one look up, and, in the light and the glory of the eternal world, take cheer. With a holier faith and a truer consecration, let us to-day march on in our Christian life, believing that he that hath pledged his word will never leave us nor forsake us. Wherever you may be, whether in battle, in the hospitals, among enemies, or in business; whatever may befall you, whether you be wounded, or captive, or sick, or maligned and traduced, or tossed hither and thither, sweet spring is coming on, and the summer of heaven is just before you. Be patient to the end, and finally you shall be saved. X THREE ERAS IN LIFE: GOD-LOVE-GRIEF. "And it came to pass after these things, that one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick; and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee. And Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed. And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt, before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. And thy issue, which thou begettest after them, shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance. And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by me in the land of Canaan in the way, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath: and I buried her there in the way of Ephrath; the same is Beth-lehem."-GENESIS, xlviii., 1-7. How strange human life appears to us in these remote ages. Society, customs, occupations, in the earliest antiquity, seem scarcely recognizable. Patriarchs of that far-off day are clothed with the romance of a thousand years. As, when a village stands on a summer afternoon flooded with a golden haze, we see it through the dust and the vapor which rise from the industry of the village itself, so we look at these old men of a distant time through an atmosphere which the minds of millions of men has created. It seems irreverent, if not wicked, to dissolve this golden mist, and to lay bare literal realities. Esau and Jacob were brothers. They could not have been better contrasted had their characters been merely dramatic. Esau, the eldest, was bold, abrupt, heedless, yet with much in his nature that was generous and lovable. |