SQLite format 3@  ii!%%atableTopicsTopicsCREATE TABLE Topics (Title NVARCHAR(100), Notes TEXT) 7Y%02-Outset From Home{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1i5-01-Preface{\rtf1\ansi\deff6Q  lBAprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang3082\f0\fs22 PREFACE\par \par This is intended as a companion volume to "Noontide at Sychar." 'The story of Jacob's Ladder' and 'The story of Jacob's Well,' may appropriately be conjoined in sacred interest. The one, forming as remarkable an Old Testament, as the other does a striking New Testament, 'Chapter on Providence and Grace.'\par \par "Why select an incident in the life of a base circumventing Jew?" was the observation of a friend, on mentioning that I was engaged in writing what follows.\par \par The speaker, I felt assured, was too just and discriminating seriously to maintain so disparaging an estimate of the illustrious Patriarch. But while accepting his remark with the qualifications I well knew were implied, I answered, it was just because of the faults and failings of a very composite nature, that whether in the separate scenes of his history or as a great whole, I thought the character of Jacob formed a valuable and interesting study.\par \par In the case of such "Great Hearts of the olden time" as Abraham and Moses, we have lofty ideals of "patriarchal saintliness,"--lives which contain passages of rare and exceptional excellence. If I may be allowed the simile, they resemble Alpine peaks with their virgin snow, towering far above their compeers, inaccessible and discouraging from their very loftiness. In JACOB, on the other hand, we have an average type of frail, fallen humanity or, to follow out the figure, we have one of the lowlier eminences of a commonplace world--one, also, with its scars and blemishes only too faithfully revealed to the eye of the spectator. We trace in his half-dramatic, half-tragic history, God's dealings with one of Nature's least lovable products; a man who originally had comparatively few elements of worth to recommend or redeem him; who, had he been left to himself, uncontrolled by any higher impulses, might have become a confirmed liar, if not a wrecked and abandoned castaway.\par \par Did we seek indeed from Old Testament history, in the era in which he lived, a more winning portraiture, we do not require to travel beyond the tent-home of Isaac. In the person of Esau, even if we take him as he is often regarded, the representative man of the world, we have more engaging native excellencies. Our sympathies are all wi th the bold, brave hunter--his noble demeanor and manly ways and filial devotion, rather than with the deceitful equivocating brother, who has tricked him out of his patrimonial rights, and drawn down thereby a very righteous vengeance.\par \par Add to this, there is nothing either brilliant or heroic about Jacob. Absent are those mental gifts and those courageous exploits which throw a halo of interest over the lives of some even subordinate characters in Bible story. Though we may admire a ten acity of purpose and unflinching determination, which go far to redeem baser and less amiable qualities--a certain worldly adroitness, energy of will, fertility of resource, and perhaps, more than all, patient endurance--yet he is neither philosopher, nor minstrel, nor warrior. His name is the key-note to his inner nature, "the crafty"--having a shrewd eye to business, and to self. His prosaic calling and ways are brought out in the sacred narrative, when he is briefly described as "a plain man dwelling i n tents" (Gen. 25:27).\par \par Yet there are lessons, more ample and more varied far--lessons alike encouraging and humbling, to be gathered from the less attractive and more commonplace personage, which the chivalrous yet reckless companion of his youth fails to furnish. Not to speak of the higher spiritual beauties to be found in the story of the heir of the Covenant, is there no special heart-cheer, for what, after all, must ever form the great majority--baffled, tempted, struggling humanity ?\par \par Is there no "courage to take heart again," when we see this "forlorn and shipwrecked brother," sentineled by angels, followed, tended, loved, restored, by a better than earthly Father, until his name "the Supplanter" was changed into "the Hero of God," and he passed away at last triumphantly to the better Canaan? Is there no word of comfort and strength to those conscious of strong, inborn, demon-passions, which may have even developed themselves into baser deeds, in the Divine whispe r--"Jacob have I loved"? (Rom. 9:13)--the Being who had fed him all his life long, purging out of his soul the alloy; making him a monument of His grace; that grace triumphing over whatever was unlovely and unloving, until, after a series of strange vicissitudes, it brought him at the last to rejoice in the God of his salvation (Gen. 49:18)?