Misread Passages of Scriptures

There is something which reaches beyond the merely historico-representative character, in the history of these twain. Most of the earnest and generous students of the Old Testament would, we imagine, if they were to make frank confession, sympathise with Esau as a wronged and ill-used man. A sentiment of pity for the big, burly hunter, so helpless in the hands of the subtle and masterly Jacob, takes possession of us as we read the history. It seems a hard penalty to pay for a moment's weakness under the pressure of the pangs of hunger; while the crafty treacherous falsehood by which the blessing as well as the birthright was won from him enlists us wholly as to that transaction on his side. This sentiment of compassion is much strengthened by the vague impression that, through the craft of Jacob, Esau suffered a terrible and irreparable loss. And younger sons, as they see the paternal acres, the family mansion, and the dignity of the family name, passing to the elder, are prone to make the same moan, and to reckon themselves the predestined victims of the social order of the world. Learn from this history how the matter really stands. Esau had all the birthright which he honestly cared for; while Jacob had simply that birthright which, blessed be Christ, is within reach of every child of every household upon earth. Do not waste your pity upon Esau, on the ground of what he lost. Pity him rather on the score of what he did not care to win. It would be a great mistake to suppose that Jacob's treachery left the elder brother a broken and ruined man; on the contrary, the ruin in the worldly sense fell on the man who won the birthright; and though the blessing was added, he went a broken and halting man to the end of his days. That exceeding great and bitter cry, which was wrung from the disinherited when he saw the paternal blessing following the birthright, did not continue to wail through his life. He was a warmhearted, loving, and generous man, though of fiery passion. The loss of the good old Isaac's benediction struck him to the heart; but we are wrong in supposing that it remained a burden on his life. Nothing of the kind; it had been better for him if it had been so. But the fury seems soon to have passed away, probably too his regrets. He became a chieftain of wealth and renown, rich, strong, illustrious. We meet with him again, and there is no trace of a shadow over his life. "And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came, and with him four hundred men. And he divided the children unto Leah, and unto Rachel, and unto the two handmaids. And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost. And he passed over before them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God hath graciously given thy servant. Then the handmaidens came near, they and their children, and they bowed themselves. And Leah also with her children came near, and bowed themselves: and after came Joseph near and Rachel, and they bowed themselves. And he said, What meanest thou by all this drove which I met? And he said, These are to find grace in the sight of my lord. And Esau said, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself." (Gen. xxxiii. 1-9.) "And Esau 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 bear them, because of their cattle. Thus dwelt Esau in mount Seir. Esau is Edom." (Gen. xxxvi. 6-8.) Read the catalogue of his princely descendants, and remember that Edom played a splendid part in the political, and especially the commercial, history of the oriental world. Esau lost that, and that alone, which his soul had no love for, and no power to use to honour. But he won that in which his soul delighted; he passed a lifetime of splendid and careless prosperity, and in a good old age went down to his grave in peace.

And what did Jacob win by his birthright – his rights of the firstborn? Simply the power to become God's pilgrim, the power to win a lofty height of honour and renown by life-long patience, by heroic struggle, by wearing, wasting toils. What good shall this birthright do to me, said the hungry hunter, mad for the mess of pottage which the thrifty Jacob sold. But what good did the birthright do to the supplanter who bought it, and filched the blessing with it? None, absolutely none, in the sense in which they talk of "good" who are reckoning gains. It drove him forth from the very hour when he stole his father's blessing, an exile to a distant land. It made him for long years, his best years, a hireling in his kinsman's house. It exposed him to precisely the kind of trick which he himself had practised, in a matter of yet deeper moment to his affection; for it imperilled the winning of the woman whom he tenderly loved. After he had served for long years as a hireling for a hireling's wage, it brought him back at length to the threshold of the promised Canaan. Rich in the wealth of the East, he drew near the borders. His soul was filled with perturbation when he heard that Esau was coming to meet him. The wrong which his brother had suffered rose up freshly before him in all its disgraceful features, and he could hardly believe in the hunter's generous forgiveness as he cowered a suppliant at his feet. Entered at length on the land of his inheritance, discord breaks out in his home and embitters his life. He is struck to the heart through his dearest affections. "There I buried Rachel" is the epitaph of a great agony; and when Joseph was not, he felt that he should go down mourning to the grave. At length the land of his inheritance refused to sustain him; and the weary old pilgrim, with one foot in the grave, goes forth once more an exile – the second and final exile – into a land where the sons for whom he won and held the birthright were destined for centuries to writhe and moan as slaves. What good did the birthright do to him?

