“Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye
know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the
blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance,
though he sought it carefully with tears.”—HEB. xii. 16, 17.
These words have always seemed to be among the very saddest in the book
of God. No place of repentance, though sought carefully with tears! It
is a very terrible picture, and seems to describe the experience of what
must have been a very wretched and blighted life. It is possible that if
we study the matter closely some of the tones of sadness may be
lightened; but still Esau and his sad history will remain one of the
dark perplexities of Scripture, just as the acts and the fate of men
like Esau are among the most inscrutable mysteries of life. There are
men like Esau cropping up everywhere; men who seem born to lose their
birthright, to be befooled by the keen and subtle Jacobs, to be seeking
ever places of repentance, and to find Fate inexorable to their tears.
Men _born_ under the dark doom of the rejected, we are tempted to
say—so inevitable their destiny appears from the first. In this case,
“_the elder shall serve the younger_,” was written of the twin brethren
in the womb, and Jacob was the successful supplanter from his birth.
There are many sad mysteries in life, and the history of such natures
and their destiny are among the saddest. We cannot hope to fathom it on
earth; but blessed be God for the assurance which we are not only
permitted but bound to cherish, that all which is inscrutable here and
dark with shadows will unfold a divine order and beauty in the long
bright day of eternity.
Esau and Jacob, both in their personal character and their relations
with each other, are representative men, and foreshow in brief the
essential character of large phases and long periods of human
development. They place before us, as we read the record of their
personal history, the great twin brethren, the Gentile and the Jewish,
perhaps even more widely the Christian and the heathen, sections of
mankind. The earlier records of the book of God are full of such typical
characters and lives. In truth, in the earliest time life was typical;
men lived in large and free intercourse with Nature and with their
fellow-men. The conventional swathing-bands with which modern society
has bound itself were unknown. Men lived boldly from within, and what
they said and did had broad human significance, and forecast naturally
what men would say and do under the same conditions to the end of time.
Hence, we imagine, the exceeding fulness of the book of Genesis in its
painting of character and life. Nowhere have we anything like such large
and graphic portraiture as here. The reason is surely that in those ages
life was richly doctrinal, and that the God who caused all Holy
Scripture to be written for our learning saw that the history of such
lives as those of Abraham, Isaac, Esau, Jacob, and Joseph, would be the
most precious legacy which could be handed down from the age of the
patriarchs to all time.
The contrast of these two men is peculiarly rich and instructive. Esau
is the lusty, genial, jovial pagan; impulsive, impetuous, frank, and
generous, but sensual and self-willed. A man keenly alive to the claims
and experiences of the moment; slow to believe in unseen realities and
the harvest which could only be reaped beyond long years of patience and
pain. Jacob, on the other hand, led from the first a meditative and
interior life. What may be meant by the description, “a plain man,
dwelling in tents,” is not very apparent. It certainly does not simply
describe a fact in his history, but rather a feature of his character.
He loved the home life; while the burly Esau was abroad in the field, he
loved to sit at home, meditating on many things, and amongst them the
highest—a plain man, sound, pure, pious, as some commentators have it.