\par \par We restrict ourselves in what follows, to one solitary scene in the varied drama of the Patriarch's life; so far as we are aware (and we marvel at it), the only monograph on this sublime episode, which for sacred interest and Gospel lessons has no parallel in Old Testament Story.\par \par The writer cannot fail to remember the words of a long deceased and aged relative, from whose exalted piety and consistent walk, more than one have derived their earliest impulses for good--that 'of all passages in the Bible he most loved that night-dream at Bethel.' I can now vividly recall, how, with gleaming eye, he contrasted the monarchs of earth sleeping on their couches of down in royal chambers, with the far truer nobility and glory, which, all unconscious to them, gathered round that lonely wanderer and his pillow of stones. The great German scholar (Ewald) speaks of it as "that passage of rare grandeur placed at the beginning of Jacob's history."\par \par Be it ours, with profound reverence, to approach this Holy Ground whose very name has become hallowed. "The God of Bethel" is a title no less loved on Christian than on Jewish lips. The incidents of the Sleeper, the Angel-ladder, and the Heavenly Voice, have, with endless diversity, been cast and re-cast in sacred poetry and song. In Scottish Churches, as we can testify, the well-known lines of Doddridge inserted at the close of this preface, have led and stimulated, with their simple strains, the devotions of worshipers--more than perhaps any other scriptural 'Paraphrase.' How often have they stirred the pulse of congregations on the Sabbath eve of a Communion, or in the waning light of the closing Sunday of the year! Nor can the writer forget the last memorable occasion on which they were heard by him. It was when they rang their plaintive cadences through the aisles of Westminster Abbey over the grave of David Livingstone. Words, familiar to the illustrious traveler from earliest boyhood, and which had doubtless often cheered him amid the scorching suns and sands of Africa, were appropriately selected for the concluding solemn rite--when the 'desert dust' of the "weary Pilgrim," "all his wanderings ceased," was laid in the great church of Britain's consecrated dead--\par \par "O God of Bethel! by whose hand\par Your people still are fed;\par Who through this weary pilgrimage\par Have all our fathers led.\par \par "Our vows, our prayers, we now present\par Before Your throne of grace;\par God of our fathers! be the God\par Of their succeeding race.\par \par "Through each perplexing path of life\par  Our wandering footsteps guide;\par Give us each day our daily bread,\par And clothing fit provide.\par \par "O spread Your covering wings around,\par Until all our wanderings cease,\par And at our Father's loved abode\par Our souls arrive in peace.\par \par "Such blessings from Your gracious hand\par Our humble prayers implore;\par And You shall be our chosen God,\par And portion evermore."\par \par  \par \par Meanwhile, Jacob left Beersheba and traveled toward Haran. At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone for a pillow and lay down to sleep. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down on it.\par \par At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, "I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I will give it to you and your descendants. Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will cover the land from east to west and from north to south. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants. What's more, I will be with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. I will someday bring you safely back to this land. I will be with you constantly until I have finished giving you everything I have promised."\par \par Then Jacob woke up and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn't even aware of it." He was afraid and said, "What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God\emdash the gateway to heaven!" The next morning he got up very early. He took the stone he had used as a pillow and set it upright as a memorial pillar. Then he poured olive oil over it. He named the place Bethel\emdash "house of God"\emdash though the name of the nearby village was Luz.\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 Then Jacob made this vow--"If God will be with me and protect me on this journey and give me food and clothing, and if he will bring me back safely to my father, then I will make the Lord my God. This memorial pillar will become a place for worshiping God, and I will give God a tenth of everything he gives me." Genesis 28:10-22\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\lang2058\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par } 033\f0\fs22 OUTSET FROM HOME\par \par "Jacob left Beersheba and traveled toward Haran." Genesis 28:10\par \par The world in many of its outward phases has undergone important alterations since the era of the Pilgrim Fathers of Canaan. Its infancy has