ence; who never bow the knee to Him, nor honor His 
 holy name or His Word; who daily, even hourly, blas¬ 
 pheme Him, in heedlessness or in anger; who, when 
 reminded of the pledge, “ I will not hold him guiltless 
 that taketh My name in vain,” deny His power to reach 
 them, or rashly proclaim their willingness to take the 
 consequences—men who thus write themselves down in 
 the lists of those “ Who ne’er have tasted grace, nor 
 goodness ever felt.” 
 
 And many sin in this way who nevertheless profess and 
 call themselves Christians. I do not refer to those who 
 look upon our Lord merely as a great human teacher; 
 or who, in other respects, are in error as to the nature 
 and person of God. No doubt such are failing to give 
 the homage which is due to Him. I speak, rather, of 
 those about us who belong to what are known as the 
 orthodox denominations. They are good people; they 
 mean no harm ; but they are so rude and free and familiar 
 in their religion that it is impossible to approve of their 
 ways. In order to escape even the suspicion of unfair¬ 
 ness I will give the words of one of their own ministers. 
 He had lived abroad for eight years, and upon his return 
 published an article (Homiletical Review , Dec., 1888, 
 page 546), from which the following sentences are taken: 
 
 A positively painful impression, upon coming home to 
 
 America, was made by the lack of reverence during 
 
 divine service. The behavior of the congregation, the 
 
 bearing of the preacher, the sermon, the announcements, 
 
 too often put divine services on the level of an entertain- 
 6 
 
82 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 ment. Sometimes the entertaining feature is not only 
 apparent, but actually announced as a special aim. As 
 a consequence, the levity found in certain congregations 
 ought not perhaps to be a surprise, however shocking it 
 may be. When a minister descends to the sensational, 
 the vulgar, the laughable, as the chief means of attract¬ 
 ing an audience, we naturally wonder why he is in the 
 pulpit. With such preaching astonishment ceases that 
 the congregation lacks solemnity, is ready for a laugh, 
 and can enter and leave the house of God without a 
 thought or an act of worship.” To this we may add 
 that irreverence towards God is more than a question of 
 taste, is more than bad manners; it is, wherever it is 
 manifested by Christians, a serious hindrance to the 
 progress of religion and a sin against the holiness of the 
 Almighty. 
 
 Once more, we may treat God with irreverence by 
 banishing Him from our thoughts, by neglecting to pray 
 to Him, by rebelling against His will. 
 
 Take another thought. Our churches are holy. We 
 should demean ourselves with reverence in the house of 
 the Lord. Jacob turned his hill-top into a sanctuary and 
 said, “ This is none other but the house of God.” Our 
 blessed Saviour rebuked irreverence in the temple and 
 He loved its courts. To teach us reverence our churches 
 are designed to be and to seem unlike other structures. 
 When we enter them we are in the shrine of an un¬ 
 seen presence, a meeting place between God and man. 
 And the worship of our sanctuaries is profoundly rever¬ 
 ent. No failure in this respect can be charged against 
 the Book of Common Prayer. Of those outside our 
 privileges it may be said that they do not know how to 
 behave themselves when assembled for public worship, 
 
The Awakening. 83 
 
 but for Church people there is no such excuse. If we 
 are not all on our knees, soberly and devoutly and 
 audibly participating in the prayers, in each and every 
 act and order of our worship, taking our part, endeavor¬ 
 ing to banish all worldly thoughts, we are sinning against 
 light and love, calling down upon ourselves a curse and 
 not a blessing. Neither must we forget the power of 
 example. The young, and all others, in fact, learn 
 reverence by example rather than by precept. The de¬ 
 vout example of one good man or woman is worth many 
 sermons upon this duty. And with reverence for the 
 house of God we shall grow to love His dwelling-place 
 and its worship and be able to say with the Psalmist, 
 “ Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house and 
 the place where Thine honor dwelleth.’’ 
 
 We must also notice that Holy Scripture couples to¬ 
 gether reverence for the Lord’s house and the Lord’s Day. 
 “Ye shall keep My sabbaths and reverence My sanctu¬ 
 ary; I am the Lord.’’ Here again, example is powerful. 
 And so reverence, like the other religious sentiments, 
 while it begins with God, descends to all the relations of 
 life. Accordingly we are told, “Ye shall fear every man 
 his father and his mother; ’’ and again, “ Thou shalt rise 
 up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old 
 man and fear thy God.” The wife, too, is taught to 
 reverence her husband and the husband to love his wife. 
 Says Ruskin: “ Reverence is due to what is pure and 
 bright in your own youth; to what is true and tried in 
 the age of others; to all that is gracious among the living, 
 great among the dead, and marvellous in the powers that 
 can never die.’’ If reverence in these respects dies out 
 we shall be far on the road to materialism. And so the 
 “great moral poet” sets forth reverence as the “angel 
 
8 4 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 of the world/’ If we believe all this, if we realize that 
 irreverence is in the daily air, that its logical and inevit¬ 
 able consequence is the certain destruction of the best 
 ideals of mankind, if we must confess that 
 
 “ in ports 
 
 Of levity no refuge can be found, 
 
 No shelter for a spirit in distress,” 
 
 then let us resolve to pray for the spirit of reverence, and 
 diligently strive to be reverent before God, reverent in 
 our sanctuaries, reverent in our homes, reverent in our 
 attitude towards all that is pure and sacred; for God, 
 who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of 
 sinful men, may be said to have forsaken us when we 
 cease to respect the reverences, human and Divine. 
 
THE VOW. 
 
 FRIDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep 
 me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put 
 on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace ; then shall the Lord 
 be my God.”—Gen. xxviii. 20, 21. 
 
 W HEN Jacob awoke he felt that he was on holy 
 ground. While the reverential mood was still 
 upon him he uttered the vow of the text. Such vows 
 are as ancient as the race; and to this day some instinct 
 of the human heart prompts men of every religion to 
 take upon themselves similar sacred engagements. 
 
 I. What, then, was the significance of Jacob’s vow ? 
 First of all we must notice what it was not. How often 
 have we heard it said that Jacob is here driving a bargain 
 with his Maker, that he is shrewdly defining his terms 
 and conditions, and selling his worship for an equivalent, 
 that in his vow we see clear indications of that commer¬ 
 cial adroitness which has ever distinguished the nation 
 
 whose founder Jacob was. A careless reading of our 
 English version, without due consideration of the con¬ 
 text, might give some sanction to this mistaken interpre¬ 
 tation, “ If God will be with me, and keep me, and feed 
 me, then shall the Lord be my God.” The Hebrew, 
 however, as the authorities, both ancient and modern, 
 assure us, warrants no such construction. The word 
 rendered “ if ” is equivalent to “ inasmuch ” or “ since.” 
 ” Since God is going to be with me, and to keep me, and 
 
 85 
 
86 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 give me all I need, and bring me back to my father’s 
 house in peace; since He has promised all this, and will 
 assuredly perform it, I, for my part, pledge myself that 
 He, and He alone, shall be my God, shall have my 
 obedience, my worship, my trust, my adoration, and my 
 love.” If this utterance falls below the measure of that 
 faith which enabled Job to say, “ Though He slay me 
 yet will I trust in Him,” Jacob was nevertheless perfectly 
 sincere, and his vision left a real and lasting impression 
 upon his soul, an impression which finds its honest ex¬ 
 pression in the words of his vow. 
 
 2. This leads on to some consideration of the fact that 
 we too are under vows. Is there one of us who cannot 
 say with the Psalmist, ” Thy vows are upon me, O 
 God ? ” In Holy Baptism we pledged ourselves to re¬ 
 nounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, to believe all 
 the articles of the Christian Creed, and obediently to 
 keep God’s holy will and commandments. In Con¬ 
 firmation we voluntarily renewed these solemn vows and 
 promises in the presence of all the people and knelt at 
 the Apostle’s feet for the gift of the Holy Spirit which 
 should enable us so to do. In the Sacrament of the 
 Altar we, from time to time, renew all these vows and 
 pledge ourselves upon the Body and Blood of the Lord 
 to continued faithfulness and loyalty. The very word 
 sacrament, originally signifying a soldier’s oath of allegi¬ 
 ance to his leader, reminds us that in these holy rites we 
 have pledged our word and honor to be loyal to our 
 leader, the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. These vows 
 are taken and imposed by sure and certain warrants of 
 Holy Scriptures; they cover all we have and are; and 
 our eternal future depends upon the earnestness of our 
 efforts to keep these vows. 
 
The Vow. 
 
 87 
 
 The Church also gives an Ordination and a Marriage 
 vow. These vows are not demanded of all, nor of any, 
 are entirely voluntary, and imposed only upon those who 
 think they have vocation for these states of life. It is 
 sometimes said that the Ordination vow is held to-day 
 with less sincerity than in former years—a very grave 
 charge which every clergyman is ready to disclaim for the 
 great majority of his faithful brethren, while in his heart 
 he fears for himself, and beseeches the people’s prayers, 
 lest having preached to others he himself become a cast¬ 
 away. But we must admit, with shame and sorrow, that 
 on every hand the Marriage vow is assumed lightly and 
 unadvisedly and as lightly broken, even by those who 
 know its sacredness. This deadly evil is growing rapidly 
 and threatens our homes and our altars. 
 
 The Church has also, in all ages, encouraged her laity 
 to take upon themselves vows of special devotion to her 
 work and worship. Brotherhoods, sisterhoods, guilds, 
 and an order of deaconesses exist, do noble and loyal 
 work and need recruits. At present there seems to be 
 an urgent need for more such women workers; and it 
 must be that in many of our parishes there are young 
 women who have generous gifts for such a blessed work; 
 who, perhaps, need only a word of encouragement to 
 lead them to enter upon it. 
 
 3. The human heart, however, has never seemed satis¬ 
 fied without vows beyond those already mentioned, vows 
 made when some crisis is at hand. And most of those 
 vows are neither wise nor righteous. For example, a vow 
 may promise that which is in itself sinful, as when the 
 conspirators among the Jews “ bound themselves under 
 a curse that they would neither eat nor drink until they 
 had killed Paul.” To all such “ hot and peevish vows ” 
 
88 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 not only are “ the gods deaf,” but against them is kindled 
 the wrath of the God of all gods. Or, a vow may be free 
 from sin and yet stupid and senseless, as when a man 
 binds himself not to cut his hair or beard until a certain 
 politician is elected President of the United States. Or, 
 a vow may be religious and yet foolish, as when a Christ¬ 
 ian undertakes that which is impossible; never again, for 
 instance, to have a wicked thought. Such ” mouth- 
 made vows which break themselves ” in vowing are vain 
 and empty, and probably impertinent. But perhaps the 
 most common form of a wrong vow is the one with which 
 Jacob has been unjustly charged ; when men, consciously 
 or unconsciously, try to bargain with God, engaging to 
 do something to compensate for past sins or negligences, 
 offering to give Him something or to do something for 
 Him if He will give them in return their heart’s desire. 
 ” If God will spare my child’s life,” we say, “ I will pro¬ 
 mise to attend Church every Sunday and become a regular 
 communicant; if God will save me from this disgrace, or 
 ward off this business failure, or this personal humilia¬ 
 tion ; if God will give me this or that blessing; then I, 
 for my part, will promise to give or do this or that for 
 Him.” The Saxon Priest of Odin, when he listened to 
 the Christian missionary, Paulinus, gave expression to 
 the same thought, exclaiming: “ The old gods have 
 profited me little; these long years have I served them, 
 no man more diligently, and yet many are richer and 
 more prosperous than I am. I will try the new.” We 
 are told that in Mexico a gambler will sometimes place a 
 picture of the Virgin on the table, vowing to her so many 
 candles or dollars if she will win for him ; and, if he loses, 
 will sometimes, in a burst of rage, draw his knife and 
 hack in pieces the picture of his divinity. We smile and 
 
The Vow. 
 
 89 
 
 sigh complacently over such miserable Christianity as 
 this; and yet, in a subtler form we often yield to this 
 same error. Even Abraham Lincoln was thus ensnared. 
 Before a certain battle Mr. Lincoln vowed that if the 
 Confederates were defeated he would emancipate the 
 slaves. And into such vows as this the best of us may 
 be beguiled. Now, how and why was Lincoln’s vow 
 wrong ? Because it was not a true vow but an offered 
 bargain. If after he had prayed and fought, God had 
 answered and helped and given him victory, then he 
 might have righteously vowed his vow, “Since God has 
 helped me to defeat the foe I will free the slaves.’’ 
 
 “ And when thou vowest a vow,’’ says the Scripture, 
 “ defer not to pay it; for He hath no pleasure in 
 fools; pay that thou hast vowed.’’ But we all know 
 how thankfulness for answered prayer soon fades and that 
 convalescents have short memories. It will be strange if 
 many of us are not under true and binding vows made in 
 the past for answered prayers. Let us pay our vows and 
 cherish our gratitude. Ingratitude is base. Furthermore, 
 our word was pledged. We take pride in being as good 
 as our word. A promise to a fellow-mortal we regard as 
 sacred. And is God less than mortal man ? Can we 
 break our word to Him without dishonor ? And you 
 have given Him your word of honor. At a time when 
 your heart overflowed with gratitude or was aflame with 
 love you vowed, “ Now shall the Lord be my God.’’ 
 Do you remember, while you listen, some such vow of 
 the past ? Consider, then, that the merciful Lord who 
 heard your vow grieves over your neglect and dis¬ 
 honor; and, it may be, is sending this present message 
 to your soul in order to shame you back to your honor 
 and win His wandering child to His heart once more. 
 
90 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 If you heed not His message of love, by and by, but 
 still in love, He will make you feel the weight of His rod. 
 
THE ALTAR. 
 
 SATURDAY AFTER THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ This stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house.”—Gen. 
 xxviii. 22. 
 
 HOSE who have seen Rubens’s great picture of 
 
 1 Jacob’s Ladder-vision in Antwerp Cathedral will 
 never forget the ideal beauty of the young patriarch’s 
 face. The painting is a blaze of glorious light. The 
 stone pillow shines like a lamp of gold in the radiance. 
 The ladder and the angels are marvels in design and 
 execution. But in the rapture of the sleeper’s face the 
 genius of the painter has its chief expression. Think, 
 then, of the look on Jacob’s face when he awoke. What 
 painter could reproduce the countenance of one whose 
 soul was filled with awe, gratitude, and faith, the counten¬ 
 ance of a true worshipper ? 
 
 Yesterday we considered the vow which now passed 
 Jacob’s lips; since God has promised to be with him and 
 keep him and never leave him, Jacob is resolved that the 
 Lord shall be his God. The narrative to-day brings be¬ 
 fore us three particulars in connection with his act of 
 worship on awakening from his dream. 
 
 i. First, he “ took the stone that he had put for his 
 pillow and set it up for a pillar and poured oil upon it.” 
 This oil, in a small skin bag, he may have carried as a 
 medicine, or possibly for food in some necessity. We 
 know that he left his father’s dwelling with only the 
 scantiest provision for his journey. In later times the 
 
 qi 
 
9 2 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 prophets, in order to rebuke the proud and haughty 
 spirit of the Jews, reminded them that “ a Syrian ready 
 to perish was their father;” while Jacob himself tells us 
 that when he crossed the Jordan the staff he brought 
 from home was his sole earthly possession. And yet, 
 although his present provision for making an external act 
 of worship was very meagre, he had no thought of defer¬ 
 ring his devotions to a more convenient season. He 
 would consecrate himself to the service of God now, 
 while the impulse to do so was strong upon him. Though 
 he had no sacrificial victim to offer, he reverently made 
 use of such symbols as he could command and worship¬ 
 ped God in spirit and in truth. He set up for an altar 
 the stone which had been his pillow while he dreamed. 
 It may have been a meteoric stone bearing outward evi¬ 
 dences of its heavenly origin. It may have been the 
 Stone of Scone now under the Coronation Chair in the 
 Chapel of St. Edward the Confessor in Westminster 
 Abbey. The stone which had been his pillow Jacob 
 turned into an altar. He would commemorate the 
 Divine communication and remind others who should see 
 it that God had visited this spot. And whenever Jacob 
 met with a special revelation or dispensation of the good 
 providence of God he set up a stone as a memorial. 
 
 Blessed, thrice blessed is the man, to whom life is,” 
 as it was to Jacob, “ dotted over with memorials of com¬ 
 munion with God.” What those rude altars of old did 
 for the patriarch, memory does for us. “I too,” says a 
 holy man, “ remember with gratitude the places where I 
 have found God near, the saints by whom He has spoken 
 to me, the occasions of comfort and peace which He has 
 sent; as long as memory lasts, I would preserve these 
 with gratitude.” 
 
The Altar. 
 
 93 
 
 2. Again, Jacob “ called the name of that place Bethel; 
 but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.” 
 Luz means an almond tree; Bethel, the house of God. 
 Afterwards, perhaps with reference to this event, in the 
 temple, the branches of the golden candle-stick, a figure 
 of the Church, were to have knobs of almonds, and the 
 sacerdotal rod of Aaron budded with almonds. So when¬ 
 ever doubt is turned into faith, repentance into forgive¬ 
 ness, Luz becomes Bethel, and the grove of almonds is 
 transformed into the house of God. 
 
 It was a good instinct which led Jacob to seek to per¬ 
 petuate the sacred impression of the moment. There is 
 a spiritual value in the forms and ceremonies of religious 
 worship; impressions and excited feelings are transient 
 and will fade away unless they are turned into some fixed 
 and permanent mould which shall give the spirit a form 
 for its home. It is sometimes said that “ religion is an 
 inward thing, that it does not consist in church-going, 
 keeping the Lord’s Day, public worship, sacraments, and 
 so forth, but is only a state of the spirit.” And yet we 
 all know that if we neglect these outward observances 
 our religion withers and dies. Human nature requires 
 the aid of these external reminders of the great facts and 
 duties of Christianity. The Holy Communion alone is a 
 monument which keeps forever before the eyes and ears 
 of the faithful the leading events in the life of our blessed 
 Saviour, while His Body and His Blood, given and re¬ 
 ceived, sustain and strengthen the spirit of the wor¬ 
 shipper. 
 
 Jacob said,“ This pillar shall be God’s house. ” St. Paul 
 interprets and applies these words to the Church of Christ, 
 which he calls “Bethel, the house of God,’’ “the Church 
 of the living God; the pillar and ground of the truth.” 
 
94 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 3. But there is something more. Jacob is resolved to 
 honor God with his substance—“ Of all that Thou give 
 me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee.” The in¬ 
 stinctive feeling that an altar demands an offering is ap¬ 
 proved by many passages of Holy Scripture. But the 
 feeling comes of itself. O ye Corinthians,” says the 
 
 Apostle, “ our heart is enlarged.” That is an experience 
 which repeats itself every time the heart is opened to 
 God. Expansion and expression is a law of spiritual 
 growth. The Dead Sea is dead because it has no outlet. 
 It is always receiving and never giving. Nevertheless 
 the failure of Christians generally to fulfil the reasonable 
 requirements of God in offerings and gifts and sacrifices 
 is a deplorable fact. Under the changed conditions of 
 modern society the precise proportion named by Jacob 
 may not be, in all cases, the Christian requirement. In 
 some instances we are told that it is impossible; in many 
 others it would be too easy a demand, for to many the 
 tenth of the income would mean no sacrifice at all. For 
 most of us it would undoubtedly be a wise rule to make 
 the tenth the standard of our giving, with the conviction 
 that that proportion is our just due and that all we give 
 in addition thereto may be regarded as a free-will offer¬ 
 ing. Do we not know that all we have is derived from 
 God ? Is He not the giver of every good and perfect 
 gift ? ” Both riches and honor come of Thee, O Lord.” 
 
 The very coins we handle have stamped upon their face, 
 ” In God we trust.” Furthermore, our lives also are in 
 His hands. “ He giveth life and health to all things.” 
 How are we recognizing and meeting these obligations ? 
 Are none of us generous, nay, extravagant, towards self, 
 niggardly towards God ? Are there not communicants 
 who pay more for a single article of personal adornment 
 
The Altar. 
 
 95 
 
 or apparel than they pay for their pew, more than they 
 ever give to missions ? The Scriptures abound in warn¬ 
 ings against the perversion of God’s gifts. “ Take heed 
 and beware of covetousness.” “ If riches increase set 
 not your heart upon them.” ” Ye cannot serve God 
 and mammon.” “ They that will be rich fall into temp¬ 
 tation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful 
 lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.” 
 ” Your gold and silver is cankered and the rust of them 
 shall eat your flesh as it were fire.” “ Charge them that 
 are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor 
 trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who 
 giveth us all things richly to enjoy; that they do good, 
 that they be rich in good works, ready to give and glad 
 to distribute.” From such passages as these it appears 
 that even if our offerings were not needed for the altar of 
 Christ, the necessity of giving as an antidote for selfish¬ 
 ness would still remain. In His mercy God has placed in 
 our hands the medicine which alone can heal that deadly 
 disease of greed. And so, if the love of money is the 
 root of all evil, the right use of it in God’s sight is a 
 source of virtue and joy and peace. 
 
 To encourage Christian beneficence Holy Scripture, 
 therefore, gives precious promises of temporal care and 
 spiritual prosperity to the liberal giver. “ Trust in the 
 Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and 
 verily thou shalt be fed.” ” Honor the Lord with thy 
 substance and with the first-fruits of all thine increase; so 
 shalt thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses 
 shall burst out with new wine.” “ The liberal man de- 
 viseth liberal things and by liberal things shall he stand. 
 The liberal soul shall be made fat.” “ To do good and 
 to distribute forget not; for with such sacrifices God is 
 
9 6 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 well pleased.” “ Bring ye all the tithes into the store¬ 
 house and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and 
 pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room 
 enough to receive it.” 
 
 When Jacob ended his act of worship he departed, 
 or literally, as it is in the margin of our Bible, “ When 
 Jacob lifted up his feet.” His feet were light, for joy 
 was in his heart. He had the assurance for which our 
 Collect prays that he would be defended from all adversi¬ 
 ties which might happen to the body and from all evil 
 thoughts which might assault and hurt the soul. At the 
 Christian altar we too may lay down our burdens and go 
 on our way rejoicing. 
 
SERVING FOR RACHEL. 
 
 MONDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for 
 Rachel thy younger daughter. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel ; 
 and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.”— 
 Gen. xxix. 18, 20. 
 
 I N this chapter we see Jacob preserved from Esau’s 
 anger, escaping from the perils of his long journey, 
 and safe at last in the home of Laban his mother’s 
 brother. And here he finds Rachel. The God who met 
 him on the way and opened heaven to his wondering 
 gaze has been with him and kept him as He promised. 
 
 Now when we recall the circumstances which led to 
 Jacob’s exile from the Holy Land one fact stands out 
 with significant distinctness. It is the providence by 
 which God saved him from the murderous revenge of his 
 brother. Esau said in his heart, “ I will slay my 
 brother! ” For years Esau has despised spiritual things, 
 living for self and the senses only. Gradually he has de¬ 
 teriorated. For, 
 
 “ Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! ” 
 
 Now he has become wicked enough to desire the life of 
 the playmate of his earliest years, his only brother. Yet 
 there is one tender memory in his heart and that restrains 
 his hand; he thinks of the blind old man reclining in 
 yonder tent, so near his earthly end, and he shrinks from 
 
9 8 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 grieving his father by this deed of blood. So he puts off 
 his purpose. ‘ ‘ I will wait, ” he says, ‘ ‘ till my father dies in 
 peace; then vengeance shall be mine.’' But that delay 
 saved Jacob’s life. It is often so with us. How many 
 evil intentions fall to the ground like unripened buds in a 
 heavy gale! How many evil deeds that men design, 
 which would fill the world with horror and despair, never 
 find accomplishment ! The would-be murderer creeps to 
 the side of the sleeper’s bed, lifts his hand to strike the 
 blow of death, when something in that calm face reminds 
 him of his own mother as she lay dead, and he creeps 
 hastily away with the fear of the unseen upon him; and 
 the victim lives out his years. We cannot measure or 
 imagine what the world is saved of misery by this opera¬ 
 tion of what is naturally good in us upon what is naturally 
 bad. We may call it the restraint of our better selves 
 upon our evil selves. It is true that the wide continents 
 are already filled with the woe which follows in the wake 
 of sin; but what would the world be if, added to all this 
 evil, there were the vast and incalculable number of 
 crimes which men intended to carry out but are somehow 
 restrained from; if, in a word, the evil designs of all hu¬ 
 man hearts could grow into deeds ? 
 
 The proverb that there is “ a soft spot ” in every heart 
 is founded upon fact. Esau loved his father, and that 
 tenderness in his wild nature delayed and finally defeated 
 his purpose. But if Jacob escaped death he was not to 
 escape the penalty of that wrong which angered Esau. 
 His punishment began at once in his banishment from 
 home and lasted until guile was beaten down within his 
 soul. 
 
 His long journey at length draws near its end. One 
 morning Jacob reaches a well where are some shepherds 
 
Serving for Rachel. 
 
 99 
 
 with their sheep. The traveller at once begins to question 
 them. An old commentator remarks that no one need 
 be above asking questions and that often our failure to 
 ask them leaves us ignorant of much interesting and im¬ 
 portant information. He learns from these men that his 
 uncle lives in the neighborhood, a leading citizen, and 
 that, according to their custom, they are waiting till all 
 the flocks are gathered together before they open the 
 well. “ And here,” exclaims one of them, “ comes 
 Rachel, Laban’s daughter, with the sheep.” 
 
 As soon as Jacob sees his beautiful cousin drawing near, 
 possibly for the purpose of attracting her favorable atten¬ 
 tion, at least with the desire of rendering her a service of 
 gallantry, he takes upon himself the task of several men, 
 and putting forth all his manly strength, rolls the ” great 
 stone ” away from the well’s mouth and gives water to 
 Rachel’s flock. Then he makes himself known, embraces 
 Rachel, and weeps for joy. 
 
 In passing notice how, in this turning-point of his life, 
 Jacob’s character as a shepherd appears. No sooner did 
 he see the thirsty sheep gathered about the unopened 
 well than he longed to have them watered and led out to 
 the green pastures. All his life long he kept and cared 
 for the sheep; and in this respect, as in many others, he 
 pointed forward to that Redeemer who was the Good 
 Shepherd of mankind. 
 
 In Laban’s home Jacob remained for a month as a 
 visitor. His uncle soon discovered that his youthful 
 kinsman possessed a thorough mastery of the shepherd’s 
 calling, and he was eager to secure his services for a term 
 of years. In what follows, a true Eastern pastoral, un¬ 
 surpassed in beauty and pathos by the later classics, we 
 shall want to hear once more the charming words of the 
 
IOO 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 old narrative itself: “ And Laban said unto Jacob, Be¬ 
 cause thou art my brother, shouldest thou therefore serve 
 me for nought ? tell me, what shall thy wages be ? And 
 Laban had two daughters: the name of the elder was Leah, 
 and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah was ten¬ 
 der eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favored. And 
 Jacob loved Rachel ; and said, I will serve thee seven 
 years for Rachel thy younger daughter. And Laban 
 said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I 
 should give her to another man: abide with me. And 
 Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed 
 unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.” 
 
 Laban’s proposition opened the way for Jacob to de¬ 
 clare his love; and, as he had no dower to offer, he 
 eagerly grasped the opportunity to propose for her this 
 long term of personal service. And these years, we are 
 told, seemed short because of his great love. There are 
 other human passions,—hate, avarice, fear, ambition,— 
 which have held men constant to long, laborious tasks, 
 but love alone could make the time seem short. It is 
 easy to believe that these seven years while the child 
 Rachel became a woman were the happiest days of Jacob’s 
 chequered life. Every reader sees clearly that his con¬ 
 stant love for Rachel is one of the marked things in his 
 career. That love never wavered, and her name was on 
 his dying lips. Coleridge has said, “ No man could be 
 a bad man who loved as Jacob loved Rachel.” The say¬ 
 ing may be true; but we shall quite miss the meaning of 
 his life if we admit that there can be any question of 
 his “ goodness.” He was accepted of God. He was a 
 spiritual man. His history is the story of the conflict 
 between his higher and his lower natures and the slow 
 but final victory of the spirit over the flesh. 
 
