yet reckless companion of his youth fails to furnish. Not to speak of the higher spiritual beauties to be found in the story of the heir of the Covenant, is there no special heart-cheer, for what, after all, must ever form the great majority-baffled, tempted, struggling humanity? Is there no courage to take heart again," when we see this "forlorn and shipwrecked brother," sentinelled by angels, followed, tended, loved, restored, by a better than earthly Father, till his name "the Supplanter" was changed into "the Hero of God," and he passed away at last triumphantly to the better Canaan ? Is there no word of comfort and strength to those conscious of strong, inborn, demon-passions, which may have even developed themselves into meaner deeds, in the Divine whisper-"Jacob have I loved"? (Rom. ix. 13): the Being who had fed him all his life long, purging out of his soul the alloy; making him a monument of His grace; that grace triumphing over whatever was unlovely and unloving, till, after a series of strange vicissitudes, it brought him at the last to rejoice in the God of his salvation (Gen. xlix. 18)?

We restrict ourselves in what follows, to one solitary scene in the varied drama of the Patriarch's life; so far as we are aware (and we marvel at it), the only monograph on this sublime episode, which

for sacred interest and Gospel lessons has no parallel in Old Testament Story.*

The writer cannot fail to remember the words of a long deceased and aged relative, from whose exalted piety and consistent walk, more than one have derived their earliest impulses for good,that 'of all passages in the Bible he most loved that night-dream at Bethel.' I can now vividly recal, how, with gleaming eye, he contrasted the monarchs of earth sleeping on their couches of down in royal chambers, with the far truer nobility and glory, which, all unconscious to them, gathered round that lonely wanderer and his pillow of stones. The great German scholar (Ewald) speaks of it as "that passage of rare grandeur placed at the beginning of Jacob's history." +

Be it ours, with profound reverence, to approach

* The dedication of this Book will reveal one purpose, at all events, which I have kept before me, alike as falling in naturally with the theme and furnishing a volume never unseasonable. While containing truths suitable and momentous for all, and in some cases, indeed, more suited for age than youth, I have had peculiarly in view those just going into "the Battle of Life;" with principles, it may be, requiring strength, encouragement, confirmation. Jacob, it is true, was at this period of his history, seventy years of age. But, nevertheless, with his journey to Bethel, his spiritual life-battle and life-lessons may be said to have begun. Am I not warranted in adding, that the more we advance in years, the more do we feel that such lessons, addressed to those in early stages of the pilgrimage, may be extended with profit and advantage to every period of human existence?

+ Ewald's "History of Israel," vol. i. p. 353.