been merged in the maturity of age. And yet the heart that beat under a Beersheba tent, or under the nightly sky of Palestine, is identical in all the "unchanged humanities" which pulse and throb to this hour under a British tree in the nineteenth century. With little variations there are the same struggles of inexperienced youth, the same stern conflicts of ripened manhood. Looking, too, to the Divine side, we have to note a similar continuity of spiritual influence. The moral forces which arrested and controlled the patriarch in his flight to Haran have their repetition now. That dream was the rehearsal of Divine revelations to the individual soul ever since. Many a heart, during the intervening three thousand six hundred years, has become a Bethel, many a dwelling, the pathway of angels.\par \par Outset from Home! How much is implied in the brief words which head this chapter! Few there are, regarding either themselves or others, in whom they do not awaken mingled recollections; all the more so, if, corresponding with the case of Jacob, it be the first blank in the tent--the first break in the magic household-circle--the first vacant chair by the fireside. At the inexorable calls of life, the cherished nest sooner or later must be broken up. Not a day passes but there are thousands of such departures--the scene in the desert and pasture-lands of southern Judah repeated amid the green lanes and smiling fields of modern England--the remnants of the long-unbroken group gathered at the door, whether of lordly castle or of thatched cottage, uttering the last farewell, and then re-entering that which will never be the same to its inhabitants again. Many an Isaac and Rebekah have thus watched their favorite boy until lost from view in the winding road or receding glades; or standing with mute tears upon the harbor, have followed the wake of the disappearing vessel until they caught the last wave of the "vanishing hand."\par \par Each may conjure up their own remembrance of that hour; whether in the remoter past or recent present. The first entrance at school or university, waking up under the strange roof, listening to the strange voices, and noting the unfamiliar ways. The more frequent case still in humbler life, the commencement of the novel toils and duties of ordinary domestic service. How many have lain down thus in their new dream-land, to whom may have come, in visions of the night, the glow of familiar faces in the "fitful firelight" with its "shadows on the parlor wall;" or the picture of loved ones seated on the mossy turf, where childhood was used to weave its necklace of primrose and daffodil, the ringing laugh still echoing over the meadows; or while listening to the music of the tuneful brook, singing its way through rocky dell amid birch and heather. How many such have opened their eyes in early morn, with the consciousness that to them at least these cherished scenes and sounds are amid the visions and echoes of the past--"as a dream when one awakens."\par \par "Far away a place is vacant\par By a humble hearth for me,\par Dying embers dimly show it,\par Where I would sincerely be!\par \par Faded Autumn leaves are trembling\par On the withered jasmine tree,\par Creeping round the little casement,\par Where I would sincerely be!\par \par There some simple hearts are waiting,\par Longing, wearying for me;\par Far away where tears are falling,\par Where I would sincerely be!"\par \par Yes, few among us can fail to recall the day, with its bygone vistas of holy sunshine (a tear may be condoned for its memories) when we went out from our Beersheba towards some unknown Haran!\par \par "Happy, thrice happy," says one of the most illustrious secular writers of the past age in concluding one of his works, "as an after remembrance, be the final parting between hopeful son and fearful parent, at the foot of that mystic bridge, which starts from the threshold of home--lost in the dimness of the far-opposing shore--bridge, over which goes the boy who shall never return but as the man."\par \par The first home-leaving, in the case of the patriarch, was in many ways singular and exce!ptional. Its sadness must have been augmented by the fact that he was no youth when he thus took his pilgrim staff to begin the pilgrim life. For many long unbroken years of fellowship he had lived, either within, or at all events near, the paternal tent. His one only brother from boyhood had been devoted to a roving life. Impatient of the restraints of home, the latter despised the dull, unexciting monotony of sheepfolds and pasture lands. From dewy dawn until the sun crimsoned with its last rays the des"ert sand, Esau, the cunning hunter, the Nimrod of his day, loved to roam the woods and scale the rocks with his bow and quiver, rejoicing his father's heart by bringing home trophies of the chase from forest, and breezy upland; or, when marauding tribe made a foray on the peaceful tents and herds of the Hebrew