Serving for Rachel. ioi 
 
 We are to see, therefore, in the great disappointment 
 of his affections not only a merited punishment but also 
 a Divine discipline. How often does the old saying 
 come true that God pays us in our own coin! So in the 
 present instance we see the deceiver deceived and the 
 cheat cheated. When the seven years’ service ended 
 the marriage feast was prepared. Then the heartless 
 Laban took his weak-eyed elder daughter, and disguising 
 her beneath the ample veil which custom demanded for 
 a bride, substituted her for her younger sister Rachel. 
 When Jacob discovered the fraud he did not repudiate 
 the marriage. He submitted with what Martin Luther 
 calls “ superhuman patience.” With a breaking heart 
 he acknowledged to himself that the measure he had 
 meted out to others was now meted to him again — that 
 in this thing God was seeking to make all trickery and 
 guile odious to him forever. What Rachel said and 
 thought is not recorded. When Laban saw that Jacob 
 was ready to sacrifice his love and the labor of years to the 
 claims of religion, this avaricious and unfatherly father 
 proposed that he should also marry Rachel and serve him 
 yet seven other years for her. Polygamy, while not un¬ 
 usual or unlawful, was virtually forced upon Jacob. It 
 speaks much for him that he did not himself propose or 
 demand a second marriage. And so Jacob continued to 
 serve for Rachel for seven additional years. 
 
 This discipline was good for Jacob’s soul. By this 
 means the doubleness, indirection, prevarication, natu¬ 
 rally so strong in him, was beaten down and kept 
 under. 
 
 Let us too submit thankfully to the chastisement of 
 the Lord. If we have made the great choice, all that is 
 laid on us is designed to make us loathe our sins, to lift 
 
102 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 up our hearts, and to guide our feet into the paths of 
 righteousness and peace. As has been said: “ God de¬ 
 lights to see grace in us at all times; but He loves not to 
 see it latent. He desires it to be in exercise. And in 
 order to bring it into exercise He uses the instrumentality 
 of suffering. The leaves of the aromatic plant shed but 
 a faint odor, as they wave in the air. The gold shines 
 scarcely at all as it lies hid in the ore. The rugged crust 
 of the pebble conceals from the eye its interior beauty. 
 But let the aromatic leaf be crushed ; let the ore be sub¬ 
 mitted to the furnace ; let the pebble be cut and polished; 
 and the fragrance, the splendor, the fair colors are then 
 brought out: ”— 
 
 “ This leaf ? This stone? It is thy heart : 
 It must be crushed by pain and smart, 
 
 It must be cleansed by sorrow’s art— 
 
 Ere it will yield a fragrance sweet, 
 
 Ere it will shine, a jewel meet 
 To lay before thy dear Lord’s feet.” 
 
THE RETURN. 
 
 TUESDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where 
 thou vowedst a vow unto me ; now arise, get thee out from this land, and 
 return unto the land of thy kindred.”—Gen. xxxi. 13. 
 
 I N the story of the fourteen years of Jacob’s service for 
 Rachel there is nothing set down to his discredit. 
 To Laban, his father-in-law, he was a faithful servant. 
 He served God, too, with all his heart. His untiring 
 industry, his intelligent supervision of every detail of his 
 work, his masterful yet kindly rule over his keepers and 
 dependants, his gifts of management and organization, 
 and his keen daily oversight of all his business, speedily 
 won its reward, and the flocks under his care throve and 
 multiplied. Laban’s chief shepherd in a few years made 
 his master a rich man. As the seasons passed the vision 
 at Bethel was ever with him, his occupation was congenial 
 and arduous, his children grew up under his own eye, the 
 constant example of his tricky father-in-law helped to 
 make guile, his besetting sin, odious; while the childless¬ 
 ness of his beloved Rachel was, perhaps, the only shadow 
 over these toilsome yet healthful and blessed years. 
 
 It is true that the polygamy which was almost forced 
 upon him produced its inevitable harvest of jealousies 
 and heart-burnings. In that early age of the world, 
 however, it was often the least of many evils, and in the 
 present instance seems to have been tolerated, even ap¬ 
 proved of God, who brought good out of the evil. The 
 
 103 
 
104 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 early Christian fathers, who were almost contemporary 
 with the Apostles, dwell at length upon the spiritual and 
 mystical meaning of this portion of the patriarch’s life. 
 According to these holy men of old, Jacob, the son 
 blessed of his father, who became a pilgrim, an exile, a 
 shepherd and a servant, for the sake of Rachel whom he 
 loved, is a type of Jesus Christ. Rachel, whose name 
 signifies a “ sheep,” represents the lost sheep Christ 
 loved and suffered for that they might become a Church 
 ” Espoused to Himself in mystical wedlock, by His 
 blessed Word and Sacraments,” purchased with His own 
 precious blood. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Ambrose 
 saw also in Jacob’s twelve sons, heads of the Twelve 
 Tribes of Israel, born of different mothers, “ a fore¬ 
 shadowing that all spiritual Israelites derive their life 
 from Christ. Jacob loved Rachel and his design was to 
 have one, and only one, wife. So in Christ’s will and 
 desire, there is one Catholic Church, from the beginning 
 to the end of the world. But all that is human is marred 
 by blemishes and sullied by stains of sin. Still God’s 
 purposes are not overthrown; Christ is the one author 
 and giver of spiritual grace wheresoever it flows. Leah 
 was clandestinely introduced into wedlock with Jacob. 
 Rachel was not exempt from envy and jealousy; so the 
 Church in this world has many spots and wrinkles of 
 human infirmities. Separate congregations are conse¬ 
 quences of her sin and barrenness. But wheresoever 
 Christians are born, whether it be at Jerusalem or Sam¬ 
 aria, whether it be in the unity of the Church, or in 
 schismatical sects, all their spiritual life, all their spiritual 
 grace, all their hopes of blessing from God, are derived 
 from Him who became a physician, a servant and a 
 ' shepherd for their sakes; the true Jacob—the promised 
 
The Return. 
 
 *05 
 
 seed of Abraham, the ever blessed son, Jesus Christ.” 
 In such a winning way did the first Christian teachers 
 combine sound Church doctrine with the charity and bal¬ 
 ance learned from those who had seen Christ. 
 
 When Joseph was born Jacob seems to have regarded 
 him as the heir of promise. About this time, too, his sec¬ 
 ond term of service came to an end. The way appeared 
 open for his return with Joseph to the land of promise; 
 and so he said to Laban, ” Send me away, that I may go 
 unto mine own place and to my country.” Laban, 
 alarmed at the prospect of losing the man whose skill 
 had enriched him, at once acknowledges his obligations 
 to Jacob, even owning that the Lord had blessed him for 
 Jacob’s sake, and offers to pay his nephew from that time 
 forth his own price. “ Appoint me thy wages,” says 
 Laban, ” and I will give it.” It is clear that the crafty 
 old man had never read what was written behind the 
 calm and patient eyes of his son-in-law. He said to him¬ 
 self, ‘‘ I have cheated and managed him for fourteen years; 
 it will be easy to keep him in my power.” When Jacob, 
 therefore, accepted the offer and proceeded to name his 
 terms for another period of service, Laban with difficulty 
 could restrain or conceal his greedy joy as he promptly 
 closed the bargain. He had expected, as a matter of 
 course, to get the advantage of his simple and pious rela¬ 
 tive, but he scarcely had counted on doing it so speedily 
 and entirely. And what was Jacob’s proposition ? He 
 agreed to serve a third seven years, not for payment in 
 money, but on condition of receiving for his own all the 
 spotted, speckled, brown, and ringstraked animals the 
 flocks of Laban might produce; while, to begin with, 
 Laban was to be permitted to remove to a place three 
 miles away all animals which were not already pure white. 
 
106 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 The young man seemed determined to cheat himself. 
 Evidently he had no head for business. Laban’s prompt 
 acceptance of the offer shows that he was an utterly 
 avaricious and unscrupulous man. 
 
 On the other hand, when we attempt to analyze Jacob’s 
 motives in proposing these terms we meet with consider¬ 
 able difficulty. We know he was not the simple and 
 unsophisticated youth he seemed to Laban. We must 
 remember that he had a keen and strong mind. He had 
 become, too, the most skilful shepherd in all the land. 
 He put brains into his work. He knew what was going 
 on. What, then, was the outcome of this bargain ? 
 Jacob’s flocks and herds increased almost miraculously, 
 and he was soon a master and prosperous proprietor on 
 his own account. Jacob himself tells us that God blessed 
 him, gave him skill, and enriched him, and that the arti¬ 
 fices he employed were revealed to him in a dream. But 
 the commentators are not agreed upon this point. Some 
 say, “ He sets himself to secure the very wealth which 
 God had promised to bestow upon him, by base and 
 crooked means; ” that “ we might as soon sprinkle rose¬ 
 water on a sewer as attempt to justify Jacob’s morality ; ” 
 that he even “ uses religious language to conceal his 
 duplicity.” On the contrary, the more conservative and 
 accepted authorities assure us that “ there was nothing 
 fraudulent whatever in what Jacob did.” The truth lies 
 probably between these two extremes. Jacob knew he 
 was dealing with a rogue, and the natural man in him, 
 the crafty man, loving indirection and doubleness, and 
 loving money, rose up to meet the cunning opposed to 
 him. “ It was diamond cut diamond.” The Jacob- 
 nature, subdued by the vision at Bethel, was not dead, 
 and, in this congenial air, revived. We know not what 
 
The Return. 
 
 107 
 
 inward battles he fought against selfishness and guile; 
 we know only that each one of us has the same enemy, 
 called self within, and that we must each plead to God 
 with all our might: 
 
 “ God harden me against myself, 
 
 This traitor with pathetic voice 
 
 Which craves for ease, and rest, and joys ; 
 
 Myself arch-traitor to myself, 
 
 My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, 
 
 My clog whatever road I go.” 
 
 At length Laban’s sons became jealous of Jacob and 
 accused him of dishonesty. Laban himself was suspicious 
 and envious; and Jacob “ beheld the countenance of 
 Laban, and behold, it was not toward him as before.” 
 These troubles evidently led Jacob to his prayers and 
 meditations, for soon he seemed to hear a voice speaking 
 in his ear the words of the text: “ I am the God of 
 Bethel, where thou anointedst a pillar, and where thou 
 vowedst a vow unto Me: arise, get thee out of this land, 
 and return unto the land of thy kindred.” And Jacob 
 obeyed the call. 
 
 Notice the significance of the expression, “ I am the 
 God of Bethel.” He is reminded of the place where his 
 heart was touched and where he made his vow. These 
 words seemed to say to him, ” I am the same Divine 
 Friend who met you in your sins and forgave you; I am 
 the promise-keeping God; I have not forsaken you; I 
 have kept you; I am with you. I am the God of those 
 early mercies; I saved you then; I have saved you many 
 times since; what I have been to you is the pledge and 
 assurance of what I will be to you. At Bethel also you 
 vowed to be Mine, saying, The Lord shall be my God. 
 Forget not that you are Mine.” 
 
io8 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 God speaks likewise to each one of us: “At the altar 
 you too vowed before men and angels that you would 
 love and serve Me to the end. Keep that vow. I will 
 help you keep it, and save you in spite of yourself.” 
 
THE PURSUIT. 
 
 WEDNESDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And Mizpab ; for he said, The Lord watch between me and thee, 
 when we are absent one from another.”—Gen. xxxi. 49. 
 
 I N the twenty-first year of his exile Jacob is summoned 
 to return to the land of promise. Fourteen of these 
 years he served for Rachel and the time seemed short 
 because of the great love wherewith he loved her. In 
 the last seven years, free to gather the earthly goods his 
 heart craved, he became a rich man. His flocks and 
 herds increased so rapidly, almost miraculously, that 
 Laban, his father-in-law, influenced by the accusations 
 of his sons, brothers of Rachel and Leah, was jealous of 
 Jacob’s success and doubtful of his honesty: “And 
 Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban that it was not 
 toward him as before.’’ We are told that Jacob not only 
 noticed the changed demeanor of Laban but also that he 
 “ heard the words of Laban’s sons. ” Some report of the 
 accusations these young men were making was brought 
 to Jacob’s ears. What others are saying of us—how few 
 can hear that with indifference! How often has some 
 such report determined our own course of action! 
 
 The discord about him, therefore, and the suspicions, 
 joined, perhaps, to the pricking of conscience within, led 
 Jacob to accept with prompt obedience the Divine sum¬ 
 mons to depart and seek once more the land of his birth, 
 the land of promise. As usual, however, he acts de¬ 
 liberately. He makes his plans beforehand and is ready 
 
 109 
 
I IO 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 to take advantage of every favorable circumstance. So 
 when his father-in-law gathered all his family and depen¬ 
 dants for the annual sheep-shearing at a place three days’ 
 journey from Jacob’s habitation he decided that the time 
 for his flight was at hand. He placed his wives and chil¬ 
 dren, eleven sons and one daughter, “ upon camels, and 
 carried away all his cattle and all his goods; and stole 
 away unawares to Laban the Syrian. So he fled with all 
 that he had.” He took all that belonged to him, but 
 nothing more. Rachel, his wife, however, without her 
 husband’s knowledge, “ had stolen the images that were 
 her father’s.” Rachel’s theft of these images or “ tera- 
 phim,” as they are called in the margin of our Bible, 
 shows that she had not entirely freed herself from the 
 semi-idolatrous faith and practices in which she had been 
 reared. Possibly she wished to prevent Laban from dis¬ 
 covering by the aid of his gods the direction of Jacob’s 
 flight; probably she wished to consult them herself should 
 danger come upon the fugitives; perhaps, as has been 
 conjectured, she coveted the silver or gold of which the 
 gods were made. 
 
 For ten days Jacob has continued his journey in safety. 
 He has placed at least three hundred miles between him¬ 
 self and Laban. He is nearing the borders of the Holy 
 Land. Bethel, where twenty years ago the God of his 
 fathers had spoken to his soul, is not far off. 
 
 As he journeyed his thoughts would range over the 
 gracious providences which had gone before and followed 
 him through all the years. He would perceive that his 
 growing riches were endangering his spiritual life; that 
 he had been doing that foolish thing most of us have 
 sometimes done, barring God out of his life with God’s 
 own gifts; making his inward life like 
 
The Pursuit. 
 
 111 
 
 “ The pleached bower 
 Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun 
 Forbid the sun to enter.” 
 
 One other thought must have been often with Jacob 
 on his way to meet the God of Bethel, the thought of his 
 own personality. He knew that he was the same man 
 who was once in Bethel long ago; that he had preserved 
 his identity, had retained his self-conscious memory. 
 John Stuart Mill has truly said, “ The mind might be 
 regarded as a mere series of feelings . . . were it not 
 
 for the memory.” And so when Jacob remembered that 
 twenty years previously he had seen the Ladder-vision at 
 Bethel, in that recollection his keen intellect would note 
 at least three things: first, the fact remembered; second, 
 the mind which remembered the fact; and third, the 
 certainty that the mind which remembered the fact was 
 the same mind as that which experienced the fact. The 
 permanence of his soul, or self, his abiding personality, 
 would assert itself. He was the same man. But could 
 that self be the body, or of the body ? No, for the 
 body changes, and we have many bodies. Could it be 
 the brain ? Even the materialists themselves confess the 
 impossibility of storing up the contents of a human mem¬ 
 ory, the record of all that has been seen, heard, felt, 
 thought, and read, “ in three pounds’ weight of albumin¬ 
 ous and fatty tissue.” The mind, the soul, the self, uses 
 the body as its instrument, but is itself living, never- 
 dying, conscious and self-conscious and eternal. As he 
 journeyed homeward Jacob thought of these things. 
 
 In the meantime Laban is in hot pursuit of the fugitives. 
 With a force of armed men, on swift dromedaries, carry¬ 
 ing only necessities, on the tenth day he overtook Jacob’s 
 
I 12 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 slow-moving company in Gilead. Here, his prey securely 
 snared, he encamped for needed rest. On the morrow 
 he would wreak his vengeance and recover his stolen 
 goods and his cattle. But that night the God of Jacob 
 visited Laban in a dream, warning him that he must do 
 his kinsman no harm; an admonition which, with a 
 strange mixture of faith and superstition, he feared to 
 disregard. In the morning, when the two leaders met, 
 Laban preferred his charges against Jacob, and demanded 
 the restoration of his gods. He reminds his nephew that 
 he is in his power and informs him that were it not for 
 his dream he would not stand parleying but at once pro¬ 
 ceed to right these wrongs. Jacob replies with his usual 
 astuteness, passing lightly but frankly over the main 
 charge. He acknowledges that he slipped away secretly; 
 but this, he says, was due to fear—he was afraid Laban 
 would not let him go, or would compel him to leave his 
 family and his goods behind him. Upon the accusation 
 of the theft of the teraphim, however, in ignorance of 
 Rachel’s act, he waxes eloquent, denying the crime and 
 boldly demanding a search. The search begins. Each 
 tent is examined without result. At last the searchers 
 reach Rachel’s temporary dwelling, where, we are told, 
 she had the images concealed beneath a camel’s saddle. 
 If little Joseph, playing about, had with sharp eyes dis¬ 
 covered his mother’s secret, he did not betray her. When 
 the searchers entered, Rachel at once showed herself to 
 be her father’s daughter and no novice in craft, as, with¬ 
 out the slightest manifestation of concern, she reclined 
 upon the saddle and asked her father to excuse her from 
 rising to receive him, as she was indisposed; whereupon, 
 after looking elsewhere about the tent in vain, Laban 
 was compelled to acknowledge Jacob’s innocence and to 
 
The Pursuit. 
 
 113 
 
 take a milder tone. Then Jacob, with growing self- 
 confidence, indignant at what he believed to be a trumped- 
 up charge, “ unpacks his heart in words ” : “ And Jacob 
 answered and said to Laban, What is my trespass ? 
 what is my sin, that thou hast so hotly pursued after 
 me ? Whereas thou hast searched all my stuff, what hast 
 thou found ? ” For “ twenty years have I been with 
 thee” keeping thy flock. “ That which was torn of 
 beasts I brought not unto thee ” to escape payment for 
 it; “ I bore the loss of it; of my hand didst thou require it, 
 whether stolen by day, or stolen by night. Thus I was; 
 in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by 
 night; and my sleep departed from mine eyes. 
 
 Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and 
 the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely thou hadst 
 sent me away now empty. God hath seen mine affliction 
 and the labor of my hands, and rebuked thee yester¬ 
 night ” in the dream. Laban could not deny the truth 
 of this outburst of natural eloquence, and, softened per¬ 
 haps by the sight of his children and grandchildren, 
 agreed to let him go on condition that he should enter 
 into a covenant to deal kindly with his wives and children 
 and never return to Padan-aram to trouble him any more. 
 So an altar was set up, each swore to the covenant by his 
 God, and they called the place “ Mizpah ”—“ The Lord 
 watch between me and thee when we are absent one from 
 another.” 
 
 To-day let us meditate upon the words in which Jacob 
 describes his good care of Laban’s sheep. “ That which 
 was torn of beasts I brought not to thee; I bore the loss 
 of it; of my hand didst thou require it.” In the same 
 way our Good Shepherd has made Himself answerable 
 
 for us even when torn by the enemy. Jacob never 
 
 '8 
 
114 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 wearied in “ the day the drought consumed ” him, re¬ 
 minding us of Him who sat down at Jacob’s well endur¬ 
 ing thirst that He might give living water to one lost 
 sheep there, rather than be served by taking the earthly 
 water from her hand. “ The frost ” was thick upon me 
 “ by night,” says Jacob, “ and my sleep departed from 
 mine eyes; ” and we think of Him who rose before the 
 day to pray, and who, stripped and bleeding, shivered 
 with the cold on the night of His passion. May that 
 Good Shepherd evermore guard and bless and keep us all! 
 
JACOB’S PRAYER. 
 
 THURSDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ 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.”—Gen. xxxii. II. 
 
 HE thirty-second chapter of Genesis is one of the 
 
 1 great chapters in the life of the patriarch Jacob. 
 It gives us Mahanaim, Jabbok, and Peniel, the angel 
 host, the prayer by the fords, and the wrestling with the 
 Nameless One in the night. Jacob’s temporal as well as 
 his spiritual history here begins anew. His prayer, from 
 which the text is taken, is one of the most familiar and 
 helpful passages in the Bible. To-day let us consider the 
 events which preceded and called forth his prayer, and 
 then hear the prayer itself. 
 
 i. After an exile of twenty years Jacob is returning to 
 the land of promise. He left home with nothing but 
 his staff in his hand; fourteen years he served for Rachel; 
 then he made a bargain with Laban, his father-in-law, to 
 work for a certain portion of the profits; and in these 
 last years he accumulated a fortune and “ increased ex¬ 
 ceedingly and had much cattle, and maidservants, and 
 menservants, and camels and asses.” But while he grew 
 rich in worldly goods his spiritual life declined. His vis¬ 
 ion at Bethel long years ago did not, as we see, make him 
 perfect; his conversion, the touch of God upon his soul, 
 did not entirely exterminate the roots of evil within him. 
 If it had he would not have been like one of us. 
 
116 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 At length God called him to arise and to return to his 
 native land. In parting from his father-in-law, which he 
 succeeded in doing with some difficulty and danger, 
 Jacob left behind him a “ magnified image of himself.” 
 In this man his own besetting sin of guile was ever before 
 him in its most unlovely aspects, that he might learn to 
 see all its baseness; and “ the sight of his own faults writ 
 large in the coarser texture of Laban’s character ” seems 
 to have been a living lesson which was not set before him 
 in vain. 
 
 2. With his caravan Jacob pushed on to the southward, 
 and not far from the borders of the Holy Land pitched 
 his camp for a short but needed rest. Here in the night 
 a vision of angels appeared to him, the same angels, no 
 doubt, who visited him in his Ladder-dream ; and he said, 
 “ This is God’s host, and he called the name of that 
 place Mahanaim.” Full of comfort and encouragement 
 was this visitation, for it assured him that he was under 
 the Divine protection, and that as he had just escaped 
 from Laban so he would also be brought safely through 
 the danger which threatened in his approaching meeting 
 with his brother Esau. 
 
 To meet angels on our way to our own land is symbol¬ 
 ical of reaching degrees of holiness. It means that our 
 virtues are revealing themselves to us; that growth in 
 grace is realized in its ripening. There are seasons in the 
 life of the believer when a discipline which has been going 
 on in the soul for a greater or lesser length oi time bears 
 fruit. We have been growing better and better and 
 knew it not. We have been gaining strength and only 
 felt our weakness. We have been in grief and sorrow 
 and knew not that suddenly we were to find a light 
 arising out of the darkness. Then in some hour of 
 
Jacob’s Prayer. 
 
 ii 7 
 
 danger, when some Esau from out a long-forgotten past 
 emerges, or some great difficulty seems about to over¬ 
 whelm us, the power of good in the recent discipline of 
 events gathers up its strength, and lo ! we behold in it 
 an angel. It trembles into visibility. It takes on the 
 smile of the morning. It points and beckons heaven¬ 
 ward. It holds on high the shield of our defence. It 
 sweeps the chilly earth with its warm and roseate wings. 
 We are consoled; we are visited with comforts from 
 above. We lift up our hearts and say, “ This is God’s 
 host. In God will I rejoice; yea in God’s word will I com¬ 
 fort me.” We are continually growing better if we are 
 religious; if we live lives of faith and prayer; if we dwell 
 in Christ and Christ dwells in us; if we daily endeavor our¬ 
 selves to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life. 
 The discipline of a well-kept Lent may reveal itself thus 
 to us in the near future, and growth in grace be realized 
 in its ripening. 
 
 3 . As we go on with the story we see that a man who 
 has learned to pray is equal to any emergency which can 
 possibly arise. The messengers Jacob has sent forward 
 return with the report that from the tents of Esau four 
 hundred armed men are advancing. The crisis is upon 
 him. The great sin of his youth, the sin of deceiving his 
 father and cheating his brother, will not down; it has 
 dogged him all his life; and now Jacob must meet it 
 face to face and vanquish or be vanquished. Notice that 
 he does not lose his self-possession. When these evil 
 tidings fall upon him his heart standeth fast. His keen 
 mind at once recognizes the hopelessness either of retreat 
 or of resistance, and so he calls upon his God. But he 
 thinks and acts as well as prays. 
 
 In the first place he sends his brother a message of 
 
118 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 kindness and peace. Then he sends him valuable pre¬ 
 sents, anticipating the wisdom of Solomon that “ a man’s 
 gift maketh room for himself” and “ pacifieth anger.” 
 Then he follows kindness with prudence, dividing his 
 company into two bands, with the hope that if worse 
 comes to worst one band at least in the darkness and 
 confusion may escape the fury of the avenger. Having 
 exhausted his own resources Jacob leaves the issue with 
 God. In his behavior at this time he sets us an excellent 
 example. This truly religious man is no fanatic. He 
 prays, and his prayer is a perfect model of supplication; 
 but he also thinks and acts. He does not imagine that 
 prayer can take the place of prudence any more than 
 that prudence can take the place of prayer. He gives no 
 encouragement to those who in sickness reject physicians 
 and medicine and rely upon faith alone. Notice, too, 
 that he does not ask or expect God to deliver him by de¬ 
 stroying Esau and his men; he asks only for some pro¬ 
 vidential stirring of better memories or better thoughts 
 which may turn his brother from his evil purpose. And 
 so in this story of Jacob’s danger we find working together 
 to a happy end kindness, prudence, and prayer. Let us 
 mark the value of the three working together; for if in 
 all our difficulties, trials, and misunderstandings with 
 others, we also exercise the three, we shall usually find a 
 happy issue out of all. 
 
 4. This leads on to the words of Jacob’s prayer. A 
 prayer, “ the combined beauty and power, humility and 
 boldness, brevity and comprehensiveness of which ” has 
 been universally recognized. ” And Jacob said, 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 
 
Jacob’s Prayer. 
 
 u 9 
 
 worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, 
 which thou hast shewed 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 Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, 
 and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot 
 be numbered for multitude.” And Jacob’s prayer was 
 answered. God appeased Esau. The next morning 
 when Esau awoke, lo! his purpose of revenge had van¬ 
 ished. 
 
 “ Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will deliver 
 thee.” These words stand verified by the experience of 
 believers in every age and race and circumstance. Have 
 we been taught the power of prevailing prayer ? Do we 
 know from a blessed personal experience that we have a 
 prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering God ? Have we 
 learned the lesson which holy men in all ages in nearly 
 the same words have so urgently impressed upon us : 
 that prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance, but tak¬ 
 ing hold upon God’s willingness ? If we have made such 
 blessed certainties our own, we may confidently meet 
 all the changes and chances of this mortal life, resting 
 upon the great facts of Revelation and experience to 
 which Browning has testified in two lines,— 
 
 “ The work began when first your prayer was uttered, 
 
 And God will finish what He has begun.” 
 
 It is true there are difficulties in prayer, that objections 
 are made to prayer. But one of the best answers to all ob¬ 
 jections is that the human heart must pray—cannot help 
 praying; and that, therefore, that which is so spontaneous 
 
I 20 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 and truly natural is implanted by the Creator and must 
 have its normal and lawful exercise according to His will. 
 Abraham Lincoln once said, “ I have been driven many 
 times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that 
 I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that 
 of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day.” 
 “ And,” writes St. John, “ this is the confidence that 
 we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to 
 His will, He heareth us; and if we know that He hear- 
 eth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the 
 petitions that we desired of Him.” 
 
THE MERCIES OF GOD. 
 
 FRIDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, 
 which thou hast shewed unto thy servant.”—Gen. xxxii. io. 
 