The meaning of the word is certainly moral; “_integer vitæ_,” may
perhaps express it. The pilgrim Abraham was reproduced in Jacob in some
of the main features of his character. He could understand, at any rate,
what Esau apparently could never understand—the sacredness of a Divine
vocation, the value of a birthright which carried with it a Divine
benediction, and which was freighted with the Divine promise to the
world. The grand distinction between the two men from the first was,
that Jacob had faith, while Esau had none. Jacob had the heart of a
pilgrim, Esau the heart of a “prince of this world.” Jacob saw something
behind the veil, which filled his soul with awe and made his life a
constant aspiration; Esau saw that on this side the veil which filled
him with the only pleasure which he cared to grasp at, and which taught
him to look upon his brother’s pilgrim lot and halting step as the sign
of a broken and wasted life. Esau had his grand success in the princedom
which he founded. You may read the list of the “dukes of Edom, who
sprang from him,” in the chapters which record his history. The sad and
weary Jacob, standing before Pharaoh when his race was well nigh run,
witnessed this confession, “_Few and evil have the days of the years of
my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the
life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage_.” His success lay
beyond generations and ages, beyond the rising of the “Star that should
come out of” his house, beyond the resurrection day. Jacob’s life won no
success but such as he shares with humanity in time and in eternity. His
success is our success; in his blessing we are blessed. He stands forth
in the early twilight of history as the typical child of the kingdom,
the Prince of God, having power with two worlds. He is the
representative of the elect men and races. This election is a broad,
plain, principle of God’s government. In all ages God is wont to call
men, races, nations, out of the commonwealth of humanity, and to bring
them near unto Himself. Their election is to service—high service, hard
battle, stern endurance. First in honour, they must be first in perils,
pains, temptations, and toils. Privilege is a word of abundant meaning
in the book of God’s dispensations; but it means privilege to be
first—to lead the van, to clear the way, to open new paths for progress
through the jungle of ignorance and night. Privilege to belong to a
privileged class, to special advantage and certain success; privilege to
run the race of life, light and trim against weighted competitors, is
part of the devil’s gospel, not of God’s. Of this royal class, who are
God’s elect ministers to mankind in all their generations, Jacob is a
typical representative. We learn from his character and history what God
means by callings, birthrights, and blessings, and how much those whom
He places in the front rank have to toil and suffer for the world. There
is something in Jacob’s character and in the development of his life
which is significant for all time, which forecasts the course of Jewish
and Christian ages, and prophesies in broad outline the method of God’s
universal culture of our race.
At the same time the patriarch of Israel presents to us a wonderfully
complete image of the race which sprang from him. We speak of Jacob
rather than Abraham, as the founder of the people to which he gave his
name; Abraham, the father of the faithful, is the founder of a yet
richer and mightier line. But Jacob is the typical Jew. His life, like
the life of his people, is simply incomprehensible to those who cannot
realize a Divine vocation, who cannot cling to a Divine promise, who
cannot struggle and suffer in faith for the sake of far-off divine
results, whereby humanity at large would be blessed. Jacob’s life was
made what it was by the commerce which he held with the unseen God of
his fathers. They have but a dim eye for the meaning of history who
cannot see that, under all this man’s questionable deeds and chequered
experience, this faith in God was the deepest and strongest element in
his nature. It ruled the critical moments of his life, it sustained him
through all the stormiest scenes of his pilgrimage, and it shone out
clearest and strongest in death. Scarcely had he gone forth an exile
from the house of his fathers, when this fruitful commerce with God and
the spiritual world was established. The beautiful narrative in Genesis
casts a flood of light on his life. “_And Jacob went out from Beersheba,
and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried
there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of
that place and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to
sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on the earth, and the
top of it reached to heaven: and, behold, the angels of God ascending
and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I
am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land
whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy
seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to
the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in
thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither
thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land: for I will not
leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And
Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this
place, and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is
this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the
gate of heaven._” (Gen. xxviii. 10–17.)