settlers, we may conjecture he would be off for days with his picked band of fighters to make reprisals. For this very reason, had his been the departure from the family home, it would not have crea#ted the blank caused by the absence of the more domestic brother, whose simple tastes seem to have made him, at all events, his mother's undisguised favorite. Rebekah had kindred sympathies with Jacob which she seemed never to share with Esau. In the case of the elder-born there was nothing in common to unite save the strong bond of nature--while, in addition to other causes of repulsion and estrangement, the mother's jealousy was pronounced and irrepressible towards the Hittite wives of her nomadic son. $The ascendancy of these idolatrous women over his pliable disposition, seemed to have formed her chief domestic trial (Gen. 26:35; 27:46).\par \par There were well-known impelling reasons in Jacob's sudden outset from home which rendered it especially painful. It does not fall within the scope of these pages to rehearse the thrice familiar story of the too successful impersonation; the duped and deceived father; the wronged, and defrauded heir; the anguish of the unscrupulous mother when she wok%e up to the full consciousness of the peril for which her duplicity was responsible.\par \par All companionless and alone, this too apt pupil in the school of treachery and intrigue goes forth on his journey.\par \par Not many years before, that same route had been traversed by a trusted servant. Slave as he was, old Eleazar of Damascus was not allowed to undertake, in behalf of his young master, the long pilgrimage to Haran unaccompanied. He had ten richly adorned and well-laden camel&s with their drivers. While now "the heir of promise," with vast material and spiritual wealth, if not in possession at least in promise, is allowed to leave with nothing but the small bag slung on his shoulders, and the pilgrim staff in his hand.\par \par The reason of the contrast is obvious. Jacob is fleeing for dear life. The wrath of a deeply-injured brother has compelled him to dispense with all preliminary preparations, and to resort to instantaneous flight. With the thought of the fleet,' vindictive huntsman tracking his footsteps, he hastens along the rugged plateau of South Palestine (scarce knowing where), with the dim purpose of reaching, after days and nights of wandering, the home of his maternal relatives on the other side of the Euphrates, a distance of 400 miles. We cannot venture with confidence to describe the precise route he would follow, nor how long time it would occupy before he reached Bethel. The distance between the latter and Beersheba would render the completion of th(e journey, in less than two days, at least, an impossibility. He would pursue his way through rustic stretches of hill and valley, then all void of historic renown, but which, in coming ages, were to assert for themselves a name and a place unrivaled in sacred interest. Among these, he could hardly miss skirting the gorge from which was to rise the future walls of the great capital, and whose rocky heights were at this time occupied by the strong Canaanite fortress of Jebus. On he would speed through the )tortuous windings of the green hills of Judah and Benjamin, sprinkled here and there with clusters of the indigenous olive tree. Probably on the second evening, the sun which had been pouring its rays on the head of the fugitive during the noontide and afternoon hours, was fast sinking behind the mountains of Ephraim; or perhaps as he surmounted at times the higher slopes, he could see beyond the Plains of Sharon--what, after his stationary home-life would be to him a less familiar feature--the great orb dipping its disc in the western wave.\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 Be this as it may, "the last faint pulse of quivering light" was gone; the stars were gemming the heavens, as we watch the lone figure of the exile, his body weary with fatigue, his soul filled with conflicting "home memories," seeking a halting place for the night in the dreary surrounding uplands.\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\lang3082\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par \par } +my loved one's sake.\par \par Let Your holy counsel lead me;\par Let Your light before me shine;\par That he may not stumble over\par Word or deed of mine!"--Whittier\par \par "Amazingly great is the power which mothers exert over the spiritual life of their offspring. It goes to one's heart to see a young tree, which while still slender and soft might have been trained to grow straight and bear fruit and show a beautiful head, ABANDONED."--Tholuck.\par \par, "And Rebekah spoke unto Jacob . Now, therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command you." Genesis 27:6-8.