 HESE are among the opening words of Jacob’s great 
 
 1 prayer. His brother Esau is advancing against him 
 with four hundred armed men. Jacob has put his mind 
 to the task of saving himself. He has thought out the 
 problem and has acted upon his thoughts. He can do 
 no more; and so, as the shadows of the Eastern night 
 begin to fall, he retires to a solitary spot near the ford of 
 the river Jabbok, and there he calls upon his God. This 
 beautiful prayer has furnished themes for many sermons 
 and is rich in spiritual lessons. 
 
 i. In the first place it is the prayer of humility. “ I 
 am not worthy of the least of all Thy mercies.” In the 
 attitude of humility alone can the creature consistently 
 approach the Creator. We cannot say, “ I thank Thee 
 that I am not as other men are; ” we cannot use the lan¬ 
 guage of merit before our Maker; the man who pleads 
 his own merit, as some one has said, does not pray, he 
 but demands his due. And if Jacob’s words are the 
 natural expression of the human heart in great distress 
 or danger, if self-righteousness instantly flees from our 
 hearts and lips when the ship is sinking, when the loved 
 one lies in the clutch of some disease, then, surely, it is 
 equally out of place in all real prayer. As St. Augustine 
 
 121 
 
122 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 has said, “ The sufficiency of my merit is to know that 
 my merit is not sufficient/’ 
 
 Notice, also, that Jacob uses the present tense, “ I am 
 not worthy of the least of all Thy mercies and Thy truth; ” 
 literally, “ I am less than them all.” He does not say, as 
 we sometimes do, “ O Lord, I was a miserable sinner, 
 when I was young, when I fell from grace, when I met that 
 great temptation few could have withstood.” He does 
 not say, ” I was unworthy when I cheated Esau twenty 
 years ago; I was not strictly honest in my dealings with 
 Laban seven years ago.” No, he brings his confession 
 down to date: “ I am in the prime of life, I am rich and 
 great, but I am not worthy of the least of all Thy mercies.” 
 Humility is not only an essential quality in all real 
 prayer; it is also an integral part of Christian character 
 itself. And yet so delicate a thing is this grace that it is 
 scarcely safe even to be conscious of it, and the moment 
 we speak of our own humility we cease to be humble. 
 And so subtle a sin is spiritual pride that it often leads 
 us to deceive ourselves and to attempt to deceive others. 
 Coleridge, who frequently went to the root of things, was 
 not far wrong when he said: 
 
 “ And the devil did grin, 
 
 For his darling sin is pride that apes humility.” 
 
 Humility seems to be, furthermore, a plant of slow 
 growth. In this age and in this country it will be safe 
 to say that it is not conspicuous in the words and ways of 
 the young. Many an upstart youth is wiser than the 
 Creeds and has outgrown the “ literature ” of the Testa¬ 
 ments. The social decencies and usages and laws which 
 have been formulated by the wisdom and experience of 
 his fathers are irksome. But a right estimate of our- 
 
The Mercies of God. 
 
 123 
 
 selves, and some knowledge of the mercies and the truth 
 of God, teach humility. Years of prayer also humble 
 the soul. When the wheat is young it lifts up its head; 
 when it is nearly ripe it bows and bends lower than when 
 it was green. Only out of a lifelong Christian experi¬ 
 ence can any of us say with perfect sincerity in the day 
 of safety and success, “ I am not worthy of the least of 
 all the mercies of God.” 
 
 2. Again, this is the prayer of faith. Jacob does not 
 address a stranger, or an impersonal force, or a tendency, 
 or a law. He calls upon the living, loving God, who is 
 his God, whom he knows, who knows him. “ O God 
 of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the 
 Lord.” He appeals to the God of the Covenant, the 
 Deity who had blessed his father and his grandfather, 
 enriching them with precious promises which he had in¬ 
 herited, and who had personally touched his own soul 
 and spoken to him in promise and command. “ O God of 
 my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac.” Can 
 you say that ? O God of my father.” “My father’s 
 God art Thou.” If you know that, if your father’s pray¬ 
 ers have gone before you, let them be followed by your 
 own. “ Thine own and thy father’s friend, forsake 
 not.” And what an argument is this to lead parents to 
 become consistent communicants of the Church! If it 
 be true, as it is, that we never quite know what our 
 parents’ hearts felt for us till we become parents our¬ 
 selves, that when we first hold our own child in our arms 
 God opens the doors of the past and reveals to us the 
 sacredness and the mystery of our own father’s and 
 mother’s love for us—if this be true, is it not also true 
 that if we know our parents loved us in the Lord, dedi¬ 
 cated us in prayer to Him who gave the gift, such 
 
124 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 knowledge must ever be the strongest of those “ gold 
 chains ” which knit us to the throne of God ? If you 
 have taught your children to pray and prayed with and 
 for them, if they have seen you kneel before the Sacra¬ 
 ment of Jesus’s love, be assured, whatever else they for¬ 
 get, they will never forget that. Will you not make it 
 possible for those you love to say in the dark day—and 
 the dark day will come for them ; you cannot keep it from 
 them—will you not by your faith and practice make it 
 possible for them to exclaim in the season of temptation 
 and sorrow and despair, “ O God of my father, O God 
 of my mother, you helped him in that day when there 
 was no help to be found in man, you strengthened her 
 in her hour of anguish, O help me! ” 
 
 Notice, too, the beautiful simplicity of the prayer 
 which springs from faith. Short, direct, artless, a con¬ 
 fiding child might have uttered it to an earthly parent to 
 whom it had fled for refuge. “ Deliver me, I pray Thee, 
 from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he will come 
 
 and smite me.” And in these childlike words we meet 
 
 « 
 
 one of the deep things of human life—fear and faith 
 joined together; and, paradoxical as it may seem, the 
 two contradictory feelings experienced at one and the 
 same time; fear for the future and faith in God—the 
 same thought to which David gives utterance when he 
 cries, “ What time I am afraid I will trust in Thee.” 
 
 And such,” as Robertson has said, ” our Christian 
 life must ever be; not an entire life of rest, for we have 
 sinned; nor an entire life of unrest, for God has for¬ 
 given us; but in all life a mixture of the two. Christ 
 alone had perfect tranquillity, for He alone had perfect 
 purity.” 
 
 3. Again, Jacob pleads the promises. 
 
 “ ‘ Thou saidst, 
 
The Mercies of God. 
 
 125 
 
 I will deal well with thee; Thou saidst, I will surely do 
 thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea.’ 
 If Esau slay my children that promise fails. These 
 promises were made at Bethel and Jacob boldly and 
 fervently reminds the Promiser of His pledged word. 
 The prophet Isaiah represents God as saying to His 
 people, “ ‘ Put Me in remembrance ’ of My promises and 
 call upon Me.” And so when Jacob pleads the promises 
 his feet are on the rock,—“ Thou saidst.” ” Thou hast 
 promised.” To learn the promises of Holy Scripture is 
 therefore an essential part of the education of a Christ¬ 
 ian. God’s pledged word He will make good, for it is 
 impossible for Him to lie. And when we can take a 
 promise, as Jacob did, and turn it into a prayer, we also 
 shall lay hold upon the mighty God of Jacob. Thou 
 hast said, “ Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall 
 find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Lord, I 
 ask; I seek; I knock! Thou hast said, “ A clean heart 
 will I give thee, and a new spirit will I put within thee.” 
 Create in me, O God, a clean heart, and renew a right 
 spirit within me! Thou hast said, ” Call upon Me in the 
 day of trouble and I will deliver thee.” I, this day, O 
 blessed Lord, am in trouble; deliver me from it, and 
 sanctify it to my soul’s good that I too may say, “ It is 
 good for me that I have been in trouble; before I was 
 troubled I went wrong, but now have I kept Thy 
 word! ” 
 
 Let us, in humility and in faith, pleading the promises, 
 freely also open our hearts to our Heavenly Father, tell¬ 
 ing out to Him all our sorrows, fears, and dangers, and 
 we shall be heard and answered and delivered as Jacob 
 was of old. Can we doubt it ? Shall we be surprised 
 that God keeps His word ? 
 
126 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 “ I stood amazed, and whispered, Can it be 
 That He hath granted all the boon I sought ? 
 
 How wonderful that He hath answered me ! 
 
 O faithless heart ! He said that He would hear 
 And answer thy poor prayer ; and He hath heard, 
 
 And proved His promise ! Wherefore didst thou fear? 
 Why marvel that the Lord hath kept His word ? 
 
 More wonderful if He should fail to bless 
 Expectant faith and prayer with good success ! ” 
 
TWO BANDS. 
 
 SATURDAY AFTER THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “With my staff I passed over this Jordan ; and now I am become two 
 bands.”—Gen. xxxii. io. 
 
 I T is a true saying that “ a grateful thought towards 
 heaven is of itself a prayer.” While earnestly pray¬ 
 ing God to save his life, his goods, and his family from 
 the avenging hand of Esau, Jacob yields to a mood of 
 thanksgiving which graciously sweeps down upon his 
 heart. His own sin and unworthiness have been con¬ 
 fessed—“ I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies 
 and of all the truth which Thou hast shewed unto Thy 
 servant; ” now he will dwell upon the plenteousness of 
 these mercies which he has received—“All Thy mercies.” 
 Let me, said Jacob, count them up, year by year, and 
 realize how great and how free these mercies have been. 
 Doubtless, too, his sense of the preciousness of God’s 
 gifts is quickened by his immediate danger of losing them 
 all. It is often so with us. While our mercies are as¬ 
 suredly ours we are careless about them; when they 
 spread their wings to take their flight from us we awake 
 to their value. 
 
 While thus meditating upon all the gracious loving¬ 
 kindnesses of the Lord through the whole course of his 
 life, his eye falls upon the staff in his hand. “ ‘ With 
 this staff,’ he exclaims, * I passed over Jordan,’ when I 
 was a poor boy leaving home to make my way in the 
 world. Then I was all alone, no servants, no changes of 
 
 127 
 
128 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 raiment, no bags full of silver and gold, wifeless and 
 childless, this staff was all I had; and now once more I 
 stand by the rolling Jordan, this time on my way home, 
 home to my native land, home to the scenes of my child¬ 
 hood ; now I am rich, my name is great, my family and 
 my flocks are sufficient to form two bands! I have 
 divided my family and possessions into two companies 
 and sent them forward by different roads in the hope 
 that one band in the darkness may escape the fury of the 
 avenger. Should one band be destroyed (which God 
 forbid!) I should still be the head of a great caravan, rich 
 and blessed beyond any man in the land; — and once I 
 stood by this Jordan a penniless youth with nothing save 
 this staff in my hand! ” 
 
 Jacob here sets an excellent example. Too many of us 
 forget the staff with which we passed over Jordan. In our 
 American life the greater part of our successful and well- 
 to-do people can look back upon days of youthful poverty 
 or struggle. Too often, however, they fail to see the past 
 as Jacob saw it. Sometimes there is the blush of shame 
 at the recollection of the narrow street, the farmhouse 
 home, the menial tasks, the humble friends; sometimes 
 there is the proud boast, “ I began with nothing and my 
 power and the mightiness of mine hand have gotten me 
 this wealth.” Jacob, on the contrary, acknowledges the 
 truth: once he was poor and friendless; now through 
 the undeserved mercies of God he is rich and great; he 
 has become two bands. It is to be feared that even the 
 best of us are lacking in thankfulness as well as in the ex¬ 
 pression of our thanks to God in prayer. Yet God expects 
 our thanksgiving and, strange as it may seem, delights in 
 our poor expressions of gratitude. “ Whoso offereth Me 
 thanks and praise, he honoreth Me.” “ In everything 
 
Two Bands. 
 
 129 
 
 give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus 
 concerning you.” But murmurs rather than thanks are 
 on our lips. Thanksgiving has no place even in the 
 prayers we teach our children. Nevertheless we have 
 much to be thankful for. Health and happiness, length 
 of days, providential ordering of circumstances, our good 
 name, our hereditary culture, our substance, our family, 
 our Christian hope, the grace which maketh us to differ 
 from another—a little reflection must bring us to the 
 grateful realization of the fact that these, one and all, are 
 the free and undeserved mercies of God. 
 
 It is told us as a proof of Jacob’s gratitude that he 
 never parted with his staff, that he leaned upon it when 
 he was a-dying, and blessed the two sons of Joseph, and 
 that it went with him into his grave. Some of us may 
 know from personal experience how Jacob looked upon 
 that staff. It may be that we too have some like posses¬ 
 sion which money could not buy because we associate it 
 with some turning-point in our own early life. Many of 
 us, surely, in the confidence that goodness and mercy have 
 followed us all the days of our life can look forward in 
 the certain faith that there are abundant mercies yet to 
 come. 
 
 On the other hand, it is possible, only too possible, 
 that some one may say, “ At certain seasons I have felt 
 thankful to God for His blessings; I have been grateful 
 to kind friends and relatives for favors bestowed upon 
 me; yet, on the whole, as I review the past and forecast 
 the future, I cannot see that I have any special reason 
 for thanksgiving. There are many around me who have 
 received rich and precious gifts, who seem to be favorites 
 of Heaven. For my part I cannot honestly declare with 
 the Psalmist, ‘ My cup runneth over.’ ” To such we may 
 
130 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 reply in the eloquent words of a well-known American 
 preacher: “ If one should give me a dish of sand, and 
 tell me there were particles of iron in it, I might look for 
 them with my eyes, and search for them with my clumsy 
 fingers, and be unable to detect them; but let me take a 
 magnet and sweep through it, and how it would draw to 
 itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power of 
 attraction! The unthankful heart, like my finger in the 
 sand, discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart 
 sweep through the day, and as the magnet finds the iron 
 so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings; 
 only the iron in God’s sand is gold.” 
 
 Yes, the gold of heavenly blessings unnumbered is to 
 be found by every thankful heart. And one way to at¬ 
 tain this thankful heart is to compare what God gives us 
 with what we deserve. To remember that in Him we 
 live and move and have our being, that we cannot deny 
 that we have more than we actually need, that if we are 
 not worthy of the least of all the mercy and all the truth 
 which God has bestowed upon us — how much more are 
 we unworthy of all the mercy and of all the truth which 
 He has shown us in the life, death, and resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. For, all earthly benefits, life, 
 health, food, raiment, reason, are simply shadows and 
 types of that great mercy and truth revealed to us in the 
 Church’s Divine Head, in whom and through whom we 
 have the means of grace and the hope of glory. 
 
 Another method of attaining a thankful heart is to 
 think and to speak often of the goodness of God. The 
 thought framed in words addressed to God and men will 
 strengthen and increase the feeling in our hearts. It is 
 significant that the great poet of our language so fre¬ 
 quently teaches this truth. “ God’s goodness hath 
 
Two Bands. 
 
 131 
 
 been great to thee,” he says, “ let never day nor night 
 unhallowed pass, but still remember what the Lord hath 
 done.” Again, he addresses the Giver of all good gifts: 
 “ O Lord, who lendest me life, lend me a heart replete 
 with thankfulness.” And again, we have the beautiful 
 words: 44 Or any ill escaped, or good attained, let us 
 remember still, Heaven chalked the way that brought us 
 thither.” That was Jacob’s consolation. He knew 
 “ Heaven had chalked the way ” he had journeyed from 
 Jordan back to Jordan once more, and would still lead 
 him on. Such grateful confidence should be our 
 own. 
 
 But in the words of the text, 44 I am become two 
 bands,” there is another lesson which must at least be 
 mentioned. Our Lord by His baptism in this same river 
 Jordan sanctified water to the mystical washing away of 
 sin; therefore those who have been made members of His 
 body in that sacrament of regeneration can say, 4 4 With my 
 staff, with what were only the natural gifts of conscience 
 and the works of the natural man, I passed over the 
 waves of my baptism; and now I am become two bands 
 —I have that godliness which has promise of the life 
 that now is and also of that which is to come.” 
 
 We are told, furthermore, that Jacob’s family was in 
 two separate bands. So is ours. Some are in Paradise, 
 some on earth; but in the blessed communion of saints 
 one family still. Of the faithful departed the Christian 
 heart may say, “ We see not the glorious faces of those 
 who are now walking before Him in the land of the 
 living; but it is a joy to know that they are sometimes 
 turned towards us. We cannot hear the voices which 
 sound in that distant land, celebrating the praise of God; 
 but it is a comfort to know that among those utterances 
 
132 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 are prayers for us who are still in our pilgrimage and who 
 serve as yet by faith.” They do not forget us. Let us 
 keep warm our love for them and strive to follow their 
 good examples. 
 
 So, too, one day, every one of us will in another sense 
 become two bands. The soul will be separated from the 
 body. But they will be reunited again beyond Jordan 
 as were the two bands of Jacob of old. 
 
 Thus all our Christian hopes are centred in Christ. 
 Temporal blessings, spiritual gifts, heavenly promises, 
 come alike from Him, to whom be praise, and thanks¬ 
 giving, and dominion, forever and ever! 
 
GOD WRESTLING WITH JACOB. 
 
 MONDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until 
 the breaking of the day.”—Gen. xxxii. 24. 
 
 A T mid-Lent the Church would seem to suggest a 
 change in the spiritual exercises of her children. 
 During the first weeks of this holy season we were 
 charged to give ourselves up to the work of repentance, 
 and in the Collect for yesterday we were taught, as the 
 result of our self-examinations, to acknowledge that for 
 our evil deeds we do worthily deserve to be punished; 
 but the days that remain are especially consecrated to 
 the remembrance of those mysterious sufferings by which 
 the gift of repentance was purchased for us. We are 
 now in a general sense to turn from self to Christ. Our 
 Lord’s wrestling with sin and death and with His own 
 human will are from this time on to be much in our 
 thoughts. 
 
 The life of Jacob, which seems specially helpful for 
 Lenten study, adapts itself, as we have divided it, to 
 such devout considerations. In the narrative before us 
 we are to see this Heel-catcher and Supplanter wrestling 
 long years between his love for self and his love for God, 
 never since his Ladder-vision failing to live the life of 
 faith and prayer, yet constantly setting his affections on 
 things below—this man we are now to see turned away 
 from earth and brought face to face with God in a con¬ 
 flict terminating in victory for the best that was in him, 
 
 133 
 
134 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 making him worthy of his new name, Israel, the Prince 
 of God. 
 
 In his great prayer he has confessed his unworthiness 
 of the least of all the mercies of God, and now, as he ap¬ 
 proaches the Holy Land to possess it as the inheritor of 
 the promises of the Covenant, he beseeches Divine pro¬ 
 tection from the dangers which confront him. He fears 
 his brother Esau, who, with four hundred armed men, 
 threatens his destruction. He has sent his family and 
 his flocks over the stream. In the night, restless and 
 sleepless, he wanders along the banks of the river in the 
 darkness. There in the shadows “ a man ” wrestles with 
 him through the night. It was some one who desired 
 to hold him back from entering upon the inheritance. 
 Jacob put forth all his strength, but the vigorous muscles 
 which once lifted the great stone from the well’s mouth 
 in order that Rachel’s sheep might drink found their 
 match in his unknown antagonist. He seeks in vain to 
 discover the features of his foe. A sense of mystery 
 begins to creep upon him. Can it be Esau’s guardian 
 angel who is holding him back from the Promised Land ? 
 Possibly it is his own alter ego in bodily form grappling 
 with him — a thought likely to alarm the boldest. But 
 Jacob, who has been a wrestler from the day of his 
 birth, when he caught his brother by the heel, struggled 
 on “ until the breaking of the day.” “ And when he,” 
 the mysterious adversary, ” saw that he prevailed not 
 against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the 
 hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint as he wrestled 
 with him.” Instantly Jacob realizes that his assailant 
 is Divine, and, ceasing to resist, clings to the Angel-man 
 with the importunate cry of entreaty, “ I will not let 
 Thee go except Thou bless me! ” The answer to this 
 
God Wrestling with Jacob. 
 
 T 35 
 
 heartfelt appeal was a question, “ What is thy name ? ” 
 “ And he said, Jacob,” “ The Heel-catcher,” ” The 
 Supplanter.” Then, replied his Companion, ** Thy name 
 shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel— the princely 
 wrestler with God-—for as a prince hast thou power with 
 God and with man, and hast prevailed. And He blessed 
 him there.” 
 
 Now, it is not necessary to materialize the old narra¬ 
 tive, for we know that all wrestling which brings spiritual 
 blessing takes place in the human soul. Yet Jacob 
 speaks of this superhuman Wrestler as “ God,” and the 
 blessing he received came from God. This is the strange 
 part of the story. We are familiar with the thought that 
 a man must wrestle with himself; that the higher and the 
 lower natures in us contend for the mastery. We also 
 know that each one of us is called upon to wrestle with 
 the world. Rivalry in business, rivalry in the affections, 
 adverse circumstances, environment, the course of events 
 —each one of us who would maintain a consistent Christ¬ 
 ian life and character must wrestle against the precepts, 
 the forces, the vain pomp and glory of the world. We 
 know, too, that the Christian is sometimes set to wrestle 
 against principalities, against powers, against the rulers 
 of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
 in high places, against the wiles of the devil. We all 
 know from personal experience what it is to contend with 
 the adversary of our souls who goeth about as a roaring 
 lion seeking whom he may devour. To wrestle with the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil is a warfare to which we 
 are all called in our Christian Baptism. 
 
 But is God also our enemy ? Must we wrestle against 
 Him to save ourselves from harm ? Does this passage 
 teach that we must agonize in prayer in order to wrest 
 
136 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 from unwilling God His blessings ? No, because God is 
 for us and not against us, and ever more ready to give 
 than we to ask. It is a sufficient answer to all such 
 questions to point out that it was not Jacob who wrestled 
 with God but God who wrestled with Jacob. It was 
 not Jacob who wrestled in prayer for a blessing; it was 
 God who wrestled with Jacob to subdue him into a will¬ 
 ingness to be blessed. Divine Love contended with 
 double-minded, double-dealing Jacob in order to win his 
 entire trust and confidence. Up to this night guile had 
 been the patriarch’s rule of life; cunning, management, 
 trickery, had been his chief reliance in accomplishing the 
 purposes which his ambition set before him. During this 
 day, however, he had made a resolution of amendment. 
 When Esau threatened his destruction he promised to 
 relinquish all that he had obtained by fraud from his 
 brother; he sent princely presents, addressed messages to 
 Esau as “ Lord,” thus declaring himself ready to aban¬ 
 don all claims to be his father’s heir and head of the clan. 
 But he had no thought of resigning his right to the spirit¬ 
 ual promise of the Covenant of Abraham. Probably he 
 was perplexed in mind as to the separation of the inter¬ 
 nal possessions of the birthright, which included the 
 promise of being the forefather of the Messiah, from the 
 outward privileges and powers of the headship of his tribe. 
 It may be that his weeping and tears spoken of by the 
 prophet Hosea were caused by difficulty in understand¬ 
 ing how the sacrifice he was determined to make as an act 
 of restitution would still leave him in possession of the 
 real and chief object of his desire. Probably also he felt 
 that Esau’s anger was all, or nearly all, that demanded 
 the sacrifice; that he secretly hoped by the keenness, 
 nimbleness, and strength of his own trained mental 
 
God Wrestling with Jacob. 
 
 137 
 
 powers again to outwit his dull-witted brother and 
 somehow place once more in his own hands all that he 
 professed himself ready to relinquish forever. At any 
 rate it is clear that the Jacob-nature, the deceit, the love 
 of money, the pride of intellect, so strong in him always, 
 though subdued by grace, was still predominant. Ac¬ 
 cordingly he was unfit to enter the Holy Land. He 
 must be made ready to receive the blessing prepared for 
 him. To break down forever his besetting sin the Name¬ 
 less Wrestler seized upon him, nor let him go until, 
 awakened to the real significance of the contention, 
 wounded and helpless, Jacob clung to Him who with¬ 
 stood him in love, and begged the heavenly blessing 
 upon his soul. 
 
 Moses had a similar experience. When he refused to 
 submit his sons to the initiatory rite of the Old Covenant 
 he was stricken down with illness. Then he obeyed and 
 yielded his will to the will of God. Job, too, for his 
 self-confidence and self-righteousness, was subjected to a 
 discipline even more mysterious than the wrestling with 
 Jacob. And in one way or another the Spirit of God is 
 striving with us also here this day. A crisis of which we 
 are conscious may be upon some of us. We feel that 
 God is seeking with violence to crush down the evil 
 weeds of self-will in our hearts, and self-will is so dear 
 that we struggle on against the loving force of God. But 
 more frequently, and especially with the young, it is the 
 goodness of God that would lead us to repentance and stay 
 us from evil. His striving with our stubborn wills is in 
 the gentle and gracious ministries of His Church, in the 
 affections of our homes, in the blessings of His providence. 
 Punishment is “ His strange work.” It would be easy 
 for this Divine Wrestler to subdue us by a stroke. But 
 
138 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 He will seek first and often to subdue us by love. If we 
 realized that He who wrestles with us is our best friend, 
 should we not instantly cease our resistance and cling to 
 Him as Jacob did, crying, “ I will not let Thee go ex¬ 
 cept Thou bless me! ” No sooner is that prayer uttered 
 from the heart than the blessing comes and the morning 
 breaks. 
 
PENIEL. 
 
 TUESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God 
 face to face.”—Gen. xxxii. 30. 
 
 W E cannot fail to see a spiritual as well as a literal 
 meaning in the story of God’s wrestling with 
 Jacob at the fords of the Jabbok. The writer seems 
 desirous of showing us a parable in the history. In the 
 original this is clearer than in the English version. 
 Everything in the narrative “ is double, like the swan 
 and its shadow on the lake.” The peculiarities of the 
 style, especially its unusual repetitions, can scarcely be 
 otherwise explained. The narrative undoubtedly bears 
 evidences of the fact that the sacred historian invites his 
 readers to look below the surface meaning of his words, 
 and would call attention to the “ethical crisis” in 
 Jacob’s career and emphasize the significance of the dis¬ 
 closure of the Divine purposes and methods here made 
 to Jacob and to all who walk by faith. To-day let us 
 consider three of these deeper, spiritual teachings of the 
 narrative. 
 
 1. In the first place we may observe that the Christian 
 fathers and older interpreters, almost without exception, 
 make the wrestling Jacob a type of Christ in His agony 
 in Gethsemane. Jacob was alone when he wrestled; 
 Christ, too, was alone in the Garden when the mysterious 
 strife came upon Him,—“ He trod the wine-press alone 
 and of the people there was none with Him.” Near the 
 
 139 
 
140 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 ford of the Jabbok Jacob wrestled; Christ wrestled near 
 the brook of Kedron. It was night when both endured 
 the conflict. An angel blessed Jacob; an angel strength¬ 
 ened the Lord in His agony. We read that the hollow 
 of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint and of Christ we are 
 told that all His bones were out of joint when it pleased 
 the Lord to bruise Him. Neither has it escaped atten¬ 
 tion that Jacob was touched in the thigh and that from 
 his loins the true Israelite was to descend, who, in the 
 fulness of time should wrestle and prevail and open the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, the real land of promise, to all be¬ 
 lievers. In the Garden of Gethsemane there was a 
 struggle, momentary it may be, but in some sense a real 
 struggle, between the human will in Christ and the will 
 of God. He desired to be delivered from that cup. In 
 His conflict there was bloody sweat and tears and He 
 conquered only as Jacob conquered, by a submission in 
 which He was enabled to utter the prayer, “Not My will 
 but Thine be done.” St. Ambrose speaks for all the early 
 Church when he says: “ Because the faith of Jacob was 
 invincible, and his devotion insuperable, therefore God 
 revealed to him hidden mysteries, and touched his thigh; 
 for from him was to come the Lord Jesus, born of a virgin 
 and co-equal with God ; through whose cross and passion 
 sins are forgiven, and the world redeemed ; and a glorious 
 resurrection and a blessed immortality are purchased for 
 
 9 9 
 
 US. 
 
 2. Again, in Jacob’s saying, “ This spot is Peniel because 
 here I have seen God face to face,’’ we may read below 
 the surface of the words. Jacob’s conception of God was 
 far short of that which has been revealed to us. We know 
 that God is Love. You will remember that Jacob said 
 to the Heavenly Wrestler, “ Tell me, I pray Thee, Thy 
 
Peniel. 
 
 141 
 
 name.” “ Wherefore dost thou ask after My name ? ” 
 was the answer which denied the request. It was suffi¬ 
 cient that Jacob recognized his antagonist as the God of 
 Abraham and of Isaac; the time was not yet ripe for a 
 fuller revelation of the Divine name and character. 
 That revelation we have received bounteously. We know 
 that God’s name and nature is Love. And yet the lov¬ 
 ing-kindness of the Lord which wrestled with Jacob and 
 prepared him for the blessing and finally blessed him is 
 evidence that God has not changed and was in Himself 
 of old what He is now and ever must be. Charles Wes¬ 
 ley has finely brought out the Christian interpretation of 
 the story in his hymn: 
 
 “ Come, O Thou Traveller unknown, 
 
 Whom still I hold, but cannot see, 
 
 My company before is gone, 
 
 And I am left alone with Thee ; 
 
 With Thee all night I mean to stay, 
 
 And wrestle till the break of day. 
 
