dark mysteries of existence, are so full of consolation and
hope as these words of the Saviour upon judgment. We can bear the
darkness, we can bear the anguish, if we are called to pass through it,
because we know that the ordering of our destinies is in the hand of One
who mingles with a brother's sympathy and tenderness the Divine Father's
equity and love.

But the text does not touch upon these difficulties of Esau's history.
It treats him broadly as the typical instance of the reprobate, the man
who by his own base acts has cast himself out of the position for which
he was born and trained; who by one decisive manifestation of his
character and propensities has shut himself out from a high career which
opened fairly before him, and who finds no means of reversing the decree
which excludes him, though he seeks it carefully with tears. It opens a
very terrible vision of the inexorable rigour with which deeds done,
facts when they are once fairly established, react upon our lives. But
the words are often perverted to yet darker meanings--suggesting visions
of unpardonable sins, of fruitless agonies of personal repentance,--with
which souls under strong conviction not seldom torment themselves, and
with which the text has absolutely nothing whatever to do. A man seeking
change of heart with an agony of tears, pleading with God to renew him,
to restore him, and to cherish him to new life and hope, yet spurned
from the gate of mercy, flung forth accursed from the arms of love, is a
picture which, blessed be God, has no original in the Divine word. No!
thus runs the gospel: "_Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light._" "_Ask, and it
shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you._" "_For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that
seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened._" "_If ye,
being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much
more shall your Father which is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them
that ask him?_" "_Whoso cometh unto me I will in no wise cast him out._"
"_This man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood;
wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto
God by him, seeing he ever liveth to mak