\par \par "Jacob left Beersheba and traveled toward Haran." Genesis 28:10\par \par In subsequent chapters, the unfolding of the Patriarch's dream will be suggestive of topics of highest interest, alike regarding God's providential and spiritual dealings--the soul and eternity. We may well, however, before proceeding, pause on the threshold, and gather a- few lessons of a more purely domestic complexion, but not on that account less momentous or important, with which the story is replete. Moreover, though it be mainly filial calls and encouragements--filial duties and responsibilities--to which indirect reference will be made in this volume, we cannot well omit all allusion to those parental influences which so vividly challenge our attention in the opening of the narrative. To the latter we shall give the priority in this chapter, reserving the former fo.r that which follows.\par \par Jacob was trained for long years under the eye of his God-fearing father, who, if we may transfer modern phraseology to an age innocent of theological erudition and book-lore, had himself been a devout student alike in natural and revealed religion. He who delighted to "meditate in the field at eventide" (Gen. 24:63) would not likely allow his child to grow up to youth or manhood with that 'outer oracle' of God unread and unreverenced. No minstrel had yet arisen to/ sing of "the green pastures, or the still waters" where the Divine Shepherd led His flock; of "the valleys covered with corn, the little hills rejoicing on every side." But the meadows around, fringing the desert, and the oasis where we may imagine the tents were pitched, would then, as now, form a floral lesson-book for the young and enquiring mind; while the bright heavens above, whether vaulted in their canopy of blue, or arched with the rainbow, or gleaming with oriental stars, would serve as a might0y diagram to illustrate the power, and love, and glory of the Almighty Framer.\par \par Isaac, also, could unfold to his son more sacred revelations of Jehovah than those seen in the hieroglyphics of external nature, the penciling of desert flower, or the lighting of the burning fires in the temple of night. By that desert tent there was an altar on which, morning and evening, sacrifices were slain, and from which the incense cloud ascended. More than this, it is evident from an expression Jacob1 afterwards employs, that the Divine Being was so constantly realized by him, (although as yet by no outward palpable manifestations), that the "no creed," so common in apostate Christendom, never threw its malignant shadow across his early mental vision. There were other wilds on which he might roam, but not the bleak wilds of sceptic doubt. He speaks of God with the familiarity of a recognized, ever-present friend--"The Lord before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God that fed me all my l2ife long" (Gen. 48:15, 16).\par \par These simple but sublime verities, these religious principles in which he had been nurtured from his earliest years, were further illustrated and authenticated by his parents' holy and consistent life. For although Isaac is the least prominent and conspicuous of the founders of the nation, reticent, retiring, unambitious, he never seems to have lost the impress and reward of his early faith, on that memorable occasion when he so meekly bowed his young head in3 unexampled self-sacrifice at the bidding of his father and his father's God. That patient, unmurmuring act of filial obedience appears to have given a tone of peacefulness to his subsequent character.\par \par The well of Lahairoi, the well of Hagar and her outcast boy, where the Patriarch occasionally pitched his tent, was well calculated, from its name and associations, to give Jacob his earliest impressions of the "all-seeing God." Nor must we forget the most venerable form in that primitive4 domestic circle. During the most impressible period of his existence (from childhood to fifteen years of age), he enjoyed the ever-brightening faith of his grandfather Abraham. We can think of the aged Patriarch Abraham, seated by the tent-door, listening with the subdued rapture of old-age to the ringing laugh of childhood and youth, watching with tender interest the dawn of two young lives with diverse tastes and dispositions rapidly developing. Or we can picture those sacred sabbaths when the family g5roup were assembled, and father and grandfather, uniting the traditions of the past with the fuller Divine disclosures of the present, unfolded in the ears of wives and household-slaves, children and children's children, the earliest stories of providence and grace. "I know him," said Jehovah, speaking of the revered "father of the faithful," "that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment" (Gen. 18:19). When Jacob, indeed6, at the time of which we are about to speak, sped on his journey towards Haran, Abraham, the saintly head of the race, had long been gathered to his fathers. But the memories of his life must have been fragrant as ever. The fugitive, therefore, in his flight, could not fail to bear along with him in vivid recollection, despite of counter-acting impressions to which we shall immediately refer, the beneficial influences of a godly home--influences which we may pronounce to have been unique in their kind, a7nd which were never shared before or since by any who have left the paternal roof to pursue the world's great pilgrimage.