 “ I need not tell Thee who I am, 
 
 My misery or sin declare ; 
 
 Thyself hast called me by my name ; 
 
 Look on Thy hands and read it there ! 
 
 But who, I ask Thee, who art Thou ? 
 
 Tell me Thy name, and tell me now. 
 
 “ Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal 
 Thy new, unutterable name ? 
 
 Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell; 
 
 To know it now resolved I am : 
 
 Wrestling, I will not let Thee go 
 Till I Thy name, Thy nature know. 
 
 “ Yield to me now, for I am weak, 
 
 But confident in self-despair ; 
 Speak to my heart, in blessing speak, 
 
142 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 o 
 
 Be conquered by my instant prayer ! 
 
 Speak, or Thou never hence shalt move, 
 
 And tell me if Thy name is Love ! 
 
 “ My prayer hath power with God ; the grace 
 Unspeakable I now receive ; 
 
 Through faith I see Thee face to face, 
 
 I see Thee face to face, and live ; 
 
 In vain I have not wept and strove, 
 
 Thy nature, and Thy name, is Love. 
 
 “ I know Thee, Saviour, who Thou art, 
 
 Jesus, the feeble sinners’ friend ! 
 
 Nor wilt Thou with the night depart, 
 
 But stay, and love me to the end ; 
 
 Thy mercies never shall remove, 
 
 Thy nature, and Thy name, is Love. 
 
 “ Contented now upon my thigh 
 
 I halt, till life’s short journey end, 
 
 All helplessness, all weakness, I 
 
 On Thee alone for strength depend ; 
 
 Nor have I power from Thee to move ; 
 
 Thy nature, and Thy name, is Love.” 
 
 And that same Divine love, doubt it not, is wrestling 
 with each one of us to-day. It resists us, now with a 
 gentleness scarcely observable, now with violence, in 
 order to win our answering love and to prepare us for 
 blessings already laid up in store. 
 
 3. Take a third thought. At Peniel Jacob learned the 
 prevenient , the going-before grace of God. God stood 
 before His servant to lead him into the paths of holiness. 
 It is a beautiful thought that God is the inspirer of our 
 prayers, of our purest spiritual longings, of all desires to 
 conquer self,—a thought full of strength and comfort, a 
 thought to make us very glad and very hopeful, a thought 
 to make us always willing to follow the Divine drawing 
 
Peniel. 
 
 x 43 
 
 and enter into the heavenly presence where we too may 
 see God face to face. He knows how weak and gross our 
 apprehension of Him is. “ He knoweth whereof we are 
 made. He remembereth that we are but dust.” He sees 
 how unrefined and earthly we are and He goes before and 
 meets us, wrestles with us, in order that He may reveal 
 Himself to us and us to ourselves. When we are sad, 
 as Jacob was, and worn with care, anxious about the 
 morrow, fearful of what is coming on the earth, troubled 
 for ourselves and ours, our hearts trembling for the Ark 
 of God and the future of the Church, and we can find no 
 consolation in human companionship, but perceive our¬ 
 selves to be drawn away by invisible hands, then it is 
 God—the God who inspires as well as answers the soul’s 
 needs — who is leading us to a Peniel of blessing. At 
 such seasons we seek God as “ Thirsty lands gasp for the 
 golden showers with outstretched hands; ” we are lifted 
 above all earthly thoughts. ‘‘Give me Thine own gift of 
 holiness,” is our earnest cry; “make me like Thyself; cre¬ 
 ate in me a new heart and renew a right spirit within 
 me.” We come before God as Jacob came, with a 
 bounded vision ; we go from Him with our horizon widen¬ 
 ing with the day. We take on something of the free¬ 
 dom and calmness and patience and peace of the matured 
 spiritual state. We too can say as we come out from these 
 Peniels of conflict, “ I have seen God face to face and my 
 life is preserved.” 
 
 Let us remember the three suggestions brought before 
 us this day. At Peniel we see in wrestling Jacob a figure 
 of the Lord in His agony in Gethsemane saying, “ Thy 
 will be done;” in God’s conflict with Jacob we learn 
 that the name and nature of the Divine Wrestler is Love; 
 and from the fact that God went before His servant, 
 
 
144 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 called him to the contest, came to him, and prepared 
 him even at the cost of wounds for higher blessings, we 
 are taught the going-before of the grace of God who is 
 the inspirer of all advances in holiness, who worketh in us 
 both to will and to do of His good pleasure. 
 
 Yes, the grace of the God who loves us will go before 
 us through the long night of our wrestling, will ever keep 
 us wakeful and watchful, will ever inspire and quicken 
 our souls to renounce the evil and choose the good, even 
 by healing bruises, until the day break and the shadows 
 flee away. 
 
THE PRINCE OF GOD. 
 
 WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel : for as a prince 
 hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.”—Gen. 
 xxxii. 28. 
 
 T HE spiritual experience related in this chapter has 
 sometimes been called Jacob’s conversion. But 
 Jacob was converted in his youth at Bethel. At Bethel 
 God first touched his heart in the vision of the ladder 
 let down from heaven to earth. There Jacob chose God 
 and the service of God, dedicating his life to Him who 
 thus revealed the heavenly world to His servant’s ador¬ 
 ing faith. The present crisis in his career, wherein he 
 received his new name, belongs to the experiences of the 
 maturer believer. As the spiritual life advances and the 
 years pass, the child of God usually comes to some such 
 second marked parting of the ways. The experience of 
 God’s people of old finds its analogy in the spiritual life, 
 as has frequently been pointed out; and some years of 
 desert wandering usually intervene between the Passover, 
 with its deliverance from the oppressor, and the passage 
 over Jordan into the happy confidence of assured 
 possession. 
 
 At Bethel long years ago Jacob saw the Ladder-vision 
 and became a religious man. He believed in the things 
 above his head. He put his trust in God. But he also 
 believed in himself; he thought of God, for the most 
 part, as One who could protect him from his foes and 
 
146 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 help him to gain the earthly riches he coveted. Up to 
 this time he was Jacob, the Heel-catcher, the Supplanter, 
 the master of guile in all its forms, who always met men 
 from whom advantage might be taken with the confidence 
 of a superior intellect, vigorous in astuteness, unscrupu¬ 
 lous in duplicity. He has not been permitted, it is true, 
 to remain ignorant of his besetting sin, for more than 
 once his craft has been punished, his pride humbled to 
 the dust; neither has he failed in some earnest efforts to 
 subdue his lower, baser nature. And so when the Divine 
 Wrestler asked him his name he honestly confessed, “ My 
 name is Jacob, the layer of snares, the schemer, the plot¬ 
 ter; Heel-catcher I have been from my youth up until 
 now.” Jacob’s answer is the explanation of the struggle 
 forced upon him. He must be taught once for all that 
 the intellect used in the service of the senses is irreligious. 
 He must be made to realize in the depths of his soul that 
 religion cannot be divorced from morality; that the all¬ 
 holy God cannot sanction lying, deceit, or pride, whether 
 intellectual or spiritual; that earthly place and station 
 must not be sought for its own sake nor ever by fraudu¬ 
 lent arts. And so He who loved Jacob wrestled with 
 him through the night. The agony of the strife was sore, 
 lasting till the darkness faded before the dawn. In the 
 wrestling of that night his Divine Friend and Foe sub¬ 
 dued Jacob, taught him to say, “ Thy will be done,” and 
 from henceforth he dwells in a higher moral and spiritual 
 sphere, leaving his old duplicity behind him forever. 
 
 Thy name,” said the Divine Wrestler, “ shall be called 
 no more Jacob, but Israel; for as a prince hast thou power 
 with God and with men and hast prevailed.” 
 
 We shall make a mistake, however, and a serious mis¬ 
 take, if we suppose that the change in his name indicated 
 
The Prince of God. 
 
 147 
 
 a radical change made at that moment in the entire tone 
 and temper of his inner life. The dawn of that memorable 
 day was but the harvest morning of a long season of 
 spiritual growth. All that had gone before in his remark¬ 
 able and eventful career was a preparation for the struggle 
 in which he gained his new name. Peniel was a richer, 
 brighter place in his memory than were Bethel or Maha- 
 naim; for though at Bethel he saw the angels of God 
 ascending and descending on the crystal stairs, and at Ma- 
 hanaim met them in the very road as they shed from their 
 folded wings a golden glory on the earth, at Peniel he 
 saw “ God face to face and his life was preserved.” Here 
 he finds himself endowed with peculiar blessings unen¬ 
 joyed and unknown before. If Bethel was the gate of 
 heaven this is its vestibule. Like David and Solomon he 
 asks and is given more than he asks. He begs a blessing 
 and is named Israel; he asks for silver and is given gold; 
 he asks for bread and is given manna. But Peniel was 
 what it was because Jacob has always been unconsciously 
 preparing for it. It would be folly to think that he 
 would have triumphed in this hour and gained his princely 
 name, if he had never struggled before. What happened 
 is the result of a long ripening of the heart. It is the 
 crowning of a long work. This is not the first time nor 
 the second nor the hundredth time that Jacob has been 
 in the Divine presence and sought divine aid. The time 
 has come for Peniel. The fruits of the spirit, like all 
 fruits under normal conditions, ripen slowly. Let us be 
 patient, nor weary in well-doing, and in due season we too 
 shall reap if we faint not. “ Let us hold fast the profes¬ 
 sion of our faith without wavering; for He is faithful that 
 promised ; and let us consider one another to provoke un¬ 
 to love and to good works.” And the same Apostle says 
 
148 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 in another place: “ Christ is as a son over His own house ; 
 whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and 
 the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” St. Paul, 
 too, exhorts the Corinthians: “ Therefore, my beloved 
 brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding 
 in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that 
 your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” 
 
 It is furthermore to be observed that in winning his 
 new name Jacob won for himself an enduring place in 
 secular and religious history. He is the recognized 
 founder of the Israelitish race and nation. When we 
 think what the word Israel stands for in literature, in the 
 life of the world, past, present, and to come, in the 
 spiritual culture and aspiration of the race, we realize 
 in some measure the wonderful significance of the 
 blessing bestowed upon Jacob at Peniel. All Israelites 
 have looked to Jacob as their ancestor; and Christians, 
 too, by their faith, are children of Israel. Nor can we 
 fail to notice that the contrast between the cunning of 
 Jacob’s earlier life and the purer, nobler manhood into 
 which he grew, of which his new name was the symbol, 
 is a contrast which is to be traced in his descendants, 
 both as a nation and as individuals. In true Israelites, 
 as in Nathanael of the New Testament, there is no guile; 
 and of Christ, the King of Israel, the true Israel, it is 
 written, “ Neither was guile found in his mouth.” More 
 than one commentator has pointed out that the most 
 vivid representation of this contrast—of the contrast be¬ 
 tween the Jacob-nature and the Israel-nature — is the 
 guileless Christ receiving from Judas the kiss of betrayal. 
 
 Again, while Jacob entered the Holy Land on the 
 morrow not as Jacob but as Israel, he nevertheless carried 
 with him the marks of the contest. The lameness re- 
 
The Prince of God. 
 
 149 
 
 ceived in the struggle remained and ever afterwards he 
 halted in his walk. “ So it sometimes happens,” as has 
 been said, “ that a man never recovers from the severe 
 handling he has received at some turning-point in his 
 life.” After God wrestles with a man to purify his soul 
 often that man goes limping through life from the con¬ 
 test. The broken health, or fortune, or pride leaves him 
 bereft of the confident, jaunty self-assurance which once 
 gave a force and a charm to his outward personality. Yet 
 Jacob’s wounds were tokens of victory and were ever so 
 regarded by his descendants. Our Lord, after His Resur¬ 
 rection, bore, and still bears, the five wounds of His 
 Passion; but they are glorified wounds, evidences of His 
 conquest over sin, Satan, and death ; wounds spiritualized, 
 beautified beyond description; nevertheless wounds which 
 remain as badges of His sorrow and of His triumph. The 
 nail-prints of the Cross are the abiding proofs of Christ’s 
 struggle as well as of His victory. And the fact that He 
 suffered in His earthly wrestling, as His wounds show, is 
 the chief reason why He holds His supreme place in his¬ 
 tory and in the affections of our hearts. Power with God 
 which Jacob won, which Christ won, left upon the victor 
 the scars of the conflict. So it is with us in our measure. 
 The conflicts to which we are called are sore. They leave 
 upon us enduring reminders of the sufferings of the strife. 
 But these wounds are the badges of our power. Goethe 
 touches the border of this truth when he says: 
 
 “ Who ne’er his bread in sorrow ate, 
 
 Who ne’er the mournful midnight hours 
 Weeping upon his bed hath sat, 
 
 He knows ye not, ye unseen powers.” 
 
 Spiritual conflict alone can win a high mastery of self. 
 
150 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 Faith, patience, true wisdom—these precious possessions 
 come not of themselves. Night-watchings, fightings 
 within and without, agonies of the flesh, travails of the 
 soul—from these and such like wrestlings come the peace 
 and power of a will that owns the will of God. Such 
 battles leave their wound-prints, but these wound-prints 
 are the emblems of victory. They are scars glorified and 
 beautified because evidences of that hard-fought battle in 
 which the wrestling believer has been changed into an 
 Israel who has power with God and men and prevails. 
 
STRANGE GODS PUT AWAY. 
 
 THURSDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put 
 away the strange gods that are among you.”—Gen. xxxv. 2. 
 
 S OMEONE who knew the heart of man has said, 
 “ Nothing is so pleasant as to give up one’s will in 
 one s own way." The pleasantness of such subtlety had 
 a peculiar charm for Jacob. But at Peniel God wrestled 
 with him and taught him the vanity of shams in religion. 
 As the sun rose that day on halting Jacob he was ready 
 for the first time to say with perfect sincerity, “ Thy will, 
 not mine, be done; done in Thine own way.” The narra¬ 
 tive which leads up to the text shows us that the new 
 grace bestowed upon Jacob, of which his new name, 
 Israel, was the symbol, was a reality and marked out an 
 epoch in the culture of his soul. He resolved to restore 
 to his brother Esau all that he had obtained by fraud. 
 In the strength of that resolution he played the man, 
 placed himself at the head of his reunited bands and 
 boldly advanced, doubting not that he should prevail 
 with man, according to the promise of the Wrestler, as 
 he had already prevailed with God. In a few hours 
 Esau’s four hundred mounted warriors caught sight of 
 the slowly advancing caravan and galloped down upon 
 them, and behold! Esau threw away his weapon, ran to 
 meet Jacob, embraced him, and they both wept. In the 
 night God had “appeased ” Esau. Jacob adhered to his 
 resolution, made the same night in his wrestling, addressed 
 
152 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 his brother as ” Lord,” recognized him as the first-born, 
 heir of his father’s earthly goods, head of the tribe, chief 
 in all save the spiritual promise of the birthright. In his 
 own frank and hearty way Esau forgave Jacob on the 
 spot, welcomed his family and declined the rich gifts 
 Jacob offered, saying, “ Keep them, my brother, I have 
 enough.” But Jacob insisted upon making the restitution. 
 
 If now,” he said, “ I have found grace in thy sight, 
 then receive my present at my hand : for therefore I have 
 seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, 
 and thou wast pleased with me. Take, I pray thee, my 
 blessing that is brought to thee; because God hath dealt 
 graciously with me, and because I have enough. And 
 he urged him, and he took it.” On both sides there may 
 have been something of that excess of courtesy character¬ 
 istic of Oriental manners; each said, “ I have enough ”— 
 a saying which few men of to-day, it is to be feared, could 
 repeat with entire truthfulness; yet the old Jewish inter¬ 
 pretation of the peculiar accent used in the Hebrew where 
 mention is made of Esau’s “ kiss,” and that modern con¬ 
 struction of Jacob’s words which makes them false and 
 canting, do equal injustice to the men and to the narra¬ 
 tive. The reconciliation was real and true. Esau ac¬ 
 cepted the presents and never asked for more. He cared 
 nothing whatever for the religious privileges of the birth¬ 
 right, and the question of rank did not concern him. He 
 was duke of his own Edom country and he had enough. 
 Jacob’s solemn words reminded him of the holy lessons 
 of his childhood. He was touched by the look on his 
 brother’s face. In his eagerness to give expression to 
 the impulse of the moment he offered to accompany his 
 brother on his journey. But the prudence and foresight 
 which never deserted Jacob warned him that it would be 
 
Strange Gods Put Away. 
 
 153 
 
 well to part while the reconciliation was complete, while 
 each could carry away softening memories of the meet¬ 
 ing; whereupon he soon separated from Esau and went 
 on his journey. 
 
 Notice that Jacob left behind him only his presents. 
 He departed richer, far richer, rather than poorer, because 
 of the sacrifice which he had made in will, which he was 
 ready to make in deed. We began with the saying that 
 
 Nothing is so pleasant as to give up one’s own will in 
 one’s own way.” Might we not add that it is also very 
 pleasant to make a real sacrifice, as Jacob did, and be 
 immediately rewarded by the return of all and more than 
 we sacrificed ? There is a true story, which possibly 
 would not be altogether foreign to the experience of some 
 of us, of a man who, after a severe inward struggle, forced 
 himself to give a certain sum of money in response to 
 some urgent call of the Church, and who soon afterwards 
 received, quite unexpectedly, a much larger sum. The 
 story, moreover, goes on to tell us that when he was 
 asked again to give he resolved to repeat his former 
 stroke of good luck and gave this time with the distinct 
 hope and expectation of getting back double his money 
 —and met with disappointment. In this lottery he drew 
 a blank. Generosity, righteousness, love, are always re¬ 
 warded ; they are their own reward. The temporal re¬ 
 wards of goodness, on the contrary, are not to be gambled 
 for, nor does God buy our service with an immediate, 
 unfailing, earthly compensation. 
 
 Notice, also, the significance of Jacob’s return to the 
 land of promise. The secular writers do not exag¬ 
 gerate when they speak of Jacob’s home-coming as a 
 “ great historical event; ” great, because he and his shep¬ 
 herd tribe “ bore with them the future religious destinies 
 
154 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 of the world.” After the long journey his flocks needed 
 rest; and he, too, had passed through trials which entitled 
 him to a season of repose and meditation. Accordingly 
 he settled near the border, first in the lowlands, after¬ 
 wards in the highlands, of Shechem ; bought and paid for 
 a large tract of land, making payment in coined silver — 
 mentioned here for the first time, probably stamped with 
 the image of a. lamb, there being no mention of gold coin 
 until the reign of David. Here also in Shechem he dug 
 the well which still bears his name. Travellers tell us 
 that the well goes down through twenty feet of loose 
 soil, this part being carefully built in with neatly dressed 
 stones, after which the bore is made through the solid 
 limestone rock. “ The entire depth was, in the year 
 1881, sixty-seven feet, but in 1866 it was seventy-five 
 feet, and may originally have been a hundred, or a hun¬ 
 dred and fifty, for stones are continually dropped into it 
 by visitors.” We are also told that the bore is nine feet 
 in diameter, and that it usually contains as much as 
 twelve feet of water, although sometimes dry in the sum¬ 
 mer-time. The sinking of such a well is a proof of 
 Jacob’s skill, industry, and wealth, as well as an “ exist¬ 
 ing monument of his habitual prudence,” for an enemy 
 might have cut him off from the stream. The slope upon 
 which this well is located has become famous in Jewish 
 annals. Here Abraham built his first altar in the land 
 of Canaan; Joseph’s bones, carried in the exodus from 
 Egypt, were interred near by at his dying command; 
 and at Jacob’s well our blessed Lord declared His Messiah- 
 ship to the woman of Samaria, foretold the outpouring 
 of the Holy Spirit and the extension of Christian faith 
 and worship throughout the world. 
 
 Many years of peace and prosperity ensued. But the 
 
Strange Gods Put Away. 
 
 155 
 
 repose of the household was rudely broken by two of 
 Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, who with a deceitful 
 cruelty sacked the town of Shechem as an act of vengeance 
 for a wrong done to their sister Dinah, slaughtering many 
 of the natives, making captives of the rest, and carrying 
 off the spoils. There was danger that other tribes in the 
 neighborhood would take up the quarrel and destroy 
 Jacob with all his family. In this hour of peril the 
 patriarch’s Divine Friend reminded him of Bethel, where 
 he would be safe — Bethel, which he had too long neg¬ 
 lected. It was a call to a renewed advance in holiness. 
 He must no more be content with a border residence in 
 the land of promise. The sins of his children warned 
 him that he had neglected their religious training, had 
 failed to govern his household as a man of God. Seeing 
 clearly the cause of the evil which had fallen upon him, 
 he calls his family to repentance and prayer. “ Put 
 away,” was his command, “ the strange gods that are 
 among you, and change your garments: and let us arise 
 and go to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto 
 God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and 
 was with me in the way which I went.” The women 
 of the household were chiefly responsible for this idola¬ 
 trous worship. Rachel herself had stolen her father’s 
 images and doubtless consulted them in the presence of 
 the children and dependants. But when Jacob gave the 
 command, ashamed of the folly of their superstition, all 
 obeyed and delivered up the idols, which he buried be¬ 
 neath an oak in Shechem. 
 
 The lesson is plain. Heads of religious households are 
 accountable for the strange gods beneath their roofs. Is 
 the tone of our own home life free from such contamina¬ 
 tion ? Is the talk of our sons and daughters at the family 
 
156 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 board and fireside untouched by worldliness, untarnished 
 by the materialism of the day ? Are pure deeds, lofty 
 aims, unselfish behavior fostered and praised there and 
 the example of them set in the fairest colors ? Were this 
 text painted on the walls of the living-room of Christian 
 homes it might preach a sermon many of us need: “Put 
 away the strange gods that are among you ! ” 
 
THE OAK OF SHECHEM. 
 
 FRIDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their 
 hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears ; and Jacob hid them 
 under the oak which was by Shechem.”—Gen. xxxv. 4. 
 
 M AN has been called an imitative animal. He does 
 as others do. This instinctive readiness to imitate 
 the words and ways and acts of those around us gives to 
 example its power and its responsibility. In every rela¬ 
 tion of life, consciously or unconsciously, we influence 
 one another, and there is nothing so constraining as 
 example. 
 
 In the text we learn that while Jacob was struggling 
 out of his old selfish life into a nobler manhood, ceasing 
 to be Jacob, becoming Israel, the Prince of God, his 
 household was being corrupted with idolatry. The 
 example of Rachel, who still retained the images she 
 had stolen from her father, the faith and practices of the 
 servants and of the heathen captives of Shechem, ap¬ 
 pealed to the superstitions of the children, and little by 
 little the members of the chosen family were being 
 turned away from the true God to fix their affections 
 upon idols made with hands. No doubt Jacob should 
 have taken the idols from his wife years before, when he 
 first discovered them. But his love for Rachel was so 
 tender that he had not the heart to displease her. It 
 may be that the images and other objects of superstition, 
 supposed to be endowed with talismanic virtues, were 
 
 157 
 
158 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 kept out of his sight, and that the worship of them, for 
 the most part, escaped the attention of one so deeply 
 engrossed with other interests. Still, he knew something 
 of the state of affairs, and he “ held his peace.” If, 
 however, for any reason, he had not cared to exercise his 
 authority, surely one with Jacob’s power in mastering 
 men would have found it easy to win these young people 
 from their superstitions. His powerful intellect, em¬ 
 ploying the craftiness he loved, would have met with 
 little opposition or suspicion. A sarcastic allusion to the 
 infinite power of men-made gods before Simeon and Levi; 
 a hint to Reuben that the first-born was not necessarily 
 the heir; a slight sternness or an intimation of restricted 
 liberties to wilful Dinah, the only daughter; a loving ap¬ 
 peal to little Joseph, who like his father dreamed of the 
 stars and of what was beyond them—some such course as 
 this would have checked the evil. One of the Puritan di¬ 
 vines speaks of a father who whipped his son for swearing 
 and swore himself while he whipped him, thus doing more 
 harm by his example than good by his correction. But 
 Jacob neither set the example of worshipping idols nor cor¬ 
 rected his children for such folly. He took no notice of it. 
 
 Christian parents cannot make over to their children 
 their own spiritual attainments, but they can restrain 
 them from the idols of the world. Perhaps the heaviest 
 punishment ever visited upon a believing parent was 
 meted out to Eli. And Eli was punished not because he 
 failed to lead his children into those higher paths of holi¬ 
 ness which he himself loved; retribution came upon him 
 simply because “ his sons made themselves vile and he 
 restrained them not.” This much at least Eli might 
 have done, Jacob might have done—every Christian 
 parent might do to-day. 
 
The Oak of Shechem. 
 
 T 59 
 
 And so the young people followed the example of the 
 mother and of the servants. The power of example can 
 scarcely be over-stated. What is any other source of 
 influence in comparison ? “ Actions speak louder than 
 
 words; ” yet speech is potent. The poet says truly: 
 
 “ Words are things, and a small drop of ink, 
 
 Falling like dew upon a thought, produces 
 That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.” 
 
 But the words will die away on the ear; those thoughts 
 will vanish with the closed book. You may forget the 
 one, you may neglect the other. From the example of 
 those around you, however, there is no escape. In 
 childhood example is everything. The lessons thus 
 learned in the early years are seldom unlearned or for¬ 
 gotten. It was Ruskin who said: “ Take your vase of 
 Venice glass out of the furnace and strew chaff over it in 
 its transparent heat, and recover that to its clearness and 
 rubied glory, when the north wind has blown upon it; 
 but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from 
 God’s presence and to bring the heavenly colors back to 
 him—at least in this world.” It is also true that the 
 capacity of youth to receive impressions for good or for 
 evil never grows old. We are ever as steel to hold such 
 impressions, as wax to take them. The photographer’s 
 sensitive plate and the TLolian harp are familiar illustra¬ 
 tions of the readiness of the human heart to respond to 
 outward influences. We are moulded by our outward 
 surroundings. We are the products of environment. 
 Rightly or wrongly modern thought places environment 
 above heredity. 
 
 Furthermore, the influence of example is often an un¬ 
 conscious one. It is what we are rather than what we do 
 
160 The Bartered Birthright 
 
 or say that moulds others. The shadow of the Apostle 
 Peter passing by wrought miracles while Peter knew it 
 not. Every man casts a moral shadow in which, often 
 unintentionally, the man himself heals or wounds. 
 There can be no more sobering thought than that of our 
 accountability for our unconscious influence. It is not 
 to be supposed that Rachel deliberately determined to 
 lead the household away from the worship of the true 
 God. The young people, however, seeing where she put 
 her trust, to what powers she turned in perplexity or dis¬ 
 tress, followed her example. Thus all our lives are inter¬ 
 locked as are the forest trees, where, if one falls, its fall 
 crushes others. Take, for instance, the example of pub¬ 
 lic worship on the Lord’s Day. One young girl who 
 goes regularly to the early celebration will lead others to 
 the altar. One deaf old man who is always in church 
 sets an example which deserves the highest commenda¬ 
 tion. As he cannot hear a word it is known that he is 
 present because he loves the Lord’s house. Or take the 
 example of a father, respected and respectable, of high 
 standing, it may be, in the community, who desires his 
 family to attend church yet goes not with them. His 
 children see that the Church has no place in his affec¬ 
 tions. As they grow older, the boys especially, follow 
 in their father’s footsteps and gradually become insensible 
 to the claims of God. If we look at the men in any of 
 our congregations to-day we shall find that the great 
 majority of them are men whose fathers went to church 
 before them. The young men who drop out of Sunday- 
 school and forsake the Church are, with very few excep¬ 
 tions, doing exactly as their fathers did at the same age. 
 
 All this leads on to the consideration of the fact that 
 the power of example continues after death. It is post- 
 
The Oak of Shechem. 161 
 
 humous. The evil men do lives after them ; so does the 
 good. We are all of us in many ways the inheritors of 
 men and women long departed. What we are now will 
 also tell upon a generation yet unborn. There is a 
 legend that after the battle of Chalons the spirits of the 
 slain soldiers continued the conflict for several days; 
 and after we are in the grave the silent, invisible influ¬ 
 ences we have brought into being will continue their 
 battle for good or for evil. Theodore Parker uttered a 
 true saying when he lay dying in Italy: “ There are two 
 Theodore Parkers; one of them is dying in Italy; 
 the other is planted in America and will continue to 
 live.” Yes, we have an immortality here on the earth. 
 So far from blotting us out, death often intensifies our 
 personal influence. The remembrance of our faith and 
 works is often more constraining than the sight of them. 
 
