sure, the world is the great obscuring principle between man and God. Why could not all the surrounding nations of Canaan see the Divine light and receive the Divine life of this covenant age? While they were believed in and received by the chosen people, they only seemed to increase the darkness of the natural man. Why were the kings of Shinar, Elam, Admah, and Zoar ignorant of these grand covenant transactions? The king of Sodom came like the king of Salem to meet Abraham; but how foreign to each other the powers that met, how different their sympathies and pursuits. The grand dukes of the house of Esau (chap. xxxvi.) knew nothing of the house of God at Beth-el; they would have ridiculed as nonsense the wrestling conflict at Peniel. In all such, our Saviour's words will be fulfilled: "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when they shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God, and they themselves cast out."

In this patriarchal Church we are in an age of historie type; and so I believe the history of Dinah, in the thirtyfourth chapter, was a type of the corruption of the Church after Christ; of her unlawful alliance with Rome, of her defilement thereby contracted, of her repudiation of the heresy, and denouncement of it: "It came to pass on the third day, Simeon and Levi, took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males. And they slew Hamor and Shechem his son with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house." I only see a typical continuity of history.

CHAPTER XX.

ON THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

"AND God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother." Beth-cl was within the border of Canaan proper, the place where God appeared to him in a vision at the moment he was quitting it; and it lay about thirty miles south of Shechem where he then dwelt.

"Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments." Doubtless these were the gods Rachel stole from the house of her father Laban, and that even the household of Jacob had been idolaters, and perhaps would have remained so if God had not reminded him of Beth-el; the mention of the hallowed spot seems in a moment to have convinced him of the sin of idolatry in his house.

"Let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; 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. And Jacob hid all the strange gods under the oak that was in Shechem. And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob." And so I think "the terror of God" was upon Esau, and that brotherly love never had place in his soul.

"So Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is, Beth-el, he and all the people that were with him. And he built there an altar, and called the place El-beth-el” -the God of Beth-el-" because there God appeared unto him, when he fled from the face of his brother." There is such a peculiar halo of interest about this spot, Beth-el, that I always stop in it to breathe the atmosphere of the place, to commune with God at the consecrated altar. I do remember the Beth-el of my childhood, the Beth-el of my girlhood; El-beth-el, the confirmed covenant of my God; and I do love to appeal to the God of Beth-el. As I look back it gives me confidence for the future; He who answered me at Beth-el, has engraven upon every step of my life, El-beth-el.

"And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padan-aram, and blessed him. And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel." Jacob had neglected to take the new name God had given him, which was an insult to God. He was then His high priest, and the father of a multitude of people;

neither of which privilege and high function did he seem fully to wake up to. "God said to him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins." Here God rather chode Jacob for his unbelief, as though he had not believed Him capable, and His purpose fixed to do all he had promised to do. El-elohe-Israel. (xxxiii. 20.)

It is possible God then directed him to move southward, but before doing so he again named the consecrated locality. Beth-el, the house of God.

"And they journeyed from Beth-el; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath and Rachel travailed. And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also. And it came to pass, as her soul was departing, (for she died,) that she called his name Ben-oni"-son of my sorrow- "but his father called him Benjamin "-the son of the right hand. In a Revelation to a lost world, God would not have given us these simple histories without they had been metaphor signifying also spiritual things. I have said Rachel was a type of Judah, and so I say it reverently, that I think Joseph and Benjamin were types of the blessings of the two covenants, Christ and the Holy Ghost; we remember her remarkable prophecy, "The Lord shall add to me another son." (xxx. 24.) And did not even Judah die when the Holy Ghost was given to the Gentile Church? Son of the right hand: "Being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of

the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear." (Acts ii. 33.) This was the fulfilment of the promise just made to Jacob, "I am God Almighty, a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee." And so I think, these eminent historic types of this covenant age, were Divinely intended to set forth to the ancient fathers the precise nature of the blessing of the covenants.

"And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto Mamre, unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned. And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years. 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." It was then a quarter of a century since Isaac had become old and his eyes dim (xxvii. 1); he had suffered long and sorely for the indulgence of his carnal appetite; but God of His infinite mercy spared him to behold his son Jacob again in peace.

Chap. xxxvi. This chapter is another proof that interpolations were made in the sacred writings by persons who arranged them after they were originally written. "Eṣau took his wives, and his sons, and his daughters, and all the persons of his house, and his cattle, and all his beasts, and all his substance, which he had got in the land of Canaan; and went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob. For their riches were more than that they might dwell together; and the land wherein they were strangers could not