Precisely the same influence was formative of the character and
destinies of his race. This high and grand quality, this openness to the
influence of the “powers of the world to come,” which is surely the
grandest of all qualities, renders the highest Divine culture possible,
with eternally blessed and glorious results. But it was marred and
debased both in Jacob and in his people by the alloy of selfish, base,
and carnal elements, of the earth earthy, which it was the great aim of
all the Divine discipline under which he and his people suffered so
sharply, to purge away and to destroy. And herein he represents a wider
family than Israel. This Divine tincture, in a measure, is in all of us,
mixed with the baser earthy matter. God’s chosen ones, the subjects of
His highest culture in all ages, have mostly the earthy element in full
force, struggling with the Divine. No model men were the chosen people
of ancient times, nor the saints of apostolic days. The one question is,
Hast thou faith? “_Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief_,” is
substantially the confession of Jacob, of Israel, and of all who in any
age form part of the Church of the living God. When Jacob, when the
Jews, suffered themselves to forget the Divinity which was with them,
which was in them, their superior power revealed itself as simply
masterly craft. Jacob, viewed in one light, is just the most
accomplished and successful schemer of his times; in another light, he
is the grandest spiritual prince. His people repeat the anomaly. The
race of the grandest spiritual power, of the most intense religious
belief, have earned the character of the most accomplished hucksters and
tricksters of the world. The power capable of the one, under the true
inspiration, without it sank easily to the level of the other. There is
a modern instance remarkably in point. In many respects the Scotch have
succeeded to the character and position which the Jews occupied in
ancient society. In both people there is the same grand spiritual power,
the same prophetic spirit—Edward Irving was more after the fashion of
an old Jewish prophet than any man, except perhaps Savonarola, whom we
have had among us in these modern days—the same intense religious zeal,
the same heroism in fighting and suffering for their faith, mixed up
with the same worldly ambition, the same cautious and canny temper, the
same facility of dispersion, and the same power of getting on and
winning wealth and influence wherever God might cast their lot. Is
there not a manifestation of the same law in the history of the
universal Church? As with Jacob, as in Judaism, so in Christendom, the
leading spiritual magnates, the prominent Churchmen of all ages,
forsaking their true strength, divesting themselves of their true power
as Christ’s priests and kings, have sunk to the level of the most
selfish schemers, and have won the reputation of the cleverest and
wiliest statesmen of the world. Churchcraft in all ages has been held to
be a shade more worldly, more subtle, more ruthless, than statecraft.
The old proverb, “the corruption of the best is the worst” partly
accounts for it; but something is due also to the principle whose
workings we trace through Jacob’s history, that the power which,
inspired of God, is capable of Godlike activity, when the world or the
devil get hold of it, is capable of all manner of worldly and devilish
work with fell energy and success.
But Jacob’s life was purified and elevated as it passed through its
tremendous discipline. The aged pilgrim, having won the title of Prince
of God, stood before Pharaoh clothed with a dignity and power which made
the world’s mightiest monarch bend eagerly under the blessing of his
hand. “_The Angel which redeemed me from all evil_,” he spake of, when
his eyes were growing dim in death. The history of his life is the
history of that redemption, and this is its rich meaning for us. He
sinned basely and shamefully, he suffered as few have suffered, and
wrestled as few have strength to wrestle for the blessing which purified
and redeemed his life. A sad, stricken, broken man, halting painfully on
his thigh, he went on his way, but ennobled, purified, and saved. His
life is a revelation of the way of God in the discipline of our spirits;
how power gets educated and purified, and made meet at last for the work
and the joy of eternity. So Judaism, as it struggled on and suffered,
lost some of its baser elements, and came forth, developed, into a
higher region of experience and power, in the life of the Christian
Church.
The study of the character of these two men is full of the richest
interest and instruction; but our present purpose is with the elder, and
this profoundly sad passage of his history. There is much, in the matter
of both the birthright and the repentance of which our text speaks,
which is frequently very grievously and even disastrously misunderstood,
which is supposed to present ideas of the dealings of God with man which
contradict the fundamental principles of the gospel, and casts no
trifling stumbling-blocks before the steps of faith. That we may
understand it truly let us consider—
I. That the rejection of the elder, and the election of the younger to
honour and power—to all that the election of God could bring—by no
means stands by itself in the history of the Divine dispensations; and
it illustrates an important principle on which we will dwell for a
moment before we pass on.
We are tempted to think that, on the whole, Esau was a hardly used man,
and that we have here an instance of the exercise of the Divine
sovereignty which is harsh, arbitrary, and unjust. In the natural course
of things, Esau would have had the birthright and all that it was worth.
It is made to appear that by a purely arbitrary act Esau was robbed of
it, while Jacob was endowed with it, having no sort of superior claim.