 When Jacob was at length impelled to act, how, let us 
 ask, did his family receive his godly admonition ? They 
 obeyed without a murmur. ” They gave unto Jacob all 
 the strange gods which were in their hand and Jacob hid 
 them, ’ ’ destroyed and buried them t ‘‘ under the oak which 
 was by Shechem.” Let believing parents of to-day be 
 encouraged by Jacob’s success. Let them lovingly, 
 firmly, call for the idols of their own households and 
 bury them under some oak of Shechem. The promises 
 of Holy Scripture are many for those who truly seek to 
 bring up their households in the nurture and admonition 
 of the Lord. “ I will pour out my Spirit and my bless¬ 
 ing,” we read in the forty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, 
 ” upon thine offspring; and they shall spring up as 
 willows by the water-courses. One shall say, I am the 
 Lord’s, and another shall call himself by the name of 
 Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto 
 
 ii 
 
162 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel.” 
 This is a beautiful picture of a Christian household. 
 Would that it were true of all our families! Each one 
 of us can do much to bring about such blessedness by 
 faithfully following St. Paul’s advice to his spiritual son 
 Timothy: Be thou an example of the believers, in 
 
 word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in 
 purity.” 
 
BETHEL REVISITED. 
 
 SATURDAY AFTER THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Bethel, 
 he and all the people that were with him.”—Gen. xxxv. 6. 
 
 I N revisiting Bethel after many years Jacob’s heart 
 overflows. The memory of God’s goodness is very 
 precious. Here in his youth, a homeless wanderer, he 
 dreamed of heaven, and the vision never faded. Here 
 God promised to be with him, to keep him, to give him 
 bread to eat and raiment to put on, to bring him once 
 more to his father’s house in peace; here Jacob vowed, 
 “ The Lord shall be my God.” 
 
 “ Who dreams of God when passionate youth is high, 
 
 When first life’s weary waste his feet have trod ? 
 
 Who seeth angels’ foot-falls in the sky, 
 
 Working the works of God? 
 
 His sun shall fade as gently as it rose.” 
 
 Jacob acknowledged the faithfulness of the Lord, the 
 promise-keeping God, and looked forward doubting not 
 that the God of Bethel would still go with him, keep him, 
 feed him, and bring him in peace to the grave and gate 
 of death and to the Father’s house beyond. 
 
 For others Bethel might be only a bleak hillside; to 
 Jacob it was the holiest of shrines. To him its inanimate 
 rocks and trees and springs were endowed with the power 
 of speech. He assembled his household, related once 
 more the story of his Ladder-vision, pointed out the 
 
 163 
 
164 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 spot where his head rested when he was in dreams, and 
 erected an altar which he dedicated with becoming 
 solemnities. 
 
 When Jacob told his children the meaning of Bethel, 
 deeply moved by the sight of his emotion, they may have 
 had thoughts which find expression in the lines of a 
 living poet: 
 
 “ I saw the Syrian sunset’s meteor crown 
 Hang over Bethel for a little space ; 
 
 I saw a gentle wanderer lie down 
 With tears upon his face. 
 
 “ Sheer up the fathomless, transparent blue, 
 
 Rose jasper battlements and crystal wall; 
 
 Rung all the night air pierced through and through 
 With harps angelical. 
 
 “ And a great ladder was set up the while 
 
 From earth to heaven, with angels on each round; 
 
 Barks that bore precious freight to earth’s fair isle, 
 
 Or sailed back homeward-bound.” 
 
 It is not difficult for us to imagine Jacob’s own feelings 
 upon his return to Bethel. There are places which hold 
 records of our lives. Each one of us can point to houses, 
 streets, streams, hills, or other inanimate objects that tell 
 tales of what we have said and thought and done in their 
 presence; which are vocal though voiceless and have mar¬ 
 vellous power to awaken memories of the past and are 
 pleasurably or painfully suggestive according to the 
 record we ourselves have made upon them. This is, 
 perhaps, the explanation of the universal tendency to per¬ 
 sonify everything around us. Children utter passionate 
 words to stones or blocks or pieces of furniture from which 
 they have received an injury, and strike them, as if these 
 
Bethel Revisited. 
 
 165 
 
 things could hear and feel and respond. When children 
 grow up and are about to leave their childhood’s home 
 for years, perhaps forever, they often move among the 
 rooms and through the grounds, uttering farewells as 
 though these silent and emotionless things could feel the 
 sorrow of parting and could reply with some farewell of 
 their own. Another illustration of this tendency to per¬ 
 sonify the inanimate may be seen in the religions of the 
 cultivated Greek and Roman civilizations, wherein the 
 grander objects and phenomena of the universe are repre¬ 
 sented as divinities, living and possessing human passions. 
 In one form or another, in every land, everything with 
 which humanity has had association has been pictured as 
 making record of the association and somehow responding 
 to the emotions of the human heart. Our blessed 
 Saviour found this thought and habit among the people 
 with whom He lived and labored while on earth, and in 
 His sermons made the trees and fields and flowers vocal, 
 leaving His earthly life impressed upon every place and 
 thing which He approached. The hills, plains, valleys, 
 towns, and waters of Palestine are to this day alive with 
 the story of the Lord’s earthly life. Bethlehem, Jerusa¬ 
 lem, the Temple, the tomb of Lazarus, Jacob’s well, the 
 River Jordan, the Sea of Galilee, the brook of Kedron, 
 Gethsemane, Calvary — all these speak of Christ and 
 will continue forever to repeat the story of the events of 
 which they were the silent witnesses. 
 
 We, too, for our part, are writing our own history on 
 the objects around us and among which we pass in the 
 journey of life. Each life, each turning-point of life, can 
 be connected with certain houses, schools, churches, or 
 objects of the world of nature. A short list of the names 
 of such things and places would give the outlines of your 
 
The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 166 
 
 life and mine. Jacob’s history could be condensed into 
 less than a dozen words—Hebron, Bethel, Padan-aram, 
 Gilead, Mahanaim, Peniel, Shechem, Ephrath, Dothan, 
 the land of Goshen. 
 
 What we want, then, is such an association with in¬ 
 animate things that they shall utter words of hope and 
 cheer to us whenever we revisit them. Doubtless Jacob 
 tried to impress this lesson upon his household. His 
 joy in revisiting Luz, which is Bethel, was undimmed by 
 the remembrance of any sin committed there. There his 
 sin was forgiven. There he saw the heavens opened. 
 Of Bethel he could say: 
 
 “ But at Luz God came to me : in my heart 
 He put a better mind, and showed me how, 
 
 While we discern it not, and least believe, 
 
 On stairs invisible betwixt His heaven 
 And our unholy, sinful, toilsome earth 
 Celestial messengers of loftiest good 
 Upward and downward pass continually.” 
 
 What vivid impressions of the great experience which 
 came to their father in his youth at Bethel Jacob’s 
 children must have received while he related it upon the 
 very spot! It may be that some of them lay down upon 
 the stones that night hoping to see for themselves a 
 similar vision. How often have we also longed for some 
 vivid sight of the open heaven or for the sound of a voice 
 from the eternal silences — and longed in vain! The 
 golden ladder did not lower again at Bethel. 
 
 “ Ah, many a time we’ve looked, on star-light nights, 
 Up to the skies as Jacob looked of old ; 
 
 Looked longing up to those eternal lights 
 To spell their lines of gold. 
 
Bethel Revisited. 
 
 167 
 
 “ But never more, as to that Hebrew boy, 
 Each in his way the angels walk abroad ; 
 And never more we hear, with awful joy, 
 The audible voice of God.” 
 
 Still the same heavens are there, the same Father looks 
 down and sends the same messengers of love upon like 
 errands of love to all who look upward in faith. 
 
 “ Yet to pure eyes that ladder still is set, 
 
 And angel visitants still come and go ; 
 
 Many bright messengers are moving yet 
 In this dark world below. 
 
 “ Thoughts that are red-crossed Faith’s out-spreading wings, 
 
 Prayers of the Church, aye keeping time and tryst, 
 
 Heart wishes, making bee-like murmurings, 
 
 Their flower, the Eucharist.” 
 
 These and many other such like aspirations are the bur¬ 
 dens of ascending angels, while other blessed messengers 
 whom faith’s eye “ alone can scan ” are ever descending 
 from the throne of grace. 
 
 When Jacob revisited Bethel he found that the place 
 bore its imperishable record of his past. That fact he 
 would be anxious to have his children apprehend. That 
 lesson is for us also. The office, the shop, the mill, re¬ 
 flect our work there. The chamber where we sleep, the 
 streets we walk in, utter in our ears the loves, the pur¬ 
 poses, the deeds, formed or wrought within them. The 
 room where you joined in family prayer in childhood; 
 the altar before which you made your first communion; 
 the grave of your first-born; the place of business or 
 pleasure where you resisted the grace of God; the house 
 in which you committed a deed of wrong or of shame, 
 when fierce passions assailed you—each of us can point 
 
168 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 to some such place bearing our own life-records. Re¬ 
 association with these scenes always brings the old 
 memories back to life. Those memories will not die. 
 They will go with us to the Seat of Judgment. 
 
THREE GRAVES. 
 
 MONDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ But Deborah Rebekah’s nurse died, and she was buried beneath Bethel 
 under an oak.”—Gen. xxxv. 8. 
 
 “And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is 
 Bethlehem.”—Gen. xxxv. 19. 
 
 “And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his 
 people, being old and full of days : and his sons Esau and Jacob buried 
 him.”—Gen. xxxv. 29. 
 
 FFLICTION followed close upon Jacob’s rededica¬ 
 
 tion of his life to God at Bethel. He is now to be 
 
 taught that sorrow purifies and refines the soul. The 
 higher life he longs for is to be won only at the cost of 
 tears. He too must be enabled to count it among his 
 foremost spiritual blessings that his “ heart has bled.” 
 
 Many secrets of religion,” says Jeremy Taylor, “ are 
 not perceived until they be felt, and are not felt but in 
 the day of a great calamity.” Longfellow said, “ It has 
 done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and 
 drenched by the rain of life.” Horace Bushnell could 
 write, “ I have learned more of experimental religion 
 since my little boy died than in all my life before.” The 
 three deaths recorded in the chapter before us to-day 
 brought home to Jacob some of these holy lessons. 
 
 But we are not for a moment to suppose that Jacob’s 
 loved ones were taken from him to purify Jacob’s soul. 
 That would be a horrible thought. If Jacob had believed 
 that, his loss would have been a curse and not a blessing. 
 In that case his dear ones would have been dealt with 
 
 169 
 
170 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 arbitrarily, unjustly. No; God did not take them to help 
 Jacob become a better man nor because Jacob loved them 
 too dearly. Two of the deaths took place in advanced 
 age and were in the course of nature; the other we can¬ 
 not explain, for Rachel died suddenly and in her youth 
 — could we explain it we should be as God, and there 
 would be no room for faith, or even for prayer; but we 
 may rest assured that God, who knows the end from the 
 beginning, dealt generously, lovingly, with Rachel; that 
 in the wisdom and will of God her time had come. 
 Nevertheless, it was a gracious Providence which called 
 Jacob to meet affliction at a season when he was in a state 
 of grace, fortified by high resolves, far more equal to mak¬ 
 ing such submission to the will of God than ever before 
 in the whole course of his life, and also at a period in his 
 career in which the softening influences of a great grief 
 could accomplish most effectually their blessed work upon 
 his heart and mind. We are told that our Lord learned 
 obedience by the things which He suffered. In Passion 
 Week our attention is directed towards that supreme 
 grief which purchased our salvation. The story before 
 us of a human heart wrung by an anguish God-given be¬ 
 fits the week and may help us to penetrate some little 
 way into the mystery of those Divine sufferings which 
 were at the same time most truly human and common to 
 man. 
 
 Jacob was first called upon to mourn for Deborah, his 
 mother’s nurse. When his mother, Rebekah, came as a 
 bride to the Holy Land, faithful Deborah, who had 
 suckled her in infancy, accompanied the bride and re¬ 
 mained a member of the household so long as her mis¬ 
 tress lived. When Rebekah died this warm-hearted old 
 woman made her way somehow across the desert wilds to 
 
Three Graves. 
 
 171 
 
 find a refuge with the son whom the mother loved and 
 trusted. It is one of the highest compliments Jacob ever 
 received, an unexpected revelation of his kindness and 
 sympathy and of his power to inspire confidence in those 
 who knew him best, that this shrewd and loving old nurse 
 turned to him, not to his father, Isaac, nor to his brother, 
 Esau, in her helpless old age to seek a protector and a 
 home. In fact Jacob was ever trusted by women, trusted 
 more than loved, for intellectual strength is not in itself 
 lovable, and when joined to spiritual insight seldom 
 awakens passionate attachments. Neither did any woman 
 ever have cause to reproach Jacob or ever receive at his 
 hands other than the most courteous and chivalrous 
 treatment. 
 
 Deborah, the old nurse, served her people for love, not 
 for pay; she was rewarded, it is pleasant to read, according 
 to her merit. In this country such relationships are rare. 
 Schoolhouses, electric lights, hotels, are unfavorable to 
 the growth of these lifelong attachments which are 
 equally honorable to the household and to the de¬ 
 pendant. Where it is possible to retain such a faithful 
 old heart in the home it is a great loss surely, a great sin 
 probably, to break the tie which has strengthened itself 
 in the memories of the years. Under the “ Oak of weep¬ 
 ing ” Jacob buried Deborah at Bethel; and his home was 
 never quite the same again. Her “ wise and happy old 
 face ” would greet him no more upon his return from the 
 cares and labors of the day; there was no one else who 
 “ called him by the pet name of childhood; ” and Jacob 
 wept for a true friend as well'as for the faithful old nurse 
 who had cheerfully given her life’s affectionate service to 
 his family. 
 
 Soon afterwards Jacob departed from Bethel to visit 
 
172 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 his father Isaac, and on the journey Rachel, the light 
 and joy of his life, was taken from him. She who had 
 said, “ Give me children, or I die,” is now to know “ the 
 misery of a granted prayer. ” As her “ soul was departing” 
 she named her new-born son “ Ben-o-ni, the son of my 
 sorrow,” but Jacob, for her encouragement, and because 
 he would not give up hope while there was life, called 
 him “ Benjamin, the son of my right hand.” The narra¬ 
 tive lingers not, the fatal words are written, “And Rachel 
 died.” Jacob buried his beautiful and beloved wife where 
 she died, in Bethlehem Ephrath, and her grave is known 
 to this day. 
 
 “ And Israel looked upon his Rachel wanned, 
 
 Like a white flower beneath long summer rain, 
 
 So she with sweat of child-birth her thin hand 
 Laid on the counterpane. 
 
 “ Near Ephrath there’s a pillared tomb apart; 
 
 It casts a shadow o’er her where she lies 
 As she a shadow o’er her husband’s heart 
 Of household memories.” 
 
 Rachel is ever spoken of as the mother of the chosen 
 people, and typical of the Church, the Bride of Christ. 
 She was buried apart from other members of the family 
 in Bethlehem where Christ, the true Israelite, was born; 
 and there in her grave she is represented as weeping for 
 her children, the Holy Innocents, who were slain for 
 Christ’s dear sake. Jacob restrained his grief, bore it 
 manfully, and in faith, but his heart was broken. The 
 story of his constant love for Rachel is one of the most 
 beautiful things in all literature. 
 
 “ For ne’er was wife, poor Rachel! loved like thee.” 
 
Three Graves. 
 
 173 
 
 In his daily occupations and companionships the chief¬ 
 tain of the tribe, silent, alert, masterful, ready for any 
 emergency, would have shown no outward evidence of 
 the romance which illumined his inner life. But the 
 poetry and the ideals of life he found in Rachel. His 
 love came to him at first sight. The fourteen years of 
 toil seemed short because of it. It grew with the years 
 and never wavered. When he was dying, half a century 
 later on, her name was on his lips: “ I lost her; as I was 
 in the way she left me.” For the time he forgets all else 
 and couples her name with the name of God : “ I remem¬ 
 ber God, and I remember Rachel that died.” As has 
 been said many times, Jacob’s visions at Bethel and at 
 Peniel, together with this pure, constant, unselfish love 
 for Rachel, connect him with all that is highest and 
 noblest in the experiences of the human race. 
 
 The death of Isaac, Jacob’s father, is also recorded 
 in this chapter. He lived for some time after Jacob 
 reached his home; and his closing years were comforted 
 by the presence and care of his descendants, his faith 
 strengthened by Jacob’s conversation, his riches, and his 
 twelve sons, the future heads of the Twelve Tribes of 
 Israel. Esau was summoned to his death-bed, and the 
 twin sons, reconciled and dutiful, followed Isaac to the 
 grave. 
 
 Henceforth Jacob looked beyond the stars not only for 
 his God and the angels of God, but also for his own loved 
 ones. Earth held his chief treasure no longer. Where 
 his treasure was there his heart turned more and more. 
 We too have sorrowed. We too have loved ones we 
 have lost awhile. Let us not forget them. In shame 
 we sometimes feel that we are neglectful of them. The 
 blessed doctrine of the Communion of Saints is too little 
 
i 74 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 known or accepted. In our prayers and meditations we 
 should call up the faces of our dead. The thought of 
 them will shield us from temptation and help us to set 
 our affections on things above. 
 
THE SALE OF JOSEPH. 
 
 TUESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ And they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to 
 the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver : and they brought Joseph into 
 Egypt.”—Gen. xxxvii. 28. 
 
 I N most lives there are long years of peace and suffi¬ 
 ciency. After Isaac’s death Jacob succeeded his 
 father as the recognized head of the chosen family; his 
 earthly ambitions were realized and he lived in peace 
 with God and man. The sale of Joseph by his brothers, 
 related in the text, broke the even tenor of these un¬ 
 eventful years and exercised a powerful influence upon 
 the future destinies of Jacob and the Jewish race. To¬ 
 day we are to consider the providences by which Joseph 
 was sold into Egypt. 
 
 It was providential, that is certain; a providence long 
 prepared, carefully worked out, and, although using the 
 evil of men’s hearts as its instrument, in the end a blessed 
 providence. Joseph was sent into Egypt in order to pre¬ 
 pare the way for the migration thither of all his father’s 
 household. But why, in the Divine purposes, was this 
 change of habitation desirable ? Religious writers have 
 given two answers. First, Jacob’s family, increasing so 
 rapidly in wealth and numbers — ceasing to be a family, 
 becoming a tribe, a large and powerful tribe—could no 
 longer remain in safety in the Holy Land. Too weak to 
 conquer the land, in a collision with the fierce and 
 heathen natives, Jacob’s family would be exterminated. 
 
 175 
 
The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 176 
 
 And such a conflict was imminent. In Egypt the tribe 
 could grow into twelve tribes, into a nation, separate, un¬ 
 contaminated, under the protection of a friendly monarch. 
 There was another reason for the sojourn in Egypt. From 
 the highest civilization of the ancient world with its re¬ 
 finements and proprieties and laws, its schools of science 
 and of art, its manufactures and mechanics,these untaught 
 plainsmen would acquire much which would go into the 
 entire warp and woof of the future Jewish nation. And 
 Joseph was the man chosen and sent before them. In 
 the familiar story of this destined one’s entrance into 
 Egypt and his career there we are able to trace God’s 
 own thought and purpose. 
 
 Jacob’s favoritism was the chief thing which turned 
 the brothers against Joseph. It has been conjectured 
 that in manner and appearance the lad “ was a perfect 
 picture of his mother Rachel.” We are told that 
 
 Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, and 
 made him a coat of many colors.” There is some dis¬ 
 agreement as to the meaning of the word translated 
 “ coat of many colors,” and scholars have been disposed 
 to rob us of our childhood’s picture of Joseph arrayed in 
 his rainbow-hued coat and to substitute in his place a 
 youth clad in a priestly tunic of white, or in a long flow¬ 
 ing garment also white, reaching to his hands and feet. 
 Recent researches and discoveries, however, as in so 
 many other instances, have led to a return to the old 
 rendering, and ” coat of many colors ” is now generally 
 accepted as admissible, probably preferable. This coat, 
 a garment such as was generally worn ” by the ruling 
 classes, by those who had not to work with their hands,” 
 indicated that his father had chosen Joseph to be the 
 future chieftain of the tribe. For this reason his brothers 
 
The Sale of Joseph. 
 
 177 
 
 hated him and could not speak peaceably unto him.” 
 They hated him also because he told tales of their 
 misdoings; although we may suppose that he only 
 answered his father’s questions and told the truth. 
 And they hated him yet more because of his dreams, 
 afterwards fulfilled to the letter: ” I have dreamed,” he 
 said, “ that we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, 
 my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and behold, your 
 sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to mv 
 sheaf.” Again he dreamed that “ the sun and the moon 
 and the eleven stars made obeisance unto him.” This 
 increased his brethren’s hatred and envy ; ” but his father 
 observed the saying.” 
 
 Joseph hated, the next act in the tragedy opens. One 
 day his father sent him to visit his brothers who were 
 feeding the flock in Shechem, and when they saw him 
 coming over the hills they conspired against him, saying 
 one to another, “ Come let us slay him, and we shall see 
 what will become of his dreams!” Reuben, the first¬ 
 born, probably in command, was the only one who did 
 not in his heart consent to the murder. He urged them 
 not to kill the lad, but rather cast him into an empty 
 cistern and let him die,—intending to rescue him “ and 
 deliver him to his father again.” It was agreed. When 
 Joseph drew near they seized him, stripped him of his 
 many-colored coat, and cast him into the pit. He was 
 but seventeen years old, helpless in the hands of ten 
 grown men. The deed done, they sat down near the 
 mouth of the pit and ate and drank, feasting perhaps on 
 the dainties their innocent victim had brought them as 
 a present from home. Reuben soon withdrew to attend 
 to some duty of the day or to devise a plan of rescue. 
 
 During his absence a caravan of merchantmen was seen 
 12 
 
178 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 approaching, and Judah made the suggestion that they 
 should sell the dreamer as a slave; the pit was opened, the 
 captive drawn out and sold for twenty pieces of silver— 
 two for each brother,—the usual price of a slave under 
 age, thirty pieces being the value of a full-grown man. 
 When their guiltless victim was led away into a cruel 
 slavery had they baffled his dreams ? On the contrary, 
 they were helping to bring them to pass. 
 
 In the evening, wavering, unstable Reuben stealthily 
 visited the pit and found it empty. He took it for 
 granted that the ten had slain Joseph and concealed the 
 body. Reuben received no portion of the twenty pieces 
 of silver, did not know of the sale, and believed that his 
 brother was dead. 
 
 “ Sold by them that should have loved thee, 
 
 Wearing graciously thy glory 
 Through the land thy wisdom won ; 
 
 How should Christians read thy story, 
 
 Aged Israel’s favored son ? ” 
 
 Can we fail to read in it of Him, beloved of the Father, 
 whose brethren said, “This is the heir, come let us kill 
 Him;” whose “own received Him not;” delivered for 
 the price of a slave; rising from the pit to the throne; 
 whose Passion won for brethren who hated Him deliver¬ 
 ance and a “ better country ? ” 
 
 The coat of many colors was dipped in blood and car¬ 
 ried home to Jacob, who “ knew it, and said, It is my 
 son’s coat; an evil beast hath devoured him.” 
 
 We know why Joseph was sold into Egypt. There 
 are other important lessons in the narrative. Jacob be¬ 
 lieving his son dead, sorrowing for the vacant place in his 
 home, acknowledges that he is being punished for the 
 
The Sale of Joseph. 
 
 1 79 
 
 sins of the past. He who had deceived his father is now 
 deceived by his own sons. Those who make light of sin, 
 think it easily forgiven, its consequences not to be feared, 
 can glean no encouragement for their assumption from 
 Jacob’s history. 
 
 But the discipline of the parting was good both for the 
 father and for the son. It made a man of Joseph. In his 
 father’s house he was in grave danger of being spoilt by 
 favoritism; in Egypt he was forced to depend upon him¬ 
 self ; it was sink or swim; the anguish, the temptation, 
 and the toil strengthened his moral nature, sharpened his 
 ambition; and in Egypt he reached far higher earthly 
 honors and gained far profounder religious experiences 
 and attainments than ever would have been possible in 
 his own land. 
 
 The loss was also good for Jacob. Taking his trouble 
 to God he would be taught that this grief was not only a 
 chastisement for sin but also the answer to earnest prayer 
 for higher spiritual privileges and acquirements. Do you 
 sometimes long for the saintly life as Jacob did just be¬ 
 fore his loss ? Do you sometimes pray to be made a 
 better Christian ? That may be a dangerous longing and 
 a perilous prayer. For some of us the furnace of affliction 
 might be the only possible answer. 
 
 Jacob, let us also remember, was a student of the ways 
 of God as well as of the ways of men. He would say to 
 himself, “ Either all is chance, and, if only chance, un¬ 
 worthy of a man’s grief, too insignificant to set this keen 
 old brain of mine at work upon ; or else God is, and reigns, 
 and all is well. If God is on the throne, whatever hap¬ 
 pens to Joseph, whatever the pain of my own heart, the 
 ordering must be just and right, designed for good, con¬ 
 sequently endurable.” Thus to the true believer days of 
 
i8o 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 darkness are growing days. And so God gives us tears. 
 To submit to the dispensations of Providence is the evi¬ 
 dence of our faith in God and in His love. Benjamin 
 Franklin, near the end of his long, eventful life, more or 
 less under the influence of French infidelity, said: “ The 
 longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this 
 truth that God governs in the affairs of men.” Jacob 
 and Joseph, when they met again in the palace of the 
 Egyptian King, could say that, could say furthermore, 
 now we know that all things work together for good to 
 them that love God.” 
 
THE FAMINE-TIME. 
 
 WEDNESDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my 
 children : Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin 
 away : all these things are against me.”—Gen. xlii. 36. 
 
 I N the sorest of the famine-time Jacob murmured. In 
 his dejection he lost his faith. Although he was be¬ 
 coming an old man his complaints are not to be excused 
 as merely the querulousness of old age. His mind was 
 clear, his eye undimmed, his reign over his tribe su¬ 
 preme. Such strong old men rule the world; always 
 have; always will. That Jacob was not in his dotage 
 appears from his manner of meeting the famine when 
 first the dearth fell upon the land. His sons, grown 
 men, with families of their own, folded their hands and 
 waited either for rain or for death. But Jacob was ready 
 for action. He did not know that the famine was an 
 ordained agent to bring him to Joseph and the land of 
 Goshen; therefore he would fight the famine. In his 
 staunch old heart he was so far from regarding the situa¬ 
 tion as hopeless that in the confidence of his own resources 
 he addressed his sons with a sarcastic gentleness : ‘ ‘ There 
 is corn in Egypt; I have money; you have youthful 
 strength for the journey; go and buy; ‘ Why look ye 
 one upon another’ in despair?” It is clear that the 
 old man’s brain is not senile, and that he “ has been 
 eying this condition of incompetency and cowardice on 
 the part of his sons with some curiosity and with some 
 
 181 
 
182 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 contempt and now breaks in upon it with his ‘ Why look 
 ye one upon another ? ’ It is the old Jacob, full of re¬ 
 sources, prompt and imperturbable, equal to every turn 
 of fortune, and never knowing how to yield.” 
 
 From childhood we have all known the story of the 
 journey of the brothers into Egypt; of their meeting 
 with Joseph, who instantly recognized them, although 
 they knew him not, arrayed in splendor and grown to 
 manhood; of Joseph’s eager inquiries for his father and 
 little Benjamin his mother’s son; and of his order that 
 no more corn should be sold them if they failed to bring 
 Benjamin with them when they came again. In the text 
 we are told that upon their return with the message 
 Jacob’s heart sank. He did not believe them. He was 
 troubled with many thoughts. After Joseph was lost the 
 patriarch turned to Benjamin, Rachel’s other son, and he 
 made him the favorite. Notice, in passing, that the 
 brothers gained nothing by their sin against Joseph. 
 They disposed of one favorite, the object of their hatred 
 and envy, only to find another and less acceptable ” little 
 ruler ” set up in his place. 
 
