His life offers less of interest,
less to excite, less to praise and less to blame than either Abraham's
or Jacob's. The father's energy, patience, faith and obedience had
prepared the way for the prosperity of the son; and Isaac, nursed in
affluence and cherished by maternal affection, seems to have exhibited
less energy, enterprise and decision than either his father or his
descendants. His premature blindness doubtless conduced to this inactive
life. Yet he trusted and obeyed the God of his father, though he enjoyed
neither the exalted faith of Abraham, nor was he favoured with the
enlarged prophetic views of Jacob.

In all the trials and infirmities of Jacob--from the day in which he
left his father's house until the hour in which "he gathered his feet in
his bed and died" in Egypt--we see the evidence and the growth of true
piety, of enlarged faith. He was encompassed with infirmities, and these
infirmities betrayed him into sins, which brought in their train the
sorrows which, through Divine grace, purified and sanctified him. Thus
his character excites our increasing love and sympathy, and his
advancing piety our veneration.

From the glimpses we obtain of the families of Nahor, Bethuel, and
Laban, we trace a gradual departure from Jehovah among the descendants
of Shem. Nahor and Abraham were possessors of like faith. They both
worshipped the God of their fathers--of Shem, of Noah, of Methuselah, of
Enoch, of Seth, of Adam. Bethuel's household still remained a household
of faith, but in Laban we see the beginning of a departure from the true
God. The first steps towards idolatry were taken. There was the resort
to a sensible representation,--some image probably used as a symbol of
the true God at first, but certainly ensnaring the heart, and ending in
idolatry. Thus the gods of Laban, which Rachel stole, were leading him
and his family rapidly to idol-worship, and to forgetfulness of the true
God. Still he had not sunk into gross idolatry. Laban still pledged
himself, and invoked the name of the God of Abraham and of Nahor, and
of their fathers, when he entered into covenant with Jacob. He had not
yet altogether abjured the worship of Jehovah: he had begun to mingle a
false worship with it, and thus prepared the way for the full apostasy
of his descendants.

That the chosen people might be kept from the taint of idolatry, Jacob
left Laban; yet Rachel had stolen her father's images--and there is then
great sig