lifetime of splendid and careless prosperity, and in a good old age went
down to his grave in peace.

And what did Jacob win by his birthright--his rights of the firstborn?
Simply the power to become God's pilgrim, the power to win a lofty
height of honour and renown by life-long patience, by heroic struggle,
by wearing, wasting toils. What good shall this birthright do to me,
said the hungry hunter, mad for the mess of pottage which the thrifty
Jacob sold. But what good did the birthright do to the supplanter who
bought it, and filched the blessing with it? None, absolutely none, in
the sense in which they talk of "good" who are reckoning gains. It drove
him forth from the very hour when he stole his father's blessing, an
exile to a distant land. It made him for long years, his best years, a
hireling in his kinsman's house. It exposed him to precisely the kind
of trick which he himself had practised, in a matter of yet deeper
moment to his affection; for it imperilled the winning of the woman whom
he tenderly loved. After he had served for long years as a hireling for
a hireling's wage, it brought him back at length to the threshold of the
promised Canaan. Rich in the wealth of the East, he drew near the
borders. His soul was filled with perturbation when he heard that Esau
was coming to meet him. The wrong which his brother had suffered rose up
freshly before him in all its disgraceful features, and he could hardly
believe in the hunter's generous forgiveness as he cowered a suppliant
at his feet. Entered at length on the land of his inheritance, discord
breaks out in his home and embitters his life. He is struck to the heart
through his dearest affections. "There I buried Rachel" is the epitaph
of a great agony; and when Joseph was not, he felt that he should go
down mourning to the grave. At length the land of his inheritance
refused to sustain him; and the weary old pilgrim, with one foot in the
grave, goes forth once more an exile--the second and final exile--into a
land where the sons for whom he won and held the birthright were
destined for centuries to writhe and moan as slaves. What good did the
birthright do to him?

If you look at the things which are seen, which are mostly in view when
birthrights are in question, Esau, the hardly used man, the victim, had
most unquestionably the preferable lot. The time came when he stood as a
prince before Jacob, and Jacob bowed himself at his feet. There was no
malign