 Jacob had seen famine-time before. It may be he 
 hoped the present supplies would hold out until rain fell; 
 but day after day dragged on; the dearth and drought 
 grew worse and worse; the corn of Egypt was consumed ; 
 the cattle were dying, his grandchildren crying for bread. 
 Must Benjamin go ? Then it was that Jacob’s faith failed. 
 God had forgotten to be gracious. For the first time in 
 his life murmurs, murmurs of despondency and doubt, 
 framed themselves upon lips that were wont to utter pre¬ 
 vailing prayer. His sons urged him to let Benjamin go. 
 But he would not yield. ” My son,” he replied, “ shall 
 not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is 
 
The Famine-Time. 
 
 183 
 
 left alone; if mischief befall him by the way in which ye 
 go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow 
 to the grave.” Notice also the injustice and petulancy 
 of his rebuke to Judah: “ Wherefore dealt ye so ill with 
 me as to tell the man whether ye had yet a brother ? ” 
 To all the brothers he uttered the lament of the text: 
 
 Me have ye bereaved of my children; Joseph is not, 
 and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: All 
 these things are against me.” We are not told that he 
 prayed for guidance or even for deliverance. His faith 
 had failed. At length, however, he was forced to act, 
 and yielding to Judah’s plea, and placing this son of 
 Leah in command, he said, “ Take Benjamin, ‘ Arise and 
 go unto the man ’ and buy more corn.” 
 
 In Jacob’s despairing cry, “All these things are against 
 me,” we may hear the expression of our own faithless¬ 
 ness in seasons of depression, worry, or doubt, and the 
 rebuke it receives. All these things were really for him, 
 not against him. The saying was false. Joseph was 
 alive, ruling in Egypt. Simeon was safe with his 
 brother. No evil should befall little Benjamin. The 
 famine was his friend, not his foe; it was designed to 
 force him away from Canaan and its dangers into the 
 safety of Goshen by the Nile bank. All these things 
 were working together for his good. But he knew it 
 not, believed it not; therefore he worried, complained, 
 despaired. If he has endured many chastisements and 
 tribulations in the past this is the culmination of them 
 all, for now he finds no help in his God. We can im¬ 
 agine his forlorn condition. All his sons are absent and 
 in danger. During weary days and weeks he waits, 
 watches, and suffers, “ a prey to fears, suspicions, sur¬ 
 mises.” There were no postmen, no telegraph wires. 
 
184 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 And he found no help in looking upward. In losing 
 faith for the time being in the goodness of God he ex¬ 
 perienced in all its bitterness the misery of hope deferred 
 as he waited, imagining and conjuring up misfortunes the 
 direst, torturing himself with weary worryings. 
 
 St. Paul exhorted the Philippians, “ Be careful for 
 nothing ”—Be full of care for nothing; or, more literally, 
 In nothing be anxious. That is to say, “ Do not fret or 
 worry or borrow trouble. Don’t cross the bridge before 
 you come to it. Live by the day. Trust God for the 
 morrow. ‘ Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ ” 
 Yet we worry and at seasons fail to see God’s love and 
 care for us in our distress. In Jacob such a state of mind 
 indicated a fall from grace; and to this day it is, in all 
 who give way to it, an unfailing evidence of spiritual 
 declension. 
 
 All things are against me and worse will come. ’’ This 
 is the general form of the disease. In foreboding fears 
 we look forward, anxiously anticipating some evil day, 
 some insurmountable difficulty, some overwhelming ca¬ 
 lamity—we know not what. These galling and needless 
 self-tortures canker and as they grow eat out the life of 
 faith. How true is the old saying that the misfortunes 
 hardest to bear are those which never happen! Never¬ 
 theless, we worry, although we know that the worrying 
 does no good, and that it is the deadliest foe of human 
 happiness and usefulness. 
 
 In thinking of our circumstances we often fall into de¬ 
 jection. “ If we had this or that; if things were different! ” 
 Those who have property worry for fear of losing it; 
 those who have none fear that they may come to want. 
 We worry on our children’s account, over their present 
 and their future, and our disquietude is accepted by them 
 
The Famine-Time. 
 
 185 
 
 either with amusement or with anger, rarely with grati¬ 
 tude. We worry, too, over our health. The patent 
 medicine advertisements which describe symptoms are 
 far more eagerly and widely read than the novels of the 
 season. Our aches and pains, our prospects of an early 
 grave — these form an unfailing and fascinating subject 
 of conversation, when we can secure a hearer. To take 
 care of our health is undoubtedly a Christian duty; to 
 worry about it, to think of it constantly, is the surest 
 way to break ourselves down. No slave of worry lives 
 long. Jacob shortened his life by this folly and died a 
 quarter of a century younger than Isaac, his calm, even- 
 tempered father. It is worry, not work, that kills. 
 
 Then, too, anxiety turns inward and we worry about our 
 religious state and standing. Sometimes we say, “ I won¬ 
 der if I am a true Christian ? I long to know by some 
 sure sign or proof, ‘ Do I love the Lord or no ? ’ ” And 
 such evidence not being granted, we anxiously ask, “Am 
 I His, or am I not ? ” More frequently we question the 
 love of God. Jacob felt that the Lord had forsaken him. 
 There are problems in our life and in the life of the world 
 we cannot solve. How can God love us when He per¬ 
 mits the evil, the pain, the inequalities, the injustices we 
 see on every hand ? How can we know that God is, 
 hears us, loves us ? What are the proofs of life beyond 
 the grave ? In Jacob’s case, because we know the end 
 of God’s plan for him, we can say that he should have 
 prayed, put his trust in God, taken his mind off himself 
 and his perplexities, busied himself with the work of his 
 plantation, leaving the issue with the Almighty. In our 
 own anxieties we have these resources and more; for 
 Jacob had not, as we have, the assurances of Him who 
 is the revelation and the representative of the Father. 
 
i86 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 The word and the promise of Jesus Christ should sup¬ 
 port our faith. Mere human philosophers at the best 
 can only tell us “ not to put on our cloaks in mid¬ 
 summer because we may need them at Christmas.” 
 But we believe that Jesus Christ once lived upon earth 
 and that we have His words. The difference between His 
 utterances and the wisdom of all other philosophers is so 
 marked that He is everywhere acknowledged as a master. 
 Were He only a man there is every reason why we should 
 accept His words. We yield to authority in art, science, 
 surgery, mechanics. In His sphere He is the recognized 
 authority. And He said, over and over again, that there 
 is a future life for man; that God, who cares for the birds 
 and feeds them and provides raiment for the lilies, will 
 much more care for His own children, made in His own 
 image; and His constant question of rebuke was, “ How 
 is it that ye have no faith ? ”—no faith in the goodness 
 and power of God, no faith in an eternity so soon to 
 come, wherein all wrongs will be redressed, all tears 
 dried. But He was God as well as man, proving His 
 Divinity by His works, by His Cross and Passion, by 
 His glorious Resurrection from the dead. To lack faith 
 in Him and His repeated assurances that God loves and 
 cares for us, that trials and difficulties are evidences of 
 His love, is inexcusable. 
 
 In due time Jacob discovered that all these tribulations 
 were for him and not against him. Let Passion Week 
 be at once the rebuke of our faithless worries and their 
 
 cure. 
 
THE WAGONS OF EGYPT. 
 
 THURSDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ And when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the 
 spirit of Jacob their father revived : And Israel said, It is enough ; Joseph 
 my son is yet alive : I will go and see him before I die.”—Gen. xlv. 27, 28. 
 
 I N famine-time Jacob lost faith in the loving-kindness 
 of the Lord. He felt that God was against him, and 
 his faithlessness found expression in the language of de¬ 
 spair. Little Benjamin and all his sons on the long and 
 dangerous journey for the corn of Egypt — the old man 
 brooded in solitary sadness, seeing no smiling face behind 
 this “ frowning providence.” In the narrative before 
 us to-day we learn how Jacob recovered his lost faith and 
 found his lost son Joseph. 
 
 1. One morning the old chieftain is awakened from 
 his stupor of gloomy foreboding by the announcement 
 that his sons are returning from their long journey. 
 He receives them in his chamber; eagerly he embraces 
 little Benjamin; anxiously he counts over the names of 
 the ten. They are there, all safe and well. Corn is in 
 their sacks and on their faces the light of a great joy. 
 As best they can they break the joyful tidings: ” Joseph 
 is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of 
 Egypt.” When he heard their words ” Jacob’s heart 
 fainted ”—his heart grew chill or seemed to cease its 
 beating, ” for he believed them not.” More than once in 
 the past these sons had deceived him and now he natur¬ 
 ally suspects another falsehood. The brothers go over 
 
 187 
 
i88 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 the details of their story. They speak of Joseph’s royal 
 rank and rule. They rehearse his words. Especially 
 would they dwell upon the fact that he had forgiven 
 them for selling him. Joseph said, they all declare, 
 “ Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold 
 me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve 
 life. It was not you that sent me hither but God.” 
 
 Jacob still refused to believe them. Then they would 
 show the presents Joseph had given them and sent to 
 him; with childish delight Benjamin would exhibit his 
 “ three hundred pieces of silver ” and his “ five changes 
 of raiment.” The money and the fine clothes making 
 some impression, the brothers besought their father to 
 come to the door and see the chariots of Egypt. Yield¬ 
 ing to their entreaties he left his chamber, and, in the 
 artless and pathetic words of the Scripture, “ when he 
 saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the 
 spirit of Jacob their father revived.” The numbness and 
 coldness left his heart, “ and Israel said,” for with his 
 awakening faith his new name is restored to him again, 
 “It is enough! Joseph my son is yet alive; I will go 
 down and see him before I die.” 
 
 When Jacob saw the wagons of Egypt his faith re¬ 
 vived. So to-day there are many who find in the objec¬ 
 tive proofs of religion great aids to faith. An answered 
 prayer, poetical justice upon an evil-doer, a special provi¬ 
 dence, the outward and visible signs of the sacraments— 
 these are encouragements to believe in God. And to 
 each of us come many marks and tokens of another 
 country, conveyances not of this world’s manufacture, 
 proofs of the existence and love of a Ruler in that land. 
 
 2. Losing no time, “ Israel took his journey with all 
 that he had.” No sooner were his doubts of God 
 
The Wagons of Egypt. 
 
 189 
 
 dispelled than his mind resumed its wonted activity. As 
 he journeyed he thought of the unsearchable wisdom 
 which had brought these strange things to pass, and he 
 realized, as he had not at first, that this journey into 
 Egypt was a momentous undertaking and would be 
 fraught with unending consequences. His longing to 
 see Joseph was intense. But Canaan was the Holy Land ; 
 Egypt was a land of idols; there, too, he might become 
 a subject and be no more a prince. Therefore, when he 
 reached Beersheba on the very borders of the great desert, 
 the last halting place in the Promised Land, while it was 
 yet possible to return, he acted the part of Israel and 
 sought an interview with his Divine Friend. He offered 
 sacrifices, asked forgiveness for his season of distrust, re¬ 
 turned thanks for the preservation of Joseph, and be¬ 
 sought guidance for the future. Whenever the believer 
 earnestly sets himself to the work of praying that his duty 
 may be made clear, light falls upon his pathway. It was 
 so with Jacob. He received a definite and gracious an¬ 
 swer: “ In the visions of the night ” he seemed to hear 
 a voice saying, “ Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I 
 will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down 
 with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee 
 up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine 
 eyes,” shall close thine eyes in death. All doubts being 
 thus removed the caravan proceeded on the journey. 
 
 3. At this point in the narrative we are given a list of 
 the names and numbers of Jacob’s household. His com¬ 
 pany consisted of twelve sons and seventy souls, thus 
 reminding us of the twelve Apostles and seventy disciples 
 sent forth by Jesus Christ. The ancient commentators 
 remark that Jacob’s household at once began to increase 
 almost miraculously, and was, in this growth, prophetic 
 
190 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 of the increase of the Twelve and the Seventy, the 
 Christian Church, sent from the Holy Land into the 
 heathen world. In each instance the grain of mustard 
 seed became a mighty tree. Of the literal Israel Moses 
 said in his day, “ Thy fathers went down into Egypt 
 with three score and ten persons, and now the Lord thy 
 God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multi¬ 
 tude.” Of the spiritual Israel, soon after its work began, 
 we read in the book of Acts that there were “ three 
 thousand believers,” and again of “ many thousands of 
 Jews that believed while at the end of the second 
 century Tertullian declared, “ We have filled the world.” 
 
 4. In due time the travellers approach the capital city 
 of Egypt. The old leader, remembering his duty to his 
 followers, restrains his impulsive eagerness for the sight 
 of Joseph’s face, calls a halt, and acts with his accus¬ 
 tomed prudence and caution. The famine has reduced 
 him to poverty; he comes, virtually, as a suppliant; but 
 he will make no needless confession of weakness. He 
 assumes the attitude of a prince who is accepting the in¬ 
 vitation of another prince. With all the state possible 
 he sends forward Judah to notify Joseph and Pharaoh of 
 his arrival and then awaits, as an equal, the honors of a 
 courteous welcome. It was well done. To have ad¬ 
 vanced unheralded through the streets of a foreign city 
 would have been unsafe and undignified. The description 
 of the meeting of father and son after the cruel separation 
 of twenty-two years is beyond comment. “ And Joseph 
 made ready his chariot and went up to meet Israel his 
 father — and he fell on his neck and wept on his neck a 
 good while.” 
 
 5. The story of Joseph, while but an episode in the 
 history of his greater father, nevertheless in its record of 
 
The Wagons of Egypt. 
 
 191 
 
 the providential opening of the land of Egypt contains 
 much to strengthen our faith. The chapters which nar¬ 
 rate the career of Joseph in the ancient metropolis of the 
 world introduce many Egyptian words and phrases into 
 the Hebrew Scripture and abound in allusions to the 
 social and political customs of that country at a specified 
 period in its history. Now, modern students are digging 
 up the old capital and have deciphered many of the 
 writings on its bricks and stones. These Egyptologists, 
 many of them, hold no brief for the Bible, yet they ad¬ 
 mit that its references and allusions in these chapters are 
 correct. Furthermore, they tell the German school of 
 critics, which rejects the Mosaic authorship and assigns 
 the narrative to the time of the kings of Israel, or later, 
 that these words and phrases do not fit the date they 
 have surmised. The precise date of the document, or its 
 authorship, could never be a vital matter to any well- 
 instructed Churchman. Our attitude toward all such 
 questions should be one of frank desire for the truth. 
 We do not fear facts. We welcome truth and seek the 
 light. The Creeds of the Church leave us free to accept 
 all discoveries of modern science, study, or research. 
 But the truth is that the scholars who are digging into 
 the remains of ancient Egypt find much to corroborate 
 the traditional or accepted view of the date and author¬ 
 ship of the chapters before us, nothing to render that 
 view untenable. 
 
 Another help to faith is the designed or undesigned 
 likeness of Joseph to Jesus Christ. It is not necessary to 
 assert that the old writer was conscious, or fully con¬ 
 scious, of that resemblance; but we can see it in its 
 beauty and we are edified by it. Take one point only in 
 that likeness. Let us see how Joseph, feeding his breth- 
 
192 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 ren in famine-time, shadows out the gifts of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ in the Holy Communion. Pharaoh gave 
 Joseph an Egyptian name, “ Zaphnath-paaneah,” mean¬ 
 ing “ The Saviour of the World,” or “ The Bread of 
 Life.” He to whom this name was given fed his breth¬ 
 ren at his own table in his own house; He who is the 
 true Bread of Life feeds us with the bread and wine of 
 His own sacrament in His own house, and we sup with 
 Him and He with us. Joseph also gave his brethren pro¬ 
 visions for the way; our Joseph says to us, “ Strengthen 
 yourselves with the Bread of Life now whilst you are in 
 the way; arise and eat of My flesh and drink of My 
 blood, because the journey is too great for thee.” In 
 Goshen also he fed and nourished them, thus reminding 
 us of that true land of Goshen wherein the Lord Jesus 
 Christ feeds His brethren at the Marriage Supper of the 
 Lamb and reveals Himself to them face to face. 
 
 Let us remember, too, that while the bread of old 
 which Joseph gave his brethren, like the manna, nour¬ 
 ished only for a season and had no promise of the life to 
 come, the Body and Blood of the Lord on Christian altars 
 has in it the seed of immortality, according to the most 
 sure promise of the Lord: “This is the bread which 
 cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof 
 and not die; if any man eateth of this bread he shall live 
 forever.” 
 
THE LAND OF GOSHEN. 
 
 FRIDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “And Pharaoh spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and thy brethren 
 are come unto thee : The land of Egypt is before thee ; in the best of the 
 land make thy father and brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let 
 them dwell.”—Gen. xlvii. 5, 6. 
 
 T HE Pharaoh of Joseph’s time is set before us in a 
 most attractive light. He is represented as a strong 
 man, honorable and generous, a wise ruler, a King who 
 believed in his own religion and sought to govern his life 
 by its precepts. It was a gracious Providence which 
 placed the future fate of Jacob’s family at the disposal 
 of such a monarch, for he was willing to give them the 
 best of the land. 
 
 In the passage before us for our exposition to-day, the 
 forty-seventh and the forty-eighth chapters of Genesis, 
 we have an account of Jacob’s interview with Pharaoh in 
 the King’s palace, a brief record of the settlement of the 
 chosen family in the land of Goshen, and then we are 
 told of the blessing which the patriarch bestowed upon 
 the two sons of Joseph. Let us follow these three 
 natural divisions of the narrative. 
 
 1. Tradition has designated the Pharaoh before whom 
 Jacob appeared as “ Apepi, the last great King of the 
 Hyksos dynasty,” and this identification is accepted by 
 Canon Rawlinson and other authorities. When he signi¬ 
 fied his readiness to give Jacob audience, Apepi was sur¬ 
 rounded by princes and courtiers and royal guards. At 
 13 
 
 193 
 
i 9 4 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 the signal Joseph, the Grand Vizier, magnificently ap¬ 
 parelled, as became the “ Governor over the land,” 
 advanced towards the throne escorting his father through 
 the double rows of guards. The old man probably re¬ 
 tained the simple dress of his native hills but he bore 
 himself with ” all the dignity of a Great Sheikh whom 
 no outward display of courtly grandeur could discon¬ 
 cert.” As he walked by Joseph’s side he may have said to 
 himself, “ Would that Rachel were here, if but for a mo¬ 
 ment, to witness her Joseph’s greatness.” The old chief¬ 
 tain must have been gratified by his reception and dazzled 
 by the magnificence of the scene, but he gave no outward 
 sign of the impression made upon him. With perfect 
 self-possession he stood before the greatest King of the 
 age. The Prince of the world and the Prince of God 
 were face to face! The things seen and temporal and the 
 things not seen and eternal had here their living repre¬ 
 sentatives. Joseph intended to manage the interview. 
 Doubtless he expected that his father, according to the 
 usage of the court, would prostrate himself before the 
 throne, receive a royal greeting, and at once withdraw. 
 The Psalmist tells us that Joseph bound the Egyptian 
 princes at his pleasure and taught their senators wisdom. 
 We know that he was a shrewd politician as well as a far- 
 seeing statesman and that he was now in the prime of all 
 his powers. But Jacob waves aside his distinguished son. 
 He himself is the great man of the company. He stands 
 erect. He has no prostration to make. On the con¬ 
 trary, he raises his hand to bless Pharaoh as the less is 
 blessed of the better. Thus the old hero, conscious of 
 his own greatness, calmly assumes the superiority. And 
 the chief prince of the world humbles himself before this 
 strong old man of God. As a modern preacher has said, 
 
The Land of Goshen. 
 
 195 
 
 a “ spiritual grandeur invested this aged and weary pil¬ 
 grim, and drew the likeness of a crown around his brow 
 as he stood before the Egyptian King. Aged he was, 
 and bowed, and sad, and weary. He halted, too, as one 
 who has been sore wounded in the battle of life.” There 
 were furrows on his brow, and lines in his cheek, “ elo¬ 
 quent of tears and cares,” while the intellectual light 
 upon his face was somewhat dimmed by the shadows of 
 a suffering life. As a prince having power with God and 
 man Jacob stood before Apepi and prevailed. The King 
 recognized the patriarch’s spiritual power, accepted his 
 blessing, and graciously entered into conversation with 
 him. “ And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art 
 thou ? ” Jacob replied, “ The days of the years of my 
 pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil 
 have the days of the years of my life been.” The nar¬ 
 rative does not continue the conversation. We must as¬ 
 sume, however, that there followed some discussion of 
 the terms upon which Jacob’s family should settle in the 
 land of Goshen and a final ratification of those terms. 
 Once more Jacob blessed the King, and, leaning upon 
 Joseph’s arm, left the throne-room with a heart over¬ 
 flowing with gratitude and triumph. 
 
 2. After Pharaoh’s consent had been secured we are 
 told that Joseph settled his father and his brothers in the 
 fertile and well-watered land of Goshen. “ And Israel 
 dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen; 
 and they had possessions therein, and grew, and multi¬ 
 plied exceedingly.” The narrative is also careful to state 
 that Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, 
 and we remember that Joseph was just seventeen when 
 he was sold away from his father. Thus Joseph nour¬ 
 ished and protected his father in his old age through as 
 
196 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 many years as his father had cared for him in his child¬ 
 hood. In many respects the closing years of Jacob’s life 
 were his best and happiest years. His children were 
 around him and his peace was made with God and man. 
 In the land of Goshen something must have come to 
 him of that conviction to which a great English writer, 
 J. R. Green, has given expression: “ What seems to 
 grow fairer to me as life goes by is the love and grace and 
 tenderness of it—not its wit and cleverness and grandeur 
 and knowledge, grand as knowledge is; but just the 
 laughter of little children, and the friendships of friends, 
 and the cosy talk by the fireside, and the sight of flowers, 
 and the sound of music.” But in Goshen Jacob also 
 found employment for his energies of mind and body. He 
 superintended the settlement of the land, and took in 
 hand the delicate task of maintaining amicable relations 
 with the Egyptian power on the one border and with the 
 barbarians of the desert on the other. Above all, Jacob 
 had the opportunity of impressing his own personality 
 upon the lives and destinies of his descendants. Rarely 
 has any man, in any age, had such an opportunity to 
 mould the future of a nation, and never, surely, has it 
 been so nobly and so successfully improved. In that 
 even-tide of peace and prosperity he was graciously 
 spared to accomplish a great work for his people, to 
 know that 
 
 “ Something ere the end, 
 Some work of noble note may yet be done ; ” 
 
 but over and beyond all, these last years must have given 
 the seal of completion to that “ work of noble note 
 which the God of the birthright had wrought in Jacob’s 
 soul. The sorrows of the past, some of which his own 
 
The Land of Goshen. 
 
 197 
 
 sins or the sins of others had brought upon him, would 
 work their perfect work of refinement and purification. 
 As he thought of these sorrows in seasons of meditation 
 he must have marvelled at the grace which had supported 
 him through them all. The Jewish rabbis speak of the 
 “seven” afflictions of Jacob: the persecution of Esau, 
 the injustice of Laban, the lameness received from the 
 angel at Peniel, the dishonor of his daughter Dinah, the 
 loss of Joseph, the imprisonment of Simeon, and the de¬ 
 parture of Benjamin for Egypt. But his sorrows were 
 more than seven. To the list given we might add the 
 loss of his property in famine-time, the moral and mental 
 failure of Reuben his first-born, and the chiefest of all his 
 sorrows, the death of his youthful wife Rachel. But in 
 the evening of his days in the land of Goshen Jacob 
 could say, It is good for me that I have been in trouble ; 
 having sowed many harvests in tears, I now reap in joy.” 
 
 3. When “ the time drew near that Israel must die ” 
 he gave repeated expression to his resignation and thank¬ 
 ful appreciation of the goodness of God under all the dis¬ 
 pensations of His providence. He ordered that his body 
 should be buried in the Holy Land. Then he called for 
 Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, laid his hands 
 upon their heads and blessed them in the beautiful words 
 which to-day we may consider in one aspect only, namely, 
 as an expression of his own thought of the Lord his God: 
 “ God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did 
 walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this 
 day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless 
 the lads.” In these words Jacob bore his testimony to 
 the faithfulness of the Lord. All the vicissitudes as well 
 as all the joys of a long, eventful life are counted by him 
 to be proofs of the goodness and love of God. The 
 
198 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 promises made him at Bethel have been kept. His God 
 is the promise-keeping God. He acknowledges that the 
 guiding hand of his Heavenly Father has led him through 
 all dangers, fed him all his life long, and that the angel 
 of the Covenant has redeemed him from all his sins. 
 
 If now while it is called to-day we also live in the same 
 loving faith that all our temporal needs shall be provided 
 for and that we shall be redeemed from all our sins, then 
 our last end may be like Jacob’s; and in that hour which 
 must surely come to each, we know not how soon, we 
 may have the same blessed assurance and be able to say, 
 
 I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, 
 henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteous¬ 
 ness.” “ To me to live is Christ, to die is gain.” 
 
THE TWO SONS OF JOSEPH. 
 
 SATURDAY AFTER THE FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT. 
 
 “ God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God 
 which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me 
 from all evil, bless the lads.”—Gen. xlviii. 15, 16. 
 
 HE mountain streamlet flows on unceasinglv towards 
 
 1 the great deep. We see here the working of a law 
 of nature. The streamlet cannot but obey the law. 
 Yet we almost feel as we watch it go leaping and bound¬ 
 ing along that it loves is course and knows its true home. 
 The largeness and freedom that are before it seem to lend 
 to it their charm, and you would not persuade it if you 
 could that it will be lost in the vastness to which it is 
 hastening. The ocean claims it for its own, and the 
 streamlet seems to love to be thus claimed. It should 
 be the same in human life. The love and the knowledge 
 of God are for the lives of His children and it is a law of 
 our nature that we should go to Him. 
 
 For years Jacob’s life has been turning in the direction 
 of the Divine and now the end is near. When God 
 wrestled with him at Peniel it was significant that the 
 great struggle in which he gained the name of Israel, the 
 Prince of God, took place upon the banks of a mountain 
 streamlet called Jabbok, for Jabbok means “ the wrestler.” 
 This stream was probably so named because it wrestled 
 and struggled and turned upon its course in forcing its 
 passage through the rocky hills which stood in its path¬ 
 way. Thus in its name as well as in itself the stream 
 
 199 
 
200 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 was an emblem of Jacob’s life. For the stream and the 
 life flowed on to the deeps. Sometimes, too, the most 
 tumultuous waters will find a last level ere they reach the 
 sea and flow on calmly to mingle with its strength 
 and peace. So the wrestling brook of Jacob’s life found 
 at last a quiet haven in which to rest ere it flowed out to 
 its final home in the mighty deep. 
 
 The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 which recounts the triumphs of faith on the part of the 
 heroes of the Old Covenant, selects the incident before us 
 as the most striking illustration of Jacob’s faith in God. 
 “ By faith,” the chapter declares, “ Jacob when he was 
 a-dying blessed the two sons of Joseph, and worshipped, 
 leaning upon the top of his staff.” Why does the New 
 Testament thus emphasize this blessing ? 
 
 In the first place it was a formal adoption of Ephraim 
 and Manasseh. “ They shall be mine,” as my own sons, 
 said the patriarch. These two sons of Joseph were no 
 longer to be Jacob’s grandsons, but his own sons, and 
 were to take their places as heads of the Tribes of Israel. 
 Joseph was not to be represented by a tribe bearing his 
 own name; he was to be honored above his brothers by 
 having two of the Twelve Tribes named Ephraim and 
 Manasseh. This adoption brought the present number 
 of the tribes up to thirteen, but the original and symbol¬ 
 ical number of twelve was subsequently secured once 
 more by the removal of the tribe of Levi from secular 
 employments and possessions when the Levites were set 
 apart to the priestly office. By faith Jacob, in this act 
 of adoption, conferred upon his favorite son Joseph a 
 double portion of the inheritance and invested him with 
 the primogeniture which weak and sinful Reuben, the 
 first-born, had forfeited. The birthright was, therefore. 
 
The Two Sons of Joseph. 
 
