of a rocket, making a great noise at the moment, and then passing away; but it is the silent influence of unseen warmth, that makes fertile the soil of many a barren heart, and clothes the life with the verdure and glory of Eden. Let us not be satisfied with Rahab's attainments, having more than Rahab's opportunities and responsibilities; nor let us be satisfied with the common level: let us rise to loftier heights; let us aspire after nobler Christianity; let us be the best; let us be distinguished in religion, as we are distinguished in the things that are in this world. Cultivate converse with things that are unutterable. Let our glory be, not the wealth we acquire, the wisdom we master, the nations we subjugate, but the victories we win (where victories are noblest) over sin, and Satan, and the world, in the exercise of Rahab's faith, by confidence in Rahab's Lord; and so, with her, inherit the promises; for "In that fair land shall disappear The shadows which we follow here, CHAPTER XIII. BLESSINGS. Tongues of the dead, not lost, But, speaking from death's frost, Like fiery tongues at Pentecost. "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come." -HEBREWS 11: 20. We have seen, in rapid succession, some remarkable instances of the power of faith. It is important to study such illustrations. The popular impression is, that faith is a thing always inoperative, and that works are alone precious. The truth is, faith is the root of all that is good and great; it is so in this world; it is eminently so in relation to a higher world. It was not by love, not by patience, not by heroism, not by virtue, but "by faith," the sainted lived and the martyrs died. Let us examine the faith of Isaac, who had no other foothold than a grave in Canaan. It is said, "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come." The moral characters of the two were perfect contrasts from the first, and yet both were equally blessed. And does not God do to us as the patriarch Isaac did to his sons? His rains descend upon the evil and the good, upon the just and upon the unjust. The sunbeams and the raindrops alight upon the unproductive clay, as well as upon the fertile soil; upon the rose-tree, and upon the brier and the thorn. God's common blessings are for all his creatures. He opens his hand, and Jacob and Esau are equally blessed by him. But there are two classes of blessings. There are the blessings of the throne, which the Jacobs only have; and there are the blessings of the footstool, which the Esaus have in common, frequently, with Jacob; there are spiritual blessings, which he gives to his own; there are temporal blessings, which he spreads, in the exercise of infinite beneficence, over all his created family. This teaches us that we are not to infer that God is for us because we suddenly or successively become rich; and that we are not to infer that God is against us because we lose the temporal blessings that we have long or immemorially enjoyed. We are never to infer what the feeling of God's heart is by the sight or the experience of God's hand. Often, when his hand smites sorest, his heart is fullest of love. Often, when the cloud overwhelms and envelops us, the sunshine of his reconciled countenance is nearest to us. We are not to judge what God is by his providential dealings; but we are to judge of his providential dealings by what God is. We are not to argue that God is against us because the world's stream runs counter to us; but we are first to ascertain what God is to us, and what we are to him, and then we are to infer what his dispensations are. Plant your footing on the fatherhood of God, satisfied that he is your father, and that you are his children, and then construe all the dispensations of his providence in the light and sunshine of your father's countenance. A believer does not say, "God is my enemy because I have lost my property;" but he says, first of all, "God is my father; therefore this loss must be friendship. God is my friend; and therefore all that betides me is but the expression of his love, the chastening of his goodness, the evidence of my sonship." Thus Esau and Jacob had common, yet different blessings; but not from this could Esau infer that he was God's child, or Jacob, from the loss of them, that God was his enemy. It is worthy of notice, as we gather from reading the interesting history which is given in Genesis, that Jacob, the younger, received the principal blessing. This is one illustration of God's sovereignty. How often have we to learn, even now, that grace is not by primogeniture! It is not always the eldest son who is the noblest Christian. It is not always where we would like, and where we should prescribe, that the blessings of grace fall fastest. We need to learn that it is not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God. If it were true that a pious man's children were always pious, and that a bad man's children were always bad, then the world would say, original corruption of heart is not true. Virtue and vice, Christianity and the want of it, are the results of education or precedent. God, therefore, interferes in sovereignty, and shows an illustrious saint emerging from a bad man's home, and sometimes a depraved and abandoned prodigal going out from a good man's house; and thus he teaches us, when we use the means with all the vigor with which they ought to be used, that we must ever look above the means, and feel that even the prescription, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it," is not enough without the blessing of God. The great law is, Train up a child aright, and he will live a Christian; but even this has its limitation and exception; and such limitation is given in order to illustrate the sovereignty of him who calls whom he will, and has mercy upon whom he will have mercy. Throughout the history of these patriarchs, we have often seen this principle embodied. Abel, the younger, was accepted; Cain was not. Abraham, the youngest in Terah's house, was adopted and chosen of God. So, "Jacob have I loved, and," as it is expressed in the Epistle to the Romans, "Esau have I hated." Yet we must not understand the last expression literally; the word "hate," when contrasted with love, in the Scriptures, is more than once used in the sense of loving less; for instance, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." One may not hate his parents; God has said that we must love and honor them; the word is therefore used in the restricted sense of loving less his father and mother than the Lord Jesus Christ. So here, it is said, "Esau have I hated; Jacob have I loved." It does not mean that God hated the one in his sovereignty and loved the other in his sovereignty; but, that he loved the one more than the other. I think it is quite true that God hates nothing but sin; in short, hates nothing that he has made. All that God has made, from the planet in the firmament to the pebble on the sea-shore, from the archangel that is about the throne to the infant that plays by his mother's knee, God does not hate. God hates nothing that he has made. He "so loved the world, that he gave his onlybegotten Son; " that none might perish except those that will," that whosoever believeth on him might not perish, but have eternal life." There is evidence, from the expression employed in the original record, to which this verse refers, that temporal blessings were not so largely conferred upon Jacob as upon Esau; for, in speaking of his pilgrimage, Jacob was compelled to confess that large temporal blessings were not his lot: "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been." Esau, however, was chagrined at the blessing, such as it was, pronounced upon Jacob; Esau had temporal blessings promised, but evidently he understood that Jacob had something higher, that is, spiritual. For instance, the blessing upon Jacob was, "God give thee 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 |