e 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.
Th