 201 
 
 divided, its temporal advantages being assigned to 
 Joseph, its spiritual privileges to Judah, to whom was 
 made over the honor “ of being the next connecting link 
 in the chain of grace, leading on and down to the coming 
 of the Saviour.” Christian teachers have always spirit¬ 
 ualized this adoption of Joseph’s sons. They have seen 
 in it a foreshadowing of that adoption whereby we cry, 
 “Abba, Father;” an adoption by which the redeemed are 
 made inheritors of the Kingdom of Christ, whereof He 
 Himself is the true and rightful heir. 
 
 It is to be noticed also that as Jacob worshipped lean¬ 
 ing upon the top of the staff with which he passed over 
 the Jordan in his lonely youth, there was in his face and 
 manner some such overwhelming manifestation of faith 
 that Joseph yielded to it and made that faith his own. 
 His sons through their Egyptian mother, Asenath, took 
 rank with the nobility of the land. This connection to¬ 
 gether with their father’s great political power would 
 have opened the highest position in the realm to Ephraim 
 and Manasseh. But Joseph, a clear-headed man of the 
 world, was ready to sacrifice these prospects in order to 
 secure for his sons an inheritance of which Jacob’s faith 
 in the promises of God was the sole guaranty and title 
 deed. His father’s faith that in the land of Canaan his 
 descendants should become a rich and powerful nation 
 conquered every doubt in Joseph’s mind, and without 
 hesitation he consented that his sons should be numbered 
 among believers and give themselves up to the service of 
 the God of Israel. He brought the lads forward and 
 caused them to kneel, the elder at Jacob’s right hand, 
 the younger at his left. But Jacob crossed his hands, 
 placing his right hand upon Ephraim’s head and his left 
 hand upon Manasseh’s head. This ” displeased Joseph,” 
 
202 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 who said, “Not so, my father: for this is the first-born; 
 put thy right hand upon this head.” Jacob, however, 
 had made no mistake. He had read correctly the char¬ 
 acters of the lads; furthermore, he was Divinely guided. 
 He was free from the weakness and wilfulness which his 
 own father, Isaac, had displayed under similar circum¬ 
 stances. “ I know it, my son, I know it,” he replied to 
 Joseph, “ he also shall become a people, and he also 
 shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be 
 greater than he.” While they knelt thus before him, 
 with his arms forming the sign of the cross, the patriarch 
 bestowed upon the young men the blessing of the text: 
 
 God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did 
 walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this 
 day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless 
 the lads. ” 
 
 In the next chapter Jacob seems to use a three-fold 
 name for God, and this benediction certainly takes a 
 triple form. 
 
 When Jacob said, “ God, before whom my fathers 
 Abraham and Isaac did walk,” he called upon the name 
 of the one true eternal God. The young men must for¬ 
 get the idols of Egypt. The God of Israel, the God of 
 all gods, should be their God. “ And,” added the patri¬ 
 arch, “ let my name be named upon them ”; henceforth 
 forever the God of the Covenant shall be known as the 
 God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
 Jacob; Jacob added his own name to the name of the 
 God of his fathers. 
 
 The God which fed me all my life long unto this 
 day.” The word translated “ fed ” means more than 
 provided with earthly food and drink. It is a word which 
 signifies performing the duties of a shepherd. The God 
 
The Two Sons of Joseph. 
 
 203 
 
 which “ shepherded ” me all my life long. David sings, 
 
 The Lord is my shepherd,” but Jacob first conceived 
 and gave utterance to that “ metaphor which has sur¬ 
 vived temple, and sacrifice, and priesthood, and will sur¬ 
 vive even earth itself; for ‘ I am the Good Shepherd ’ is 
 true to-day as when first spoken by Jesus, and the ‘ Lamb 
 which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them,’ and 
 be their Shepherd, when the flock is carried to the upper 
 pastures, and the springs that never fail.” Jacob had 
 been a shepherd all his life long. In his speech to Laban 
 he gave a vivid description of the cares and dangers of 
 such a calling. But he loved the shepherd’s life, and 
 one day as he watched the flock he said to himself, “ All 
 that I do for the sheep God does for me in an infinitely 
 greater measure. He supplies all my wants, guides, 
 guards, loves me. I am the shepherd of these sheep; 
 the Lord is my shepherd .” And it was Jacob upon whom 
 first flashed this thought which has cheered and refreshed 
 the heart of the world. 
 
 “ The Angel which redeemed me from all evil.” The 
 word for “ redeemed ” is the same word which is used by 
 Job and quoted in the Burial Office, “ I know that my 
 Redeemer liveth.” Much has been written of this old 
 Hebrew word; we cannot err, however, in saying that 
 the Goel to whom ** both Jacob and Job looked forward, 
 and of whom both Moses and the prophets did testify, 
 was Christ.” We know assuredly that He is our 
 Redeemer. 
 
 In this Holy Week before us our thoughts will be 
 directed to the redemption purchased for us on Calvary. 
 In that great fact of our religion the Good Shepherd be¬ 
 came the Lamb of the Passover; Himself the Priest, 
 Himself the Victim. Putting aside all theories and all 
 
204 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 controversies concerning the atonement the Christian 
 heart may confidently rest upon the short, simple, yet 
 sufficient declaration of St. Paul, “ Christ died for our 
 sins according to the Scriptures.” 
 
UNSTABLE AS WATER. 
 
 MONDAY BEFORE EASTER. 
 
 “ Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”—Gen. xlix. 4. 
 
 HE forty-ninth chapter of Genesis has ever been con- 
 
 1 sidered one of the great chapters of the Bible. 
 When Jacob assembled his twelve sons about his death¬ 
 bed he uttered a prophecy which he declared should 
 cover the centuries unto the “ last days.” The remain¬ 
 ing books of the Old Testament are occupied with the 
 fulfilment of the destinies here predicted, while the 
 heavenly city which St. John beheld in his vision ” had 
 twelve gates, and the names written thereon ” were “ the 
 names of the Twelve Tribes of the Children of Israel.” 
 That Jacob’s prediction in this remarkable chapter should 
 furnish most helpful and suitable themes for Holy Week 
 meditations will surprise none who have read the chapter 
 attentively. 
 
 The words of the text, “ Unstable as water, thou shalt 
 not excel,” were addressed to Reuben, the first-born. 
 His mental and moral failure cut him off from the bless¬ 
 ings of the birthright. There is here primarily a reference 
 to Reuben’s unrestrained passions, which are represented 
 as boiling and bubbling like water in a caldron or a gush¬ 
 ing spring; but “ unstable,” unsteady, inconstant “ as 
 water ” is an accurate description of the man’s character 
 as a whole. Indecision and vacillation marked each im¬ 
 portant act in his history. When the brothers conspired 
 to kill Joseph, Reuben’s instability appeared. He was 
 
 205 
 
206 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 in command and he made a stand against the murder. 
 He seemed to be the only one of the company who dis¬ 
 played natural affection or horror of bloodshed. There 
 was a tender spot in his heart for the little Dreamer. 
 He was the brother, too, who had greatest reason for 
 hating the lad, for the favorite seemed destined to sup¬ 
 plant him in the chieftainship of the tribe. And so there 
 was much goodness and self-sacrifice in the heart of the 
 man who desired to save little Joseph. “ No,” said he, 
 “ we will not kill him, we will cast him into a pit and let 
 him die. ” But he intended to rescue the lad. At the first 
 opportunity he would remove him secretly from the pit 
 and “ deliver him to his father again.” Reuben here re¬ 
 vealed his weakness. He wished to act generously and 
 do what was right, but he lacked the courage and the en¬ 
 ergy to carry out his purpose. Even the plan of rescue, 
 devised in a feebleness which could not face the determi¬ 
 nation of the ten brothers, failed because of its author’s 
 instability, for, thinking that there was now no immedi¬ 
 ate danger, he went away to attend to other matters, and 
 while he was absent the ten sold Joseph to the merchant¬ 
 men of Midian. Reuben, nevertheless, might have saved 
 his brother. He was in command. Had he manfully 
 and resolutely asserted his authority the ten would not 
 have dared to disobey him. But Reuben had not suf¬ 
 ficient strength of character for the emergency and 
 showed himself “ unstable as water.” 
 
 The Gospels for Holy Week bring before us a Reuben 
 of the New Testament. In the Passion of our blessed 
 Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Roman governor who 
 pronounced the sentence of death was as “ unstable as 
 water.” Pontius Pilate wavered, hesitated, and failed. 
 In his struggle to save the innocent Christ, the true 
 
Unstable as Water. 
 
 207 
 
 Joseph, he was that “ double-minded man ” of whom 
 St. James speaks, “ unstable in all his ways ; for he 
 that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the 
 wind and tossed.” Water is the very image of vacillation 
 and indecision of purpose. Whether we observe it in the 
 waves of the sea driven by the wind and tossed ; in the quiet 
 lake reflecting the last object impressed upon it, moon, 
 stars, foliage, or face of man; taking readily the mould 
 and form of the vessel into which it is poured ;—it is ever 
 fickle, incapable of standing alone, powerless to resist the 
 pressure of external forces. When a man is “ as weak 
 as water ” he is a pitiable creature. Alexander the 
 Great, when asked how he had conquered the world, re¬ 
 plied, ” By not wavering.” Philip van Artevelde’s words 
 express the universal sentiment: 
 
 “ All my life long 
 I have beheld with most respect the man 
 Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him, 
 
 And from among them chose considerately, 
 
 And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind 
 Pursued his purpose. ” 
 
 Pilate’s purpose was to escape the guilt and dishonor 
 of pronouncing the death sentence upon an innocent 
 man. St. Peter, in the book of the Acts, tells us that 
 Pilate “ was determined to let Him go.” But he did 
 not pursue that purpose with a steadfast mind. The 
 story of the changeable moods in which he resolved, hesi¬ 
 tated, vacillated, resolved anew, and finally yielded, is a 
 tragedy in itself. 
 
 Pilate, like Reuben, however, was a man who claims 
 our admiration and our pity as well as our condemnation. 
 He had led the rough and careless life of a soldier, a life 
 
208 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 of self-indulgence. But there is enough on record to 
 show that he was a man of some education and refine¬ 
 ment; naturally just, generous, attractive; a gentleman, 
 according to the code or standard of his race and rank. 
 He was the sixth governor-general sent to Jerusalem 
 since the Roman conquest, and from the beginning his 
 administration had been unpopular and unsuccessful. 
 At the ceremonies connected with his assumption of 
 office there was a riot, and up to the present time three 
 formal indictments had already been lodged against him 
 in Rome. He knew that another serious uprising of the 
 people would probably cost him his office. 
 
 After our Lord’s condemnation in the palace of the 
 high priest He was dragged through the streets to Pilate’s 
 judgment hall. The leaders of the mob demanded an 
 order for the execution of the Prisoner. They expected 
 no difficulty or delay, for they knew that Pilate was afraid 
 of them. The governor took in the situation at a glance. 
 He perceived that it was for envy they had delivered 
 Jesus and he recognized the fact that the Prisoner was 
 no common criminal. Now the Roman law called for 
 justice—stern, unpitying justice, it is true—still it called 
 for justice. The governor was under oath to administer 
 justice, and it was a famous saying among the judges and 
 administrators of that old Roman Empire, “ Let justice 
 be done though the heavens fall.” Pilate’s honor was at 
 stake. All his manhood was aroused as he faced the 
 mob and demanded, “ What accusation bring ye against 
 this man ? ” thus boldly declaring that he refused their 
 unlawful demand and intended to give the Prisoner a fair 
 and impartial hearing. And so the trial began; atrial 
 which was in reality nothing more than a trial of Pilate’s 
 stability of purpose and of character. 
 
Unstable as Water. 
 
 209 
 
 The governor certainly made most strenuous efforts to 
 save the Lord Jesus Christ from the cross; six times at 
 least in the course of the trial he endeavored to set the 
 Prisoner free; three times he pronounced officially, “ I 
 find no fault in this man.” But the chief priests held to 
 their purpose. Since the conquest their council could 
 not inflict the death penalty and the crowd, already be¬ 
 coming turbulent, fiercely demanded, “ Let Him be 
 crucified.” Then the frightened, wavering judge asked 
 a second private interview with Christ. The Prisoner 
 might confess. At any rate it would give the judge a 
 moment’s respite. But somehow the Lord’s presence 
 and words awakened in Pilate thoughts of the unseen, 
 and he was the more afraid. At this crisis, when con¬ 
 science and all that was best in him pleaded for Christ, 
 his wife’s message reached him. Claudia Procula was 
 his best friend, a sensible, gracious woman, and he loved 
 her. Dreams, too, were regarded by the Romans with 
 the utmost veneration. Had his wife’s dream no “ di¬ 
 vinely sinister ” significance ? As he once more faced 
 the mob, what must have been the thoughts of Pilate’s 
 heart ? Should he yield ? Should he dishonor his office 
 and his manhood ? “ No! ” he seemed to have said to him¬ 
 self, “ I will stand firm! I will heed the voices of wife, of 
 conscience, and of the gods!” But at that fateful mo¬ 
 ment the leaders of the mob made their final move, and 
 won. They raised the cry, “ If thou let this man go 
 thou art not Caesar’s friend!” At the mention of that 
 “ dark and terrible ” name, at the thought of the “ ulcer¬ 
 ous features” of Tiberius, his “ poisonous suspicions,” 
 his ** desperate revenge,” Pilate’s resolution tottered and 
 fell. He called for water, unstable as himself, washed 
 
 his hands of blood, and gave the sentence. 
 
 14 
 
210 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 We know that Pilate’s weakness in this trial was the 
 chief cause of his subsequent downfall. Instability of 
 purpose is fatal to temporal success of any kind. For 
 Christians, however, the words of the text have a special 
 significance. When we were confirmed, when we made 
 our first communion, did we not resolve to be steadfast ? 
 We thought we should never waver. “ Bypath meadow ” 
 had no attractions; our course should be “ as the shining 
 light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” 
 But must we not confess that we have been “ unstable 
 as water,” unstable in prayer, in faith, in loyalty to the 
 Church; hot, and cold, and lukewarm, each in turn, in our 
 devotion to Jesus Christ! To-day let us say, “ O Cruci¬ 
 fied Lord, I would renew my steadfastness, I would love 
 and serve Thee to the end.” 
 
THE SCEPTRE OF JUDAH. 
 
 TUESDAY BEFORE EASTER. 
 
 “ The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between 
 his feet, until Shiloh come.”—Gen. xlix. io. 
 
 I N the blessing of Judah Jacob reaches the climax of 
 his prophetic predictions. The primacy of Israel is 
 here bestowed upon faithful Leah’s fourth son. In the 
 significant words of the text there is certainly the “ an¬ 
 nouncement of a Personality, mysterious, ineffable, sub¬ 
 lime, which dwarfs all others — as Mont Blanc the lesser 
 elevations of his mountain realm.” Before that Person¬ 
 ality, seen by faith, the dying patriarch ” bows in wor¬ 
 ship,” while his withered face is illumined ” with a light 
 not born of earth.” 
 
 In this prophecy, which is generally accepted as Mes¬ 
 sianic, Jacob foretells the future fortunes of Judah and 
 of the tribe which Judah founded, and in his words we 
 may also read of Christ of whom they give us a true and 
 pleasing picture. The prophecy, as will be noticed, 
 takes a poetical form: 
 
 “ Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: 
 
 Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies ; 
 
 Thy father’s children shall bow down before thee. 
 
 Judah is a lion’s whelp : 
 
 From the prey, my son, thou art gone up : 
 
 He stooped down, he couched as a lion, 
 
 And as an old lion ; who shall rouse him up ? 
 
 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
 
 Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 
 
 211 
 
212 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 Until Shiloh come ; 
 
 And unto him shall the gathering of the people be, 
 
 Binding his foal unto the vine, 
 
 And his ass’s colt unto the choice vine ; 
 
 He washed his garments in wine 
 And his clothes in the Blood of grapes : 
 
 His eyes shall be red with wine. 
 
 And his teeth white with milk.” 
 
 You will observe that this prophecy has three divisions, 
 each of which takes up and repeats the “ happy name of 
 Judah.” 
 
 i. In the first division we are told how Judah shall be 
 regarded by his brethren, and how he shall deal with the 
 foes of Israel. “ Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren 
 shall praise: thy father’s children shall bow down before 
 thee.” Jerusalem, the capital city of the Holy Land, 
 was located within Judah’s borders, and David and Solo¬ 
 mon were sons of his tribe. The word Jew was also de¬ 
 rived from his name. The name Judah means “ praise,” 
 or “ praise to God,” and so there is a play upon the 
 word, “ Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall 
 praise.” It has been pointed out that the angel’s song 
 for Judah’s son, Jesus, “ Glory to God in the highest, on 
 earth peace,” in the Hebrew might have been, “ Judah 
 in the highest, on earth Shiloh.” And Jacob’s words 
 may be applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. “ Thou art He 
 whom Thy brethren shall praise.” Judah’s son David 
 said of Christ, “ Prayer shall be made ever unto Him, 
 and daily shall He be praised; ” and we sing, “ Praise 
 Him all creatures here below.” ” Thy father’s children 
 shall bow down before Thee ” are also words which we 
 
 may ascribe to Him of whom it is written: “ All kings 
 
 shall fall down before Him, all nations shall do Him 
 
 service; ” and “ at His name every knee shall bow.” 
 
The Sceptre of Judah. 
 
 213 
 
 Of Judah’s enemies it is predicted that his “ hand ” 
 shall be in their ” neck.” The tribe of Judah should 
 fear no foe and triumph over the enemies of Israel. But 
 we remember that “ Jesus stretched forth His hand ” 
 against sin, death, and hell. “ The Lord said unto my 
 Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand until I make Thine 
 enemies Thy footstool,” for ” He must reign till He hath 
 put all enemies under His feet.” 
 
 2. In the second part of the prophecy Judah is set forth 
 as the lion of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. In future 
 years the lion became the battle standard of the royal 
 tribe of Judah. In the Revelation St. John identifies 
 Christ as the One of whom Jacob here prophesied and 
 calls Him “ the lion of the tribe of Judah.” In the 
 words, ” From the prey, my son, thou art gone up,” 
 Jacob may be interpreted as addressing the suffering and 
 conquering Christ: ” Thou, my Son, art gone up on 
 high; Thou has led captivity captive; Thou hast bound 
 the strong man, Satan, and hast spoiled his goods; Thou 
 hast come forth as a conqueror from the grave, and death 
 is swallowed up in victory.” The phrase, ” He stooped 
 down,” is especially descriptive of our Lord’s humiliation 
 in His Passion and the depths of suffering into which He 
 descended on the Cross, where, as St. Paul says, “ Being 
 found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and 
 became obedient unto death, even the death of the 
 Cross; ” but from that ” stooping,” from that ” couch¬ 
 ing down, ’ ’ the Lord has ‘ ‘ gone up; ” “ Wherefore God 
 also hath highly exalted ” the crucified and risen Christ, 
 ” and given Him a name which is above every name.” 
 
 3. The third portion of Jacob’s prediction concerning 
 Judah begins with the words, ” The sceptre shall not de¬ 
 part from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 
 
2 14 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 until Shiloh come.” This passage is not without its 
 difficulties, critical and exegetical. In Holy Week we 
 will take what is certain. 
 
 Shiloh is a “ mystic ” word, a word ** coined by 
 Jacob,” and it has a “ hundred meanings.” Primarily 
 it means the Rest-Giver , the Prince of Peace; so for us it 
 is one of the precious names of our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ. “ Until Shiloh come the sceptre shall not 
 depart from Judah.” A cautious and learned modern 
 commentator, Canon Rawlinson, does not hesitate to say 
 that this “ prophecy may be considered as fulfilled by 
 the continuance of Judea as an independent kindgom 
 until Rome established her dominion over it by the ap¬ 
 pointment, in A.D. 8, of Coponius, the first procurator.” 
 In the year of our Lord 8, Shiloh had already come, the Babe 
 of Bethlehem. But it is not necessary to claim a literal 
 fulfilment for this, or for the later prophecy that David’s 
 seed should sit on the throne for ever and ever. The 
 heart of the prophecy is a precious certainty. In any 
 case the Jewish nation lasted, the Jewish Church lasted, 
 until the coming of Christ. This is a fact of history. 
 To-day, in the truest sense of the words, David has an 
 heir who will sit on the throne forever, “ and of the in¬ 
 crease of His government and peace there shall be no 
 end.” “ Unto Him,” continues the prediction of Jacob, 
 “ shall the gathering of the people be.” Our Lord 
 shall be the “ Desire of all nations,” He shall ” gather 
 together in one the children of God,” for He Himself has 
 promised to gather all His sheep together so that ” there 
 shall be one fold and one Shepherd.” 
 
 The concluding clauses describe the fruitfulness of the 
 region which should be assigned to Judah in the land of 
 Canaan. The vines should be so strong that asses could 
 
The Sceptre of Judah. 
 
 215 
 
 be tied to them, and grapes so abundant that wine should 
 be as plentiful as water. But the words, “ Binding his 
 foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice 
 vine,” have reminded holy men that “ foal ” and “ ass’s 
 colt ” are are figures of the Gentiles as “ the vine is a 
 figure of the Jewish Church. The Psalmist said of the 
 Church of the Old Covenant, “ Thou hast brought a vine 
 out of Egypt,” and again, ” Thou God of hosts, look 
 down from heaven, behold, and visit this vine.” In the 
 New Testament our Lord represents His union with His 
 Church as the union of a vine and its branches. And so 
 on Palm Sunday in the remarkable fulfilment of Zech- 
 ariah’s prophecy, “ Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, 
 meek, riding upon an ass, even upon a colt, the foal of 
 an ass,” a further fulfilment of Jacob’s words has been 
 seen, for Christ advanced to His passion in order to ** tie 
 the foal unto the choice vine,” binding the Gentiles to 
 the privileges of Israel. As St. Augustine (quoted by 
 Bishop Wordsworth) says: ” ‘ He bound His foal unto 
 the vine ’ when He rode on the colt to Jerusalem, and 
 prefigured the bringing in of the Gentiles to the Church 
 of God. He ‘ washed His garments in wine;’ in the 
 wine of that Blood which was shed for the remission of 
 sins. He is the bunch of grapes which was suspended on 
 the wood. He washed His robes, and the robes of His 
 Church ‘ in the blood of grapes.’ ‘ His eyes are red with 
 wine,’ for His saints are filled with holy joy. ‘ His teeth 
 also are white with milk,’ for babes in Christ are ” nour¬ 
 ished by Him. 
 
 Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be. ’ ’ Let 
 these old words concerning the promised Shiloh sink 
 into our hearts this day. He Himself said, I, if I be 
 lifted up will draw all men unto Me.” Once He was lifted 
 
216 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 up on Calvary’s Cross. During Holy Week throughout 
 the world that Cross is again lifted up. Unto Him is 
 the gathering of the people. No man in Holy Week can 
 entirely escape the remembrance of the Passion and 
 Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This holy season preaches 
 Christ crucified to multitudes who never enter the doors 
 of the church. Now, however, He is especially lifted 
 up before the eyes of the believer. Thou, O Lifted-up 
 Redeemer, hast said Thou wilt draw all men; O draw 
 me! The power of Thy Cross has changed the world; 
 O may it change me! O Saviour of the world, who by 
 Thy Cross and precious Blood hath redeemed us; save 
 us, and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord. 
 
GRIEVED BY THE ARCHERS. 
 
 WEDNESDAY BEFORE EASTER. 
 
 “ The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him : 
 But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong 
 by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob ; (from thence is the shepherd, the 
 stone of Israel:) ”—Gen. xlix. 23, 24. 
 
 T HE text is a portion of Jacob’s prophetic blessing 
 upon his favorite son, Joseph. The dying patri¬ 
 arch has a blessing for each of his twelve sons, but when 
 he reaches Rachel’s first-born, his heart overflows in 
 words of pride and praise. In glowing and exuberant 
 language he tells of Joseph’s triumphs over all his foes in 
 the past and foretells for him the richest future happiness 
 and prosperity; yet the greater part of this blessing is 
 history rather than prophecy. In the words of the text 
 the patriarch certainly speaks of the sufferings his son 
 has endured and of the Divine strength imparted to him, 
 by which he was enabled to triumph over those who 
 hated him. Whatever is prophetical must be said of 
 another; and it is impossible to read the words without 
 thinking of Another, even the Lord Jesus Christ. The 
 theologians of all schools agree in making the life and 
 character of Joseph a foreshadowing of Him who was to 
 come. The greatest of the Christian poets have also 
 seen in Joseph a picture of Christ. Newman opens his 
 beautiful sonnet on Joseph with these words: “ O purest 
 semblance of the Eternal Son.” Isaac Williams says: 
 
 “ Thus, sweet-souled Joseph, as thy life ran on, 
 
 Each scene disclosed anew th’ Eternal Son.” 
 
 217 
 
2 l8 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 To-day let us consider the sufferings described in the 
 text. Are not the words as true of Jesus as of Joseph ? 
 
 The archers have sorely grieved Him, and shot at Him, 
 and hated Him.” Recall some of the chief points of the 
 resemblance. Joseph was the son loved of the father; 
 so was Christ. The dreams of Joseph which foretold the 
 bowing down of his brethren before him remind us of 
 One greater than Joseph, at whose name “ every knee 
 shall bow.” Joseph was “ sorely grieved by the archers,” 
 he was “ a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; ” 
 he was hated by his brethren and stripped of his raiment, 
 even as Jesus Christ was, and cast into a pit as a dead 
 man; he was one, as the Evangelical Prophet said of 
 Christ, whose garments “ were dyed in blood.” His 
 brethren, “ moved with envy,” sold him to the Egyptians 
 for the price of a slave; and the Jews, “ moved with 
 envy,” delivered Christ who was also sold for a price. 
 Joseph was sorely grieved by the archers of temptation 
 in Potiphar s house, but he did no wrong; Christ, too, was 
 tempted in the wilderness, yet was “ without sin.” 
 Joseph was falsely accused and imprisoned, while the 
 True Joseph was “ accused by false witnesses,” and 
 “ numbered with the transgressors.” In the dungeon 
 Joseph was “ as a dead man out of mind,” and was num¬ 
 bered with “ two malefactors,” the butler and the baker, 
 to one of whom he promised life, and to the other, death. 
 On the Cross our Lord was hanged between two thieves, 
 one saved, the other lost; and in the dungeon of the 
 grave He was “ free among the dead.” But each was 
 raised from the pit to rule in royalty. Truly of Joseph 
 it may be said, 
 
 “ Type thou art of One more holy, 
 
 Who His glory laid aside, 
 
Grieved by the Archers. 
 
 219 
 
 Took the form of servant lowly, 
 Stooped to suffering man and died. 
 
 “ He was scorned and sold and hated 
 By the men He came to save, 
 
 With a cruel wrath unsated 
 Followed to His three-days’ grave.” 
 
 Joseph’s history after he rose from the grave of Poti- 
 phar’s dungeon is as prophetic as the story of his suffer¬ 
 ings. He “ is raised on high among the heathen,” as 
 Isaac Williams has said, “ saving life and giving bread, 
 the bread that saveth from death; setting forth Him 
 who giveth the true bread from Heaven; married to a 
 daughter of Egypt, as Christ’s Bride, the Church, is 
 taken from among the Gentiles ; then receiving his 
 brethren as * one alive from the dead,’ with words like 
 those of our Lord Himself after His Resurrection, when 
 they were ‘ troubled at His presence,’ and ‘ supposed 
 that they had seen a spirit,’ but Joseph says, ‘ Come 
 near me, I pray you. And they came near. And he 
 said, I am Joseph your brother.’ ” 
 
 The words of the text, “ The archers have sorely 
 grieved him,” are fulfilled in the sufferings of Christ as 
 they are brought before us in to-day’s Gospel. All the 
 archers of evil have shot at Him, and hated Him. The 
 story of His agonies of mind and body occupies a large 
 part of the four Gospel narratives. Above all He was 
 grieved with the wounds of an arrow whose sharpness we 
 know not nor can imagine, when the Lord God “ laid on 
 Him the iniquity of us all.” 
 