If you look at the things which are seen, which are mostly in view when birthrights are in question, Esau, the hardly used man, the victim, had most unquestionably the preferable lot. The time came when he stood as a prince before Jacob, and Jacob bowed himself at his feet. There was no malignant spirit at work here, as we are sometimes tempted to conceive of it, making Esau's life wretched and broken, while Jacob's was heaped high with all which could gladden a grasping and sensual heart; on the contrary, the chosen son won only that which Esau would not have cared to lift if it had been laid at his very feet. Esau lost only that which would have been life-long a torment to his easy, jovial, sensual nature, which he would have prayed to get rid of, which he would in some way have got rid of, if it had clung to him, no matter at what cost. There were some, remember, who, finding their herds of swine in peril, prayed even the merciful Saviour "to depart out of their coasts." Jacob seized a bitter inheritance as far as this world was concerned, by his clever impersonation; while Rebekah, who prompted and managed it, paid a yet heavier price for it; in this world she never saw her darling more.

What he won was power with God and with man as a spiritual prince; power to pray, and to conquer by prayer; power to trust and to hope in God's mercy through stern struggles and bitter miseries; and power to reach a hand through death and lay up the hope of his soul with God on high. The heart which could crave for a spiritual thing, which pined to be a child of promise, which clung to the traditions of his fathers and the hope of his house, all which Esau scorned, God trained by suffering to aim continually at higher and yet higher things. He won, in a word, a high place in God's high school of discipline, and a name of renown as a spiritual hero in time and in eternity. This was practically his gain; and it is precisely this which God places fairly within your reach. You too may be the sons of promise; "power to become the sons of God" is the birthright which in Christ is yours. Jacob, no doubt, and most justly, seems to you the grander man as compared with Esau, and his life the nobler and more glorious life. Then live it. All that he won you may win. Make yourself a prince of God by wrestling prayer. The birthright of broad acres and family honours may pass to your elder. The birthright of hard work, stern struggle, strong effort, high aspiration, disciplined power, victorious faith, eternal renown and joy, is yours. Christ has won it, and freely bestows it – no younger son's portion, but the birthright of the eldest, the only-begotten son, glorious through time and eternity. It may be that many a younger son may read these words; many a one who may be tempted to bemoan himself that the younger son's portion, the lot of toil and struggle, has fallen to him in life. Well! if it be so, bless God for it. If the lot of the younger be toil and struggle, if it falls to them mainly to open new paths, not without peril and pain, to win by earnest and patient effort strength and wisdom, and to take the leader's place in the battle-field of life, don't moan over it if it has fallen to you, but again I say bless God for it. The nobler, the richer, the lordlier inheritance, is yours. Pity, do not despise, but pity the elders who sit clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day. It would be a strange history if it were fairly written out, the history of younger sons, with a just estimate of what they have done in comparison with the elder for the service and progress of mankind. The eldest born, the heirs, with the inheritance which the past has lazily left to them; the younger sons, with the domain of wisdom, strength, and influence, which their own right hand, God helping them, has won. If Jacob seems to you the petted child of fortune, the chosen favourite of heaven, and Esau the wretched reprobate outcast, spurned alike of man and of God, then take Jacob's inheritance; take it, it is fairly yours. Spurn Esau's, which the devil is putting into your hand. Be your choice the pilgrim's toils and struggles, the name of renown, the everlasting portion; and with the words of the pilgrim's hymn upon your lips pass on your way.

"Contented now upon my thighI halt, till life's short journey end;All helplessness, all weakness, IOn Thee alone for strength depend;Nor have I power from Thee to move;Thy nature and Thy name is Love.Lame as I am, I take the prey;Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o'ercome;I leap for joy, pursue my way,And, as a bounding hart, fly home;Through all eternity to proveThy nature and Thy name is Love."

VI.

NO PLACE OF REPENTANCE

"He found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears." – Heb. xii. 17.

