who had kept him and blessed him all these
twenty years, and who had led him now so far on his journey?

Why should he fear now, when he was almost at his father's tent?

It was because he heard that HIS BROTHER was coming to meet him. But why
should this fill him with such fear? Surely it would be a happy meeting;
brothers born of the same father and of the same mother, who had dwelt
together in one tent, kneeled before one father's knees in prayer, and
joined together in the common plays of childhood,--surely their meeting
must be happy, now that they have been twenty years asunder, and God has
blessed them both, and they are about to see each other again in peace
and safety, and to shew to each other the children whom God had given
them, and who must remind them of their days of common childhood. And
why then is the man afraid? Because when he left his father's house this
brother was very angry with him, and he fears that he may have remembered
his anger all these twenty years, and be ready now to revenge himself for
that old quarrel.

And yet, why should this make such an one to fear? Even if his brother
be still angry with him, and have cruel and evil thoughts against him,
cannot God deliver him?--cannot the same God who has kept him safely all
these twenty years of toil and labour, help and save him now? Why then
does he fear so greatly? He has not forgotten that this God can save
him--he has not for a moment forgotten it; for see how earnestly he makes
his prayer unto Him: hear his vows that if God will again deliver him, he
and all of his shall ever praise and serve him for this mercy. Yet still
he is in fear; and he seems like a man who thought that there was some
reason why the God who had heard him in other cases should not hear him
in this.

What was it, then, which pressed so heavily upon this man's mind? It was
the remembrance of an old sin. He feared that God would leave him now to
Esau's wrath, because he knew that Esau's wrath was God's punishment of
his sin. He feared that Esau's hand would slay his children, as God's
chastisement for the sins of his childhood. He remembered that he had
lied to Isaac his father, and mocked the dimness of his aged eyes by a
false appearance; now he trembled lest his father's God should leave the
deceiver and the mocker to eat the bitter fruit of his old sin. It was
not so much Esau's wrath, and Esau's company, and Esau's arms, which he
feared--though all