 But his bow abode in strength; ” the Lord Jesus en¬ 
 dured the sorrows of the Cross because “ the arms of His 
 hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God 
 
220 
 
 The Bartered Birthright 
 
 of Jacob.” Here was one name for God, but the patri¬ 
 arch added two other names and gave his God a triple 
 name,—“ The mighty God of Jacob, the Shepherd, the 
 Stone of Israel.” These names were each taken up by 
 future writers of Holy Scripture, explained and ex¬ 
 pounded; and they have made for themselves a perma¬ 
 nent place in religious literature. 
 
 The Mighty God of Jacob .—In this personal appropria¬ 
 tion of God, Jacob could cry,“ My Lord, and my God,” 
 as Christ could say, “ O my Father”; even as each 
 Christian heart can speak of One who “ loved me and 
 gave Himself for me.” This name for God was never 
 forgotten by Jacob’s descendants. How often do we 
 read in the Psalms of the “ God of Jacob”! “ The 
 Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our re¬ 
 fuge.” Our Lord Himself used this name as a proof of a 
 future life when He said, “As touching the resurrection 
 of the dead, have ye never read ” that long after the 
 burial of the three great patriarchs God revealed Himself 
 to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and 
 
 God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” 
 And we know that in His Passion our blessed Saviour 
 was strengthened by the hands of the mighty God of 
 Jacob. 
 
 The Shepherd .—Once before Jacob had spoken of the 
 
 God which shepherded me all my life; ” he thought of 
 the Lord as his shepherd long before David wrote the 
 twenty-third Psalm. The figure may be found in many 
 later books of the Bible. “ Behold the Lord God shall 
 come with a strong hand; He will feed His flock like a 
 shepherd,” declares the prophet; and to-day we see the 
 Good Shepherd of souls ready “ to lay down His life for 
 the sheep.” 
 
Grieved by the Archers. 
 
 221 
 
 The Stone of Israel .—Jacob here coined another pre¬ 
 cious word which will never die. “Trust ye in the Lord 
 forever,” said Isaiah, “ for in the Lord Jehovah is ever¬ 
 lasting strength,” or as the Hebrew is rendered literally 
 in the margin of our Bible, “ in the Lord Jehovah is the 
 Rock of Ages; ” and our Lord said, “ Did ye never read 
 in the Scripture, The stone which the builders rejected, 
 the same is become the head-stone of the corner ? ” And 
 of the cleft rock in the wilderness the Epistle to the He¬ 
 brews declares, “ That rock was Christ.” In a great 
 sermon upon this text Dr. Maclaren says: “ At one end 
 of the long chain this dim figure of the dying Jacob, amid 
 the strange vanished life of Egypt, stretches out his 
 withered hands to God the stone of Israel; at the other 
 end, we lift up ours to Jesus, and cry: 
 
 “ ‘ Rock of Ages ! cleft for me, 
 
 Let me hide myself in Thee.’ ” 
 
 To-day the Church brings before us the complete ful¬ 
 filment of the prediction of Genesis. On the Cross we 
 do see Him whom “ the archers have sorely grieved,” 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, and we see Him “ made strong ” 
 to submit to the agonies of the Crucifixion “ by the hands 
 of the mighty God of Jacob, the Shepherd, the Stone of 
 Israel.” 
 
 He was the true Joseph who in Jacob’s words “ was 
 separate from his brethren.” That separated One is our 
 Brother, and He is grieved for our sakes, in order that 
 He may bear our griefs. As we think of that Cross each 
 pardoned Christian soul, remembering how once it was 
 stricken by the archers of sin and healed by Him who 
 had Himself been hurt by the archers, can reverently re¬ 
 peat the singularly beautiful words of Cowper: 
 
222 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 “ I was a stricken deer, that left the herd 
 
 Long since ; with many an arrow deep infixed 
 My panting side was charged, when I withdrew, 
 
 To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. 
 
 There was I found by One, who had Himself 
 Been hurt by th’ archers. In His side He bore, 
 
 And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars; 
 
 With gentle force soliciting the darts, 
 
 He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live.” 
 
 The Task , Book III. 
 
THY SALVATION. 
 
 THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER. 
 
 “ I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.”—Gen. xlix. 18. 
 
 I N the midst of his prophetic blessings upon the Twelve 
 Tribes of Israel Jacob uttered the ejaculation of the 
 text. Why he paused for prayer at this particular point 
 in his speech we do not know, and the exclamation of the 
 text is open to various interpretations; but there can be 
 no doubt that the salvation he waited for was the last and 
 chiefest blessing of the Lord. As the patriarch lay dying 
 the prophetic ecstasy was upon him. Already he has 
 seen a vision of the Shiloh unto whom should be the 
 future gatherings of the people. He was a man of prayer, 
 the Prince of God, the Prevailer, and so we must recog¬ 
 nize in his dying prayer the highest aspiration of a spirit¬ 
 ual master and victor. 
 
 For many years Jacob had set his affections on things 
 above and his present utterance was a fulfilment of the 
 promise that “ the righteous hath hope in his death.” 
 He now waited for salvation, he looked forward to a 
 better country,” a clearer, fuller revelation, “ a city 
 which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is 
 God.” I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord,’ ” he 
 says; “ I have experienced a large measure of the blessed¬ 
 ness of that salvation, for the God of my fathers has 
 shepherded me all my life long unto this day, and the 
 Angel of the Covenant hath redeemed my soul from all 
 evil; yet there is much that is dim and vague. Behold, 
 
 223 
 
224 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 I die; my spirit will soon return to God who gave it; 
 and there, in the waiting-place of the departed, I shall 
 know and see, and Thy full salvation shall be revealed to 
 me in the face of Him who is thy Salvation and my 
 Saviour. ” 
 
 Now in the first chapter of his first Epistle St. Peter 
 alludes to the ejaculation of the text, and we may well 
 turn to his comment upon the salvation of the Lord as 
 the Christian interpretation of Jacob’s words. The 
 Apostle speaks of salvation as a complete and eternal 
 deliverance from all sin and from all imperfection: “ Of 
 which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched 
 diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come 
 unto you: searching what, or what manner of time the 
 spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it 
 testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory 
 that should follow.” St. Peter would include Jacob 
 among the prophets who inquired and searched diligently 
 — who thought, meditated, prayed, and earnestly en¬ 
 deavored to comprehend the meaning of the revelation 
 given unto them to utter concerning the salvation of the 
 Lord. The prophets of old time, moreover, foretold 
 that this salvation should be accomplished and secured 
 by “ the sufferings of Christ.” The true Joseph must 
 be “ sorely grieved by the archers.” The Holy Spirit 
 which was in the prophets testified beforehand to a sal¬ 
 vation won by a suffering Messiah. A suffering Saviour, 
 declares St. Peter, is the main theme of Old Testament 
 prophecy. In his sermon in Solomon’s porch the same 
 Apostle repeats this assertion: “Those things which 
 God before had shewed by the mouth of all His prophets, 
 that Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled.” And 
 St. Paul, in his speech before King Agrippa, declared 
 
Thy Salvation. 
 
 225 
 
 that he had said “ none other things than those which 
 the prophets and Moses did say should come : that Christ 
 should suffer, and that He should be the first that should 
 rise from the dead.” Our Lord Himself on the day of 
 His Resurrection expounded to the two disciples on the 
 way to Emmaus the things concerning Himself, “ begin¬ 
 ning at Moses and all the prophets,” saying, ” ought not 
 Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into 
 His glory ? ” 
 
 In his reference to the salvation for which Jacob 
 longed, St. Peter teaches not only that the salvation of 
 the Lord was purchased in the past on Calvary, but also 
 that by His Passion and Crucifixion our Lord won for 
 us a present and a future salvation. Concerning salva¬ 
 tion in the world to come, he says that the faithful are 
 begotten again to an inheritance incorruptible, and un¬ 
 defiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for 
 you, who are kept by the power of God through faith 
 unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 
 Our Lord has gone to prepare a place for us. The 
 blessedness of eternal life is ours. That final and com¬ 
 pleted salvation is ready to be revealed to each believer. 
 
 But this salvation, past and future, is also, the Apostle 
 declares, a present salvation: ** Whom having not seen, 
 ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet be¬ 
 lieving, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: 
 receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of 
 your souls.” The tenses are present. The souls of be¬ 
 lievers are saved now. As St. Paul says, “ By grace ye 
 are saved through faith.” And this salvation, past, 
 present, and future, was wrought for us by the sufferings 
 of Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Of that salva¬ 
 tion Jacob’s exclamation in the text is a prophecy, “ I 
 15 
 
226 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord.” In the fervent 
 words of the devout William Law: “ Salvation! It is 
 the work for which Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and 
 lived on earth, and died on Calvary, and descended into 
 the grave, and burst the bonds of death, and mounted to 
 heaven, and sits on the right hand of God. For this He 
 reigns and prays on high. It is the work for which the 
 Spirit seeks our earth, and knocks at the barred entrance 
 of the sinner’s heart. For this He assails the fortress of 
 self-love, and reveals the perils of sin, and wrestles with 
 ignorance and vain excuses. Salvation! It is the first 
 message which mercy uttered to a ruined world. It is 
 the end of every prophecy, the purpose of every pre¬ 
 cept, the beauty of every promise, the truth of every 
 sacrifice, the substance of every rite, the song of every 
 inspired lip, the longing desire of every renewed heart, 
 the beacon which guides through the voyage of life, the 
 haven to which the tides of grace convey, the end of 
 faith, the full light of hope, the home of love! ” 
 
 Furthermore, as a prophet Jacob would personify the 
 Salvation of the Lord. His exclamation in the text re¬ 
 minds us of the words of another aged saint of God. 
 Simeon, who chanted his nunc dimittis in the temple, had 
 also waited for the salvation'of the Lord; he had 
 waited for the consolation of Israel.” But unlike dy¬ 
 ing Israel he was to see the reality and not the vision 
 only, for “ it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost 
 that he should not see death before he had seen the 
 Lord’s Christ.” Accordingly when he clasped the Holy 
 Child in his arms he cried, “ Lord, now lettest Thou Thy 
 servant depart in peace, according to Thy word ; for mine 
 eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Having waited in faith 
 he could now say of the Infant in his arms, “ This is Thy 
 
Thy Salvation. 
 
 227 
 
 Salvation ! ” But Simeon as a prophet saw yet more; with 
 all the prophets ” he foretold the sharp sword of suffer¬ 
 ing which should pierce both the Saviour and the saved. 
 
 As we meditate upon the salvation of the Lord, made 
 ours by the death of Christ upon the Cross, that salvation 
 which Jacob and all the prophets longed for and foretold, 
 that salvation won in the past, our present possession, 
 our hope of glory in the eternal future, can we fail, on 
 this Maundy Thursday, to accept and make our own the 
 grateful words of the Psalmist: “ What reward shall I 
 give unto the Lord for all the benefits that He hath done 
 unto me ? I will receive the cup of salvation, and call 
 upon the name of the Lord.” The Psalm which con¬ 
 tains these words was part of the Hallel sung by our 
 blessed Lord and His Apostles on the night of the insti¬ 
 tution of the Holy Communion, when He gave them the 
 Cup of Salvation in His Blood. And so upon this Thurs¬ 
 day which commemorates the celebration of the First 
 Eucharist, O blessed Lord and Saviour, I will meditate 
 upon Thy love in giving that Feast of Salvation unto 
 Thy Church; with Thy help I will prepare for my own 
 Easter Communion, and on that holy day with all the 
 faithful throughout the world, ” I will receive the Cup 
 of Salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.” As 
 I kneel before the Easter altar to receive Thy gift, I will 
 not forget that it is also written: ” Unto them that look 
 for Him shall He appear the second time, without sin, 
 unto salvation.” 
 
 “ O Love, who once in time wast slain, 
 
 Pierced through and through with bitter woe, 
 
 O Love, who wrestling thus didst gain 
 That we eternal joy might know : 
 
 O Love, I give myself to Thee : 
 
 Thine ever, only Thine to be. 
 
228 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 “ O Love, who once shalt bid me rise 
 From out this dying life of ours : 
 
 O Love, who once above yon skies 
 Shalt set me in the fadeless bowers : 
 O Love, I give myself to Thee ; 
 
 Thine ever, only Thine to be.” 
 
HE YIELDED UP THE GHOST. 
 
 GOOD FRIDAY. 
 
 “ And yielded up the ghost.”—Gen. xlix. 33. 
 
 W E are naturally inclined to be indifferent to that 
 which is familiar. In the northern parts of 
 Europe the sun does not rise for six months in the year, 
 but when he does appear after his long sleep the people 
 who dwell in those far away lands welcome him with ex¬ 
 uberant delight. They climb to the summits of the 
 great rocks which overlook the northern sea and sing 
 psalms of thanksgiving to God for the reappearance of 
 the king of day. The sunrise is a great event because 
 months have passed since last it was seen. With us, 
 however, the sun rises every morning in the year and the 
 dawn is such a commonplace matter that we scarcely give 
 it a moment’s consideration. So it is with the familiar 
 certainties of life. The great truths are so well known 
 that we neglect and forget them. Some of the essential 
 facts which men and women are prone to put aside are 
 brought before us most vividly on Good Friday. 
 
 One of the facts which the death of Christ emphasizes 
 is the certainty that we too must die. And we know so 
 well that we are mortal that we forget the fact. We 
 even seek to forget it, and seem to live as though we 
 were to live here forever. To-day, then, let us face this 
 contingency and try to realize the end which awaits us 
 all. In yielding up the ghost our blessed Lord sub¬ 
 mitted to the lot of every child of Adam. Death reigns. 
 
 229 
 
230 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 We must die. Over each one of us will be said, “ Ashes 
 to ashes, dust to dust.” There is no escape; “ all heads 
 must come to the cold tomb.” The grave yawns, your 
 grave and mine. Yet how seldom when in the enjoy¬ 
 ment of health do we reflect upon the grave and gate of 
 death—our own death, our own grave! It has been said 
 that we never know the meaning of death until death 
 comes to one we love. Of most of us the saying is true. 
 In youth we heard of death, read of death, saw the hearse, 
 the graveyard, the funeral procession; but when death 
 came to our own home, then, for the first time, we under¬ 
 stood its awful significance. 
 
 The death mentioned in the text will help us to think 
 of our own dying day. If we have found the life of Jacob 
 a fruitful and edifying Lenten study, surely, now at the 
 close, as we behold him yielding up the ghost, we may 
 say, “ Let my last end be like his.” He died in faith, 
 in charity with all men, and he had “ hope in his death.” 
 Beginning life with an inborn love for the things of earth 
 rarely exceeded, still he set his affections on things 
 above; and after a lifelong struggle to subdue the evil 
 within him, won the crown of righteousness and died for¬ 
 given and victorious. In Jacob “ patience had her per¬ 
 fect work.” Gradually, under the discipline of a loving 
 Heavenly Father’s hand, he was changed from Jacob the 
 Supplanter into Israel the Prince of God. But you say, 
 “ When Christ yielded up the ghost on Calvary He was 
 more than man and He could say with an assurance 
 which passed beyond faith, ‘ Father, into Thy hands I 
 commend My spirit; ’ when Jacob yielded up the ghost 
 he was an old man with little more to live for, and he 
 was one of the greatest of the saints; I am only human, 
 and very human; I have not attained unto Jacob’s years 
 
He Yielded up the Ghost. 231 
 
 or Jacob’s faith, and the thought of my own death crushes 
 and overmasters me.” The fear of death, however, which 
 is natural, cannot furnish a valid excuse for refusing to 
 give it consideration. All living creatures fear death. 
 As has been said: “ The senseless, dumb creature, the 
 sheep, the ox, will tremble as he sees death at his side. 
 This shrinking, this horror of great darkness, comes even 
 to the animal which has no sense of sin, no dread of 
 doom. And why ? Because death and life are at eternal 
 enmity. Man was made for unity, and death means 
 destruction. Man was made for beauty, and death means 
 corruption. Man was made for health, and death means 
 fatal disease. If you know what it is to live in God — if 
 you know what it is to feel that within you there are 
 powers and capacities the exercise of which produces in¬ 
 finite delight: if you know what pure, unselfish affection is, 
 — if you have really entered into the charm of life—then 
 you have shrunk with inveterate loathing from death.” 
 At the grave of Lazarus our blessed Lord groaned in 
 spirit and was troubled. He trembled with human horror 
 as the shadow of death approached Him in Gethsemane. 
 And this thought of death frightens us all. Its inevit¬ 
 ableness also adds to the fear which it inspires. 
 
 “ The black camel Death kneeleth once at each door 
 And a mortal must mount to return nevermore.” 
 
 That grim messenger will come for me. I must go with 
 him ; I must go alone. No human companions can share 
 my journey. The grave with its loneliness, its silence, 
 its worm, awaits my body. I must leave this world, my 
 work, my pleasure, my goods, and be no more seen. 
 Henry Kirke White’s lines seem wrung from the very 
 heart of humanity: 
 
232 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 “ Yes, I must die—I feel that 1 must die, 
 
 Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me 
 As I contemplate the dim gulf of death, 
 
 The shuddering void, the awful blank futurity. 
 
 « • • • • • • 
 
 “ And it is hard 
 
 To feel the hand of death arrest my steps, 
 Throw a chill blight o’er all my budding hopes, 
 And hurl my soul untimely to the shades, 
 
 Lost in the gaping gulf of blank oblivion.” 
 
 To him one of the saddest thoughts of death was that he 
 should be forgotten by the bright world of which he then 
 seemed a vital part, that soon he should be “ lost in the 
 gaping gulf of blank oblivion.” But probably for most 
 of us the chief alarm caused by the thought of the grave 
 is the conviction that death does not end all, that we 
 must each one appear before the Judge of all the earth 
 to give account for the deeds done in the body. For how 
 many would death be robbed of its sharpest sting should 
 some Divine hand write over the entrances to all our 
 burial grounds what infidelity once wrote on the portal 
 to Pere la Chaise Cemetery, “ Death is an everlasting 
 sleep”! But in the sleep of death, perchance, we may 
 dream, perchance, awake—“ Ay, there ’s the rub! ” Yes, 
 there is something in the human breast which forces us 
 to set our seal to the declaration of Holy Scripture, “ It 
 is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the 
 judgment.” On this one day in the year let us think 
 seriously of these things and so prepare to meet our God. 
 The earnest words of Canon Liddon will help us to realize 
 what it is to die and to meet God: “ Every man who be¬ 
 lieves that God exists, that he himself has a soul which 
 does not perish with the body, knows that a time must 
 come when this meeting will be inevitable. In the hour 
 
He Yielded up the Ghost. 233 
 
 of death, whether in mercy or in displeasure, God looks 
 into the face of His creatures as never before. The veils 
 of sense, which long had hidden His countenance, are 
 then stripped away; and as spirit meets with spirit with¬ 
 out the interposition of any film of matter, so does man in 
 death meet with his God. It is this which renders death 
 so exceedingly solemn. Ere yet the last breath has fairly 
 passed from the body, or the failing eyes have closed, the 
 soul has partly at any rate, entered upon a world entirely 
 new, magnificent, awful. It has seen beings, shapes, 
 modes of existence, never even imagined before. But it 
 has done more than that. It has met its God as a dis¬ 
 embodied spirit can meet Him.” Prepare, then, to meet 
 thy God. Prepare to meet Him in death, prepare to 
 meet Him in judgment. That judgment, demanded by 
 the moral sense of mankind, is revealed in the Word of 
 God, “ For God hath appointed a day in which He will 
 judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He 
 hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto 
 all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead.” 
 “ The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as 
 some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us- 
 ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all 
 should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord 
 will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens 
 shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall 
 melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that 
 are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these 
 things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought 
 ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. Look¬ 
 ing for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, 
 wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and 
 the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless 
 
2 34 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a 
 new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, 
 beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent 
 that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and 
 blameless. ” 
 
 May God grant that when each one of us shall have 
 served Him in our generation we may be gathered to our 
 fathers having the testimony of a good conscience; in the 
 communion of the Catholic Church; in the confidence of 
 a certain faith; in the comfort of a reasonable, religious 
 and holy hope, in favor with our God, and in perfect 
 charity with the world; and hear the voice of the Cruci¬ 
 fied saying, Come, ye blessed children of My Father, re¬ 
 ceive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning 
 of the world! 
 
THE CAVE OF MACHPELAH. 
 
 EASTER EVEN. 
 
 “ In the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in 
 the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the 
 Hittite for a possession of a burying-place.”—Gen. xlix. 30. 
 
 T HUS Israel gave commandment concerning his burial. 
 
 Although he knew that Joseph’s power could secure 
 interment for him in the most magnificent of Egyptian 
 tombs he would nevertheless make his grave in the land 
 of promise. The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews tells us that Jacob was one of those “ who died in 
 faith.” He believed the promise made to Abraham and 
 to Isaac that Canaan was the inheritance of God’s people, 
 a land in which they should rule and worship, the land 
 of the coming Shiloh, a land which was the type and 
 promise of the Promised Land beyond the grave. There¬ 
 fore he charged his sons, “ Bury me with my fathers in 
 the cave that is in the field of Machpelah; ” for ” there,” 
 he continued, “ they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; 
 there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there 
 I buried Leah. The purchase of the field and of the cave 
 that is therein was from the children of Heth. And when 
 Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he 
 gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the 
 ghost, and was gathered unto his people.” 
 
 To the ancient commentators it seemed not without a 
 poetical and spiritual significance that Jacob’s new name 
 of Israel, which he won in the wrestling at Peniel, con- 
 
 235 
 
236 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 tains “ the first letters of the names of the other five ” 
 who were buried in the cave of Machpelah—Isaac, Sarah, 
 Rebekah, Abraham, Leah ; for us, however, his words are 
 noteworthy because there is in them a clear expression of 
 his confident faith in an immediate meeting with the souls 
 of his kindred. “ Bury me with my fathers,” he says; 
 “ my dust shall rest with theirs.” But he also says, “ I am 
 to be gathered unto my people,” and the historian adds, 
 “ he yielded up the ghost and was gathered unto his 
 people.” His body was not yet gathered to the bodies 
 of his people, so if, at the moment of death, he was 
 gathered to them it must have been in the spirit, in the 
 Paradise of the faithful; accordingly the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews declares of Jacob and of all those who were 
 buried with him in the cave of Machpelah, “ These all 
 died in faith, not having received the promises, but hav¬ 
 ing seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and 
 embraced them.” In the assurance of that faith Jacob 
 met death with perfect self-possession. “ He gathered 
 up his feet into the bed ; ” he consented to his departure, 
 even as Christ upon the Cross bowed His head in token 
 of His consent to the approach of death, and thus will¬ 
 ingly, triumphantly, he was gathered unto his people. 
 
 How calm and noble that face looked, fixed in the 
 marble of death! The Jacob-look had vanished from it; 
 and it was stamped with the smile with which the royal 
 Israel-spirit had moulded it in its outward passage.” 
 
 “ So, pilgrim, now thy brows are cold, 
 
 We see thee what thou art; and know 
 Thy likeness to the wise below, 
 
 Thy kindred to the great of old.” 
 
 During the weeks of Lent we have been trying to learn 
 from Jacob how to live; to-day we may learn from him 
 
The Cave of Machpelah. 
 
 237 
 
 how to die. After “ life’s long Lent” the world-wearied 
 servant of God has “ entered into the quiet Easter-eve of 
 faith.” His history is especially helpful to those who 
 find it hard to be good. From first to last his life was a 
 fierce and fiery struggle of the flesh against the spirit, and 
 of the spirit against the flesh. The note of joy is faint. 
 The joylessness of his spiritual life, if somewhat magni¬ 
 fied, is yet traced to its source in Arthur Hugh Clough’s 
 interpretation of the patriarch’s last words to his sons: 
 
 “ Ah me ! this eager rivalry of life, 
 
 This cruel conflict for pre-eminence, 
 
 This keen supplanting of the dearest kin, 
 
 Quick seizure and fast unrelaxing hold 
 Of vantage-place ; the stony, hard resolve, 
 
 The chase, the competition, and the craft 
 Which seems to be the poison of our life, 
 
 And yet is the condition of our life ! 
 
 To have done things on which the eye with shame 
 Looks back, the closed hand clutching still the prize ! 
 Alas ! What of all these things shall I say ? 
 
 Take me away unto Thy sleep, O God ! 
 
 I thank Thee it is over, yet I think 
 It was a work appointed me of Thee. 
 
 How is it? I have striven all my days 
 To do my duty to my house and hearth, 
 
 And to the purpose of my father’s race, 
 
 Yet is my heart therewith not satisfied.” 
 
 Yes, the secret of all Jacob’s dissatisfaction and dis¬ 
 quietude was his sin and its penalty, the punishment of 
 disobedience which “ is the other half of sin.” Endowed 
 by nature with the richest gifts of intellectual strength 
 and firmness of purpose, he was destined to be a master¬ 
 ful, distinguished man. But he was also born with keen 
 inclinations to seek self-advancement at any price, and 
 
238 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 thus guile in its multitudinous forms became the beset¬ 
 ting sin of his life. It was decreed that he should be the 
 birthright heir of the promises of God, but his father’s 
 wilfulness in disregarding the oracle from on high tempted 
 the youth to secure his own by fraud and the bartered 
 birthright became henceforth at once the bane and the 
 blessing of his life. When God spoke to his soul in the 
 Ladder-vision at Bethel he was not disobedient unto 
 the heavenly vision; he vowed his vow, consecrated him¬ 
 self to the service of God, and all that follows is the rec¬ 
 ord of his efforts to keep that vow. And the Spirit of God 
 helped him in his struggle, by encouragement, by chas¬ 
 tisement, and never forsook him. There can be few of 
 us who have had to meet greater hindrances in our efforts 
 to be true to God and to the highest ideals of mankind. 
 But in the end he triumphed over all the foes of his soul. 
 If we are steadfast, we also may share his victory. 
 
 They “ buried him in the cave of the field of Mach- 
 pelah.” On Easter Even our thoughts turn to another 
 cave where “ they laid Jesus.” In that cavern tomb, 
 which was also in the land of Canaan, the worn and 
 lacerated body of the Lord reposed in peace through the 
 long Jewish Sabbath Day. Our Saviour’s body was in 
 the cave; His soul was gathered to His people. He was 
 with His people, all the departed, who awaited the resur¬ 
 rection and the final judgment. He promised to meet 
 the penitent thief this day in Paradise. And Paradise is 
 not Heaven, for on Easter morning He said to the Mag¬ 
 dalene, “ Touch me not! I have not yet ascended to My 
 P'ather.” He did not go to Heaven, the abode of the 
 Father, until He assumed His risen body. On Easter 
 Even, therefore, we see the meaning of the words of the 
 Creed, “ He descended into Hell,” into the abode of the 
 
The Cave of Machpelah. 
 
 239 
 
 departed, where all souls wait the resurrection and the 
 judgment of the last day. 
 
 Can we doubt that on the first Easter Even Jacob saw 
 Christ, and received the full answer to his dying prayer, 
 
 I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord! ” 
 
 Jacob’s soul was in Paradise; on earth his body was 
 being prepared for Machpelah. “ And Joseph com¬ 
 manded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: 
 and the physicians embalmed Israel. And forty days 
 were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of 
 those which are embalmed. . . . And Joseph went 
 
 up to bury his father: and with him went up all the serv¬ 
 ants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the 
 elders of the land of Egypt. And all the house of 
 Joseph, and his brethren, and his father’s house: only 
 their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they 
 left in the land of Goshen. And there went up with 
 him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great 
 company. And they came to the threshing-floor of 
 Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned 
 with a great and very sore lamentation : and he made a 
 mourning for his father seven days. And when the in¬ 
 habitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning 
 in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourn¬ 
 ing to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was 
 called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond Jordan. And his 
 sons did unto him according as he commanded them: 
 For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and 
 buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which 
 Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a 
 buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.” 
 Thus the mortal remains of the Prince of God were laid 
 to rest; “ and in all probability they are there, in a state 
 
240 
 
 The Bartered Birthright. 
 
 of perfect preservation, unto this day. Many a storm has 
 swept over them — Assyrian, Egyptian, Babylonian, 
 Grecian, Roman, Saracenic, and Mohammedan. But 
 nought has disturbed their quiet rest; and there ” they 
 await the second advent of the Crucified and Risen Lord. 
 
 For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with 
 a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the 
 trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 
 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up 
 together with them in the clouds; to meet the Lord in 
 the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Where¬ 
 fore comfort one another with these words.” 
 
 THE END. 
 



 
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