We have shown in the last discourse that a close examination of the question of the birthright lightens some of the deeper shadows which lie upon it. Comparing the outward and visible aspect of the two men – the man who sold the birthright and lost the blessing, and the man who won them both – it would appear that the balance of worldly prosperity was altogether on Esau's side. Esau lost just that which his soul despised, and he won what his soul lusted after, wealth, power, and the position of a prince. He lived prosperously and splendidly, and died peacefully we may believe, with few regrets. There is certainly nothing in the few words which are devoted to his subsequent history to suggest that he lived a disappointed ruined man. On the contrary, he seems to have displayed on his meeting with Jacob that magnanimity and generosity which shallow natures are wont to manifest in a prosperous lot. It is just the glow of the sunlight reflected from their lives: the rippling shallows make a braver show in the sunlight than the still deep pools; and Esaus are gayer objects to look at, when all goes well with them, than the careworn halting pilgrim, who bears on his brow, and no sunlight can efface it, the marks of many toils and tears. But be that as it may, there can be no question that the Bible does not picture the life of Esau as a broken and ruined life, as far as this world is concerned. The man grew rich and powerful, so rich that he could afford to make light of Jacob's presents, so powerful that Jacob's company was helpless in his hand. It is written that once the children of Israel cried for flesh, and "God gave them flesh, but sent leanness into their souls." Something like this was the history of Esau, and of how many a worldly-hearted man whom fortune loads with gifts, while the springs of his higher life sink low and die. And his race prospered. As Jacob was to Esau, quite the weaker and more dependent of the two, so when centuries passed was Israel to Edom. The descendants of Esau had attained to such strength and political influence that they were able to bar the gates of their land against the elect host, pilgrims through the wilderness like their sire, angel-led, and saved by hope. On the whole then, for himself and his descendants, his life must be pronounced a worldly success.

Jacob, on the other hand, had to reap life-long the bitter fruits of his craft and fraud. His life was a weary, wasting struggle with selfish craft and evil passion in all who surrounded him. He spent the best years of his life in exile, and stood before Pharaoh, in his own judgment prematurely aged and decayed. He won a name and a place which called him to submit to a searching discipline, to live the life of a pilgrim, to dwell as a stranger in his promised land, and to die in exile at last. The world was fuller to him of sorrows and toils than of benedictions, and the crown which the Prince of God at last was able to bind around his brow was set with many a thorn. But he won the power to follow the Angel, the Angel which redeemed him from all evil; his life, halting as was his step, was a noble spiritual progress from strength to strength, from victory to victory, till he passed up to receive the prize of his conflict in a world and from a hand which Esau "despised."

Looked at in the light of this world's interests then, some of the darkest difficulties vanish as we read the record of this birthright lost and won. But then there is Esau himself, the man who despised his birthright, who counted himself unworthy of the honour to which God had ordained him, incapable of the glorious toil and patience to which God had called him, and careless of the prize which God had placed within reach of his hand. The life of this man, from the higher point of view, was as sad, wretched, and faithless, as was the pilgrim Jacob's from the lower. He won his wealth and his princedom by his energy of hand and will in all things that pertained to this life; but he let all the interests and hopes of the higher life fade out of the horizon, and the crown of his spiritual manhood slip from the grasp of his careless hand. He touched it, but he could not hold it. What good shall this birthright do to me, he moaned when the mess of pottage steamed before his hungry senses; and the crown rolled in the dust. There is the man Esau, under all his possession and princedom, in the sight of God a very wretched and poverty-stricken outcast of the kingdom whose citizens believe in truth, duty, spiritual effort, conflict, prayer, self-sacrifice, heaven, and God. About the case of Esau personally there are many heavy difficulties. His course seems to have been in a measure marked out from his birth: "The elder shall serve the younger" was said of the twin brethren while they were yet in the womb: and some such relation of the two seems to be involved in the destiny which a higher Will had from the first decreed. And this opens the vision of an abyss of mystery, into the depths of which no finite intellect can search – the relation of connate constitution and temperament to character, and the measure in which this bears on the supreme fact of man's being, responsibility. Responsibility, implying freedom in the largest sense, we hold to be the corner stone of our dignity as men. If man be not free, with the everlasting crown of freedom within his reach as the prize of all his toils and struggles, why! there is not a cur that prowls about the streets whose lot is not more enviable. In that case man would be a combatant by a profound instinct of his nature, struggling sternly life-long against innumerable evils, with nothing after all to struggle for; pressed, crushed, by the weight of intolerable ills, with no hope to sanctify and no harvest to repay his pain. Who would not "rather be a dog and bay the moon," than such a creature? For freedom, and the responsibility which it brings, as the fundamental spiritual fact of our nature, we contend earnestly, yea vehemently, as for the only justification of God's constitution of the human world, the only key to the woes which He lets loose to afflict it and the discords with which He allows it to be torn. And for the reality of this moral freedom we shall have to do stern battle with the school who are urging now, with great subtilty and force, that all the moral phenomena of man's nature are just the finest efflorescence of the nerve matter of which his intelligence is manufactured, the cream of the milk of his natural law.