\par \par But there was another side, another and a sadder phase to this parental example.\par \par Mournful exception, also, was it to the general experience--the deteriorating and counteracting influences coming from the quarter which is generally the sacred one. The maternal training which, in a hundred instances to one, is so hallowed and blest, was in the case o8f Jacob baneful and blighting. Rebekah (herself inheriting the deceitfulness and treachery of her father's household and race) trained her boy from his earliest years in deceitful deeds. His susceptible nature was only too open to such impressions and teachings. Strange, indeed, seems her resort to the wicked dealings which formed the impelling cause of Jacob's present flight. Strange that she should have deemed it necessary to stoop to a domestic scandal--dishonorable plottings and contrivances which she9 must have known to be unnecessary. She had been made personally cognizant that a future of greatness, riches, and renown, as one of the spiritual chiefs of a new divine dispensation, had been infallibly secured to her favorite son by what was equivalent to a legal bequest. She may possibly have thought that it would extenuate the guilt of thus clandestinely obtaining the blessing for Jacob, that she was thereby only taking an indirect means of accelerating and fulfilling the divine decrees--accomplishing: the divine will and purpose. As if He whom she professed to own and worship could not, in manifold ways unknown to her, fulfill His own pleasure beyond any risk of miscarriage and without human help or expedient.\par \par How different her conduct, with its rationalization and chicanery, from that of more than one of the saintly heroines of the future, whose attitude was simply to "stand still and see the salvation of God." REBEKAH is placed before us in the sacred page an exceptional beacon of; warning among the mothers of Israel. What, after all, did she make of her promptness of invention and heartless, though successful, shrewdness? She had indeed obtained the coveted blessing for her son; but she had to pay for the triumph of her scheming and maneuvering, among other penalties, the life-long forfeiture of his presence and companionship. The glimpse she obtained of him that morning when he went forth a trembling, conscience-smitten impostor and outcast from her sight, was, unknown to her at no public recognition; but they have their reward, and they are enshrined in the hearts of their sons." \lang3082 (British Quarterly Review.)\par \par \lang1033 The mother truly is the Angel of the house. The might of her beneficent sway is more than that of all other moral forces. She speaks and is listened to as the oracle of God. Silent, undemonstrative, it may be, but her influence is like the aroma of the precious nard spoken of in the Gospels, diffusing its fragrance, until the whole hear?t--the whole house is filled with the odor of the ointment. A father's domain is the mind--the intellect. A mother's is the will and the affections--the heart and the life. "Let France," said another, who knew the silent workings of human nature as well as the tactics and strategy of battlefields, "Let France" said Napoleon, "have good mothers, and she will have good sons."\par \par Yes, and like that fragrant perfume of which we have spoken, these hallowed influences often survive after the cas@ket is broken. Indeed, when the grave has closed upon her, the mother at times wields a sovereign power which she may have failed to command in life. In her case, more than in any other, there is 'a speech of the dead'--the memory of gentle looks, and kindly utterances, and holy prayers, like the rustle of angels' wings, inciting to all goodness and deterring from all baseness.\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 Sad, on the other hand, when alike present and posthumous influence may be on the side of evil. When in life, by equivocating word and sinister deed, she may take the keen edge off the moral perceptions, weaken the strength of principle, dull the fires of truth and integrity within the shrine of the youthful soul. Sadder still, when life is ended, the shaft of evil still speeds on its fatal mission of ungodliness, when the hand that drew the bow is mouldering in the dust!\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par \par } 7Y%02-Outset From Home{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1i5-01-Preface{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\f @@\103-Home Memories and Their Lessons{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 HOME MEMORIES AND THEIR LESSONS\par \par "Up to me bright boyhood looks,\par Heart and mind and soul awake;\par Guide my steps, O gracious Father\par For *D (continued)\par \par "Oh take the green ears of an early life,\par And lay them on God's altar."