fore.

If you had stood near to that man, you might, perhaps, have heard him
speaking to God in prayer and thanksgiving; you might have heard him
saying to himself, "with my staff passed I over this Jordan, and now I am
become two bands:" or you might have heard him earnestly calling upon the
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac his father, to keep him safe in the
great danger which now lay close before him. His mind was certainly very
full of that danger; for he kept looking up from the sand on which his
eyes were often fixed, and gazing as far as he could see over the hills
before him, as if he expected to see some great danger suddenly meet him
on his way, and as if, therefore, he wished to be quite ready for it.

If you looked into his face, you could see at once that he was not a
common man. He was not a very old man; his hair was not yet grey upon
his head; and yet it seemed, at the first glance, as if he was very old.
But as you looked closer, you saw that it was not so; but that many, many
thoughts had passed through his mind, and left those deep marks stamped
even on his face. It was not only sorrow, though there was much of that;
nor care, though he was now full of care; but besides these, it seemed as
if he had seen, and done, and felt great things--things in which all a
man's soul is called up, and so, which leave their impress behind them,
even when they have passed away.

He HAD seen great things, and felt great things. He had seen God's most
holy angels going up to heaven, and coming down to earth upon their
messages of mercy. He had heard the voice of the Lord of all, promising
to be his Father and his Friend. And only the night before, the Angel of
the covenant had made himself known to him in the stillness of his lonely
tent, and made him strong to wrestle with him for a blessing, until the
breaking of the day. So that it was no wonder, that when you looked into
his face, it was not like the face of a common man, but one which was
full of thought, which bore almost outwardly the stamp of great
mysteries.

But what was it which now filled this man with care? He was returning
home from a far land where he had been staying twenty years, to the land
where his father dwelt. He had gone out a poor man; he was coming home a
rich man. He was bringing back with him his wives, and his children, and
his servants, and his flocks, and his herds; and of what was he afraid?
Surely he could trust the God