of his crime, and confirmed the true and legitimate order; and Esau awoke too late to see the blessing he had despised: "He cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, Bless me, even me also, O my father." Does not this lost state of Esau evoke from us a prayer: 'Give us grace, O God, to estimate aright our birthright, "Heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ," give us grace, O God, to estimate aright our spiritual inheritance, not to despise it'?" He was despised and rejected of men," strange perversity! Open the eyes of thy people, O God, before it be too late.

"And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept." This lamentable cry, and lamentable loss, should teach us to overcome all carnal desire, to lay down every vestige of temporal glory, even as Christ did, to mortify all carnal indulgence, to overcome self, and to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan." And it should teach us to lay hold more and more of the spiritual promises, to plead them, to keep God to His Word, to live upon them, to die upon them. Let the world leave us if it will, the sooner the better; let it fall from our shoulders, the sooner we are rid of the burden the better; but let us never be called fornicators and profane persons as Esau. "For he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” Give me grace, O God, to be practical upon this point.

Isaac bestowed upon him the blessing of temporal favour, "Thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the

dew of heaven from above." But this was only the portion of the animal kingdom. Too late he beheld the glorious portion he had despised. "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." Here is the very curse Jacob feared, the curse Rebekah resigned herself to. (ver. 12, 13.) The world will always envy, and hate the spiritual supplanter, and slay him if it can. Esau's was only the sorrow of the world, which worketh death; his hatred and desire to murder, betrayed Satan.

Rebekah sent away Jacob to the house of her brother Laban at Haran to escape from Esau. I think it was here they both did wrong. The land of Canaan had been given to the seed of Abraham, and to flee back to the land from whence he had been called was to distrust God, to relinquish the strength that had helped him thus far against God's incarnate enemy. And here I think began his trials, which God still overruled to His glory. "If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?"

We do not read of Rebekah again as an actor in the scene. Isaac perceived that Jacob was the divinely-chosen progenitor of the house of Israel, and he confirmed to him "the blessing' of "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people."

CHAPTER XIX.

ON THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

CHAP. XXVIII. The life of Jacob, like that of Abraham, is so full of thrilling interest, one knows not how to handle it. The type glides into a type of Christ; and his taking two wives of the house of Laban was a type of Him betrothing Israel and Judah. (Hos. ii. 19, 20.)

Thus were Prophecy and Revelation proceeding.

"And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, 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. And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people; and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham." And we read, Isaac sent away Jacob to the house of Bethuel in Padanaram. And that when Esau saw that he had done so, he

went "unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives that he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son."

Thus were two types of good and evil again set up, two antagonistic armies organized.

"And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the stin 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." The vision of God which Jacob received in this place will be the more interesting to us if we retrace Jacob's steps in this journey, and consider the locality where he then was. He started from Beer-sheba, the southern extremity of Canaan. Perhaps he had sojourned upon the plain of Mamre, near Hebron, twenty miles from his starting-point, and found there a little corporated body of holy people, a Church, and worshipped there with them. The sacred record is so brief, that we may fill up the narrative by more than probable incident. Perhaps he then travelled on to Salem, twenty miles more, and there worshipped with the royal house of Melchizedek, in the holy city which was to witness the advent of the Messiah whom he typified, and to be the foundation of a city of rest. From hence he travelled on to Beth-el, about eight or ten miles more, upon the extreme border of the tract immediately called Canaan. Let us rest here, and suppose what were his reflections and feelings. He was just then about to cross the border of the land that had been promised to him and to his seed. This promise had

been made to his fathers; he had received it from Isaac. God had never yet appeared to him. He was then called upon to take the last step in that land, and to leave it. He had left an implacable enemy behind; a strange land and a strange people lay before him, even that which Abraham had been commanded to leave. Did not Jacob at that moment require more than human direction and assurance? God knew he did, and He always meets with His people in proportion to their need. Jacob lay down to sleep in that consecrated precinct. The Genius of the place, God, and His holy angels, surrounded His sleeping minister, and were in spiritual communication with him. "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 descending on it." This was not more a vision of the heavenly host to our world, than it was of Jacob to himself. He was then the angel of the Second Church in the world's history, and the Spirit of God in him was the Angel of God ascending and descending as he spiritually beheld; and the ladder thus represented to him the work going on between earth and heaven. The ladder of human divinity is set upon the earth, but it does not reach to heaven. If we are God's sent ones, His Spirit is in us, is in communication and intercession before Him in the most holy place, in the heights of glory. And thus it is that throughout Scripture there is a peculiar connexion between the ministry of men and angels; angels are often called men, and men angels. I conceive that