--Anon.\par \par "It is one of the peculiar beauties of Scriptural narrative, that no veil is ever drawn across the frailties or the sins of those whom it describes--there is no flattery and there is no omission. In the case of Jacob, we have the whole man placed faithfully before us--his piety and virtues distinctly portrayed, that they may be imitated; his infirmities and errorsE as candidly avowed, that they may be shunned.--Blunt.\par \par "Look at those who are honest and good, for a wonderful future lies before those who love peace." Psalm 37:37\par \par "And Jacob went out from Beersheba."--Gen. 28:10.\par \par If, in following the footsteps of the fugitive from the Beersheba home to the Bethel dreamland, the first lesson suggested has reference to parental duty and obligation, the next is surely that of filial responsibility--the bliss and happFiness of early piety, the shame and degradation of early sin.\par \par Had it not been for Jacob's scheming of a wicked deceitful plot, he might have left his father's tent on his northern pilgrimage with light heart and elastic step. Sin compels him to steal away a coward and outcast. With all Canaan for his inheritance he is not to be envied. He speaks of it in long subsequent years as "the day of his distress" (Gen. 35:3). The iron had entered into his soul. He was filled with fear; the inwarGd shame of guilt and self-accusation; the consciousness that he had brought this swift exile on himself by a web of falsehoods; all the time knowing the right and doing the wrong. How the flagrant dishonor, involved in the attempt to cheat and out-manoeuver his blind, unsuspicious father--the unblushing lie, told with unscrupulous effrontery, "I am Esau your firstborn;"--the loud and pathetic wail of injury, and the glance of stifled resentment which rose from the lip and flashed from the eye of the defraHuded brother--how would one and all of these memories rise up before him, as with trembling step he now pursued his way! Like Cain he had gone forth with a curse-mark upon him. All the more terrible must have sounded in his ear that despairing cry of the outwitted elder-born, when the latter asserted (27:41) that it was only the pang which fratricide would inflict on a father's heart, which prevented him obeying the impulse of instantaneous revenge. Would even that purpose of repression be kept? Might it Inot before the morrow be cancelled? The thought the dread at least--of so righteous a penalty of his baseness would haunt the fugitive!\par \par Young reader--still it may be within the curtains of the modern tent, or perchance on the eve of setting out from it--let Jacob instruct you by the reverse in his own miserable experience, the blessedness of the spirit of him "in whom there is no deceit" (Ps. 32:2). The night-winds of Bethel sighing around him, the shock of a life of isolation and solitJude succeeding that of home endearment, would have been nothing had his been the inner sunshine of a pure heart and stainless soul. But a defiled conscience, far more than an injured brother, was the nemesis that was tracking his steps. He might moreover have had good reason to dread that, with the forfeiture of human friendships, he had surrendered all claim to a better guardianship. If, in anticipation of coming night-dreams, he had thought of visitants from the spirit-land, it might only have been of aKvenging angels--those flaming cherubim with burning swords, of which in boyhood he had heard as having guarded the entrance to a forfeited Paradise.\par \par He doubtless afterwards came to be, what might be called, 'a prosperous man.' He lived to see one of his sons the ruler of a great kingdom; but at the same time, in righteous resurrection, these very acts of early deceit and wrongdoing seemed ever and anon to be disentombed, and to reappear in the guilt and punishment of others of his familLy. It is certainly noteworthy, that his heaviest cares and sorrows arose from the repetition of his own early crimes, especially in the two points which stand out in most painful prominence in his history--unscrupulous deceit, and the violation of the sacredness of human relationships. The bold subtlety and cunning artifice of the Beersheba tent, had its counterpart and revenge in the web of falsehood and outmaneuvering woven by the grasping, hard-hearted LABAN; in the life of drudgery to which the predesMtined heir of Canaan was subjected, toiling as a bondsman under exasperating demands more cruel than the tyrant's lash. He tells us that his weary frame was well-near prostrated with the burning sun by day, and the chilly frost by night--sleep was banished from his pillow.