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 Lo