But it cannot be questioned for a moment that men appear to be under various conditions of advantage, as we might call it, with regard to the exercise of their freedom and its fruits. The differences arise partly, but not we believe chiefly, from circumstance. The child of a household of thieves or vagrants, for instance, seems to have but a poor chance in life compared with the children who grow up, pure, cultivated, comely, and pious, in your serene, happy, and orderly homes. But the more serious source of this inequality is to be found in character and temperament, inbred lusts, passions, tempers, and proclivities which may make the life of a man one long agony of struggle and failure, while another man more fairly endowed may find from the first the way of wisdom a way of pleasantness and all her paths paths of peace. A man born with a brutal nature and feeble spiritual energy, or with a native propensity, as far as we can see, to certain forms of sin – the temptation to which exercises the kind of fascination over his will which the serpent's eye is said to exert over the victim bird, but which another man would burst through as easily as Samson flung off the withes of the Philistine harlot – is, one is tempted to think, at a terrible disadvantage in life's battle, compared with the man who has a halo of saintly glory around his brow from his birth. It is a dark, sad mystery, much of which, after all our brooding over it, we must leave in trust with God.

I believe firmly that inequalities arising out of circumstances are after all far less real than they appear. The facilities and opportunities for a fair unfolding of life are not so uneven, in the various classes and callings, as they seem. There must be some deep meaning in the Saviour's words, "Blessed are ye poor," and in the terrible sentence, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." There is an amount of practical Christianity – daily, hourly trust in God and ministry to each other – developed by the circumstances of the lot of the poor, which we may fairly set against the intelligent beliefs, the doctrinal correctness, and the measured charities of the richer class, as in the sight of God of equal or of higher price. There is nothing in a workman's lot or toil, to remove him farther from the gate of the kingdom than rich men, nobles, priests, or kings; nay, the balance is altogether in his favour. But, alas! there is a class far below the workman, a vast class, vastest in the great cities where Christian civilization is at the height of its splendour and power, whose lot it is terribly difficult to comprehend in a theodicy, and of whom it is hard to believe that they are not from the first at a fearful disadvantage as respects nearness to the gate of the kingdom of heaven. But the gravest side of the difficulty is not circumstantial; it concerns nature and temperament. Though perhaps, if we could search a little more deeply, we should see that each type of character has its own peculiar class of difficulties and temptations; and that the most beautiful and saintlike have their dread perils of shipwreck, which make their course as arduous as that of the souls which bear about with them a great load of fleshliness and groan under the bondage of tyrannous passions and lusts. Still it is a truth which is not without its awful significance, that temperaments, passions, and powers, are very variously distributed to men, while the burden of existence is laid equally upon all, and "every soul must bear its own burden" in time and in eternity.

These things lend infinite meaning to the word "Father" when uttered by Divine lips. Like as a father pitieth his children, the Father pitieth and beareth with us: "he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust." It is a father's compassion, tenderness, and equity which we need, to be the basis of our confidence and hope. A father considers with fatherly care, interest, and love our individual endowments, difficulties, and temptations, in ruling and in judging us; and He will ordain our eternal state with a merciful wisdom, which has to satisfy not a rigid justice only but the hopes and yearnings of a paternal heart. If it were not for the belief that the bar of judgment before which we shall stand is a wise and righteous fatherly heart, the best endowed might well faint under the burden of existence, while the worst would moan under its agony and curse the day on which they saw the sun. There are some very terrible sentences in the word of God, which utter the moan, not of the worst men, but of the best and noblest with whose history it deals. "After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. And Job spake, and said, Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein." (Job iii. 1-7.) "Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; Which long for death, but it cometh not: and dig for it more than for hid treasures; Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they can find the grave? Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters. For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came." (Job iii. 20-26.) "Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad. And let that man be as the cities which the Lord overthrew, and repented not: and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noontide. Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me. Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?" (Jer. xx. 14-18.) These were not bad men, crushed under the burden of their own iniquity, but just, upright, and God-fearing men, who felt that existence was too terrible for them under conditions which hid from them the Father's ruling hand. And if they shrank from the burden of conscious responsible being, how shall weaker men escape its terror, but by taking refuge under the shield of a Father's equity and love! But these thoughts lend a most blessed meaning to the words of the Saviour: "Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth: and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man." (John v. 19-27.) "The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son." "Because he is the Son of Man." Because He can take a man's measure as well as a Divine measure of a man's weaknesses, perils, and temptations; can measure, as a man, man's need of mercy, and utter the Divine Father's judgment from pitiful human lips. Few words, as we pore over these dark mysteries of existence, are so full of consolation and hope as these words of the Saviour upon judgment. We can bear the darkness, we can bear the anguish, if we are called to pass through it, because we know that the ordering of our destinies is in the hand of One who mingles with a brother's sympathy and tenderness the Divine Father's equity and love.