Paul, in Romans ix. 10–13, is careful to insist that whatever the
principle may be which is at work here, at any rate it is not merit, for
the decree was pronounced long before any questions of merit could have
force. The sovereignty of God is here the keystone of his argument: it
is worth our while to discern, as far as we may, the reason on which
this act of sovereignty rests. Of course the sympathy which we extend to
Esau is based upon some idea of the rights of the elder born which seems
to be instinctive in the human heart. This opens a wide question into
which we have no need in this place to enter. The principle is
recognised plainly enough in the word of God. In Deuteronomy xxi. 15–17,
there is explicit legislation on the subject. “_If a man have two
wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children,
both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be her’s that
was hated: then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that
which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn
before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: but he shall
acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a
double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his
strength; the right of the firstborn is his._” Joseph was evidently
grieved when Jacob blessed the younger with the blessing of the
firstborn, as though some sacred order had been violated: and the very
word “firstborn” is employed as a term of dignity and pre-eminence both
in the Old and the New Testament scriptures. I believe it to be for the
good of society that this order should exist; that the eldest son should
be looked upon as the representative of the family, while the younger
sons should regard it as their lot—and not the worse lot in the sight
of God and the angels—to carve out a new fortune for themselves. I
believe this to be a Divine institution, and that God contemplated it
when he established the family life as the basis of human society. But
just because it is an order ordained of God, man shall not make an idol
of it. A certain free play in the working of an order or an institution
is essential to the well-being and progress of society. If God had so
ordered all the dispensations, that the elder son was constituted
invariably the organ of His communication with the household, the tribe,
the race, it would have instituted a caste instead of a principle of
order, and the great majority of our race would, in that case, be
outcast from their birth. That this rule of the elder might not become a
tyrannous thing, that the younger sons of the house might feel that they
too had a man’s part to play on the theatre of life, a part which might
easily become grander and more glorious than that of the firstborn, God,
at great critical moments, seems to have broken through the order, and
made the younger the heir of the promises and the organ of His
revelation to mankind. Jacob is a notable, a typical instance. The case
of David is hardly less remarkable, 1 Sam. xvi. 6–13. And Paul in the
spiritual family illustrates the same principle; the youngest born of
the apostles, one in his own estimation hardly meet to be called an
apostle, laboured more abundantly than they all, and was crowned with
the most glorious success. But these arbitrary selections, as they
appear at first sight, in reality, when we look more closely, are found
to deliver the institution of primogeniture from arbitrariness; and they
show to us that the Will which rules the world maintains its freedom
under the guidance of its wisdom, and remits to no institution, however
useful or honourable, the supreme power in the conduct of human affairs.
It seems as though, knowing man’s inherent propensity to formalism, the
Lord had visibly broken through, from time to time, the very forms which
He had Himself established, that He might show decisively that forms can
have noble use alone in the hands of the free. Two singular instances of
this, closely parallel to each other, are to be found in the numbers of
the tribes of Israel and of the apostles of Christ. We talk familiarly
of twelve tribes and of twelve apostles. But were there truly twelve or
thirteen in each case? The question is by no means easy to answer. The
tribe of Joseph was split into two. Theoretically, it is easy to regard
the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh as forming together the one tribe of
Joseph. But, practically, we must remember that the tribe of Ephraim was
the most powerful and masterful of the tribes until the rise of the
house of David. If any tribe might be looked upon as complete, certainly
it would be the tribe of Ephraim. So that, looking at it in the light of
actual history, we should be compelled to reckon thirteen, but for the
fact that the separation of the tribe of Levi for the priesthood reduced
to twelve the number of tribes claiming tribal settlement in Canaan, and
active in the spheres of industry, politics, and war. Similarly, it is
an open question how far the place of Judas among the Twelve was
lawfully filled up by the election of Matthias. It is far from clear
that Peter and the infant Church were not acting hastily in this
election and ordination of a successor to the apostate. We hear the name
of Matthias only, and then he disappears from history. While we soon
meet with an apostle of the Lord’s election, who, if Matthias was duly
called, raises the number of the apostles to thirteen. Is not this
uncertainty, this fringe of doubt, left hanging around the numbers in
these important and critical instances with a set purpose, that men
might not make an idol of the number? That men might not think in the
one case that the firstborn were the world’s sole masters, nor dream in
the other that a college of twelve was essential to the conduct of all
the great spiritual movements of mankind.
II. The question of the birthright seems to us to be one on which there
is, popularly at any rate, a good deal of misunderstanding. We will look
at it a little more closely, before we proceed to consider the
unavailing repentance which will form the topic of a second discourse.
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 thigh
I halt, till life’s short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness, I
On 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 prove
Thy nature and Thy name is Love.”