\par \par His breach of filial honor and devotion, on the other hand, had its righteous recompense in the long story of family sorrow--the living trial of a dishonored only daughter; the early grave of a beloved wife; the cruelN dissimulation by which jealous brothers led him to believe that his dearest son had been devoured by wild beasts. The hairy mantle with which he himself duped his own half-blind father, having its mimicked retribution in the coat of many colors--the sight of which threatened to bring down his grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.\par \par "God," says Bishop Hall in his "Contemplations" on this passage, "comes oftentimes home to us in our own kind--and even by the sin of others pays us our own whenO we look not for it." Even when the end of all was near; when life's vesper chimes rang in the Patriarch's ear, there seemed to mingle solemn remembrances, like the tolling of a funeral bell, from that distant past. In the proudest hour of his waning existence he sighs out the confession, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been" (Gen. 47:9). Though he clung to the Rock of Ages, he heard the boom of far-off billows, or rather the waves of saddened memory chafed at his feet. He had salvatioPn on his dying lips; but he could not, he dared not say with Paul, "I have fought the good fight!"\par \par Those are indeed to be envied, who, at life's evening hour, are unconscious of having done anything to cause the blush of shame, or to sadden the visions of the past--who can make the grand protest of Samuel--"Here I stand. Testify against me in the presence of the Lord and his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated? Whom have I oppressed? From whosQe hand have I accepted a bribe to make me shut my eyes? If I have done any of these, I will make it right." (1 Sam. 12:3). Doubtless one secret of this prophet's evasion of corrupt and corrupting influences, arose from the sunny memories connected with a holy infancy and childhood at Shiloh. Happy is he who can revert to similar hallowed remembrances; who can look back on the long chequered vista of life and think of the household history--the family surroundings--only in connection with lofty principle aRnd earnest faith, loving words and kindly deeds--the FATHER who would recoil from a lie as from a demon's presence; who would scorn all sinister dealing; all deflections from the path of honor--compassing worldly ends by base and unworthy means--the MOTHER who would rather her children should go penniless than stoop to the heartless stratagem or equivocating deed, that would compromise fidelity to God or man.\par \par When such are the bonds which unite parent with son, brother with sister, therSe can truly in the best, the noblest sense, be no breaches in the circle. Oceans and continents may divide you; weekdays of familiar greeting or the solemn hush of former Sabbaths may be exchanged for the hum of the city and its fevered crowds. But it is not locality which determines the true home and the true rest of the soul. It is not the grave which can destroy it. The most lasting links of dear household life survive and defy landmark and distance. Many a family are far nearer to one another, some ofT whom may be in different continents; than those living all unsympathetic and uncongenial under the same roof. Retain the love of the Great Father of all; and the tie of sonhood, and sisterhood, and brotherhood, go where you may, will be inviolate and unbroken. Yes, cleave if you can to such sacred retrospects, cleave to them especially in moments of fierce temptation, whether of assailed creed or assailed passion, and let them serve to beat back the adversary. You may have little or no other patrimony. IUt matters not. "No riches," says Lord Bacon, "are comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth." By the allegiance of the soul to honor, purity, and integrity, you are served heir to that which is better than thousands of gold and of silver. These are heritages which never die, which no fire can consume, and of which no throws of capricious fortune can defraud you. These are 'treasures' which will come to your help, and may be the means of averting moral bankruptcy, in moments when you are Vbrought to feel the weakness of all that is strong, and the insecurity of all that is human.\par \par Beware of the false, conventional estimate of earthly riches and honors. Virtue is wealth; principle is wealth. Raise your protest against the world's perversion of a divine saying--"A man's life consists not in the abundance of the things that he possesses" (Luke 12:15). Be assured you can know no ruin and disaster, so fearful as the insolvency of character. No darkening and eclipse of your earWthly sky can equal the blackness and the shame of evil-doing, the tyranny of servile vices, the hell of a heart no longer pure. Age has no such decrepitude as that of guilt.\par \par Aye, and remember too, as in Jacob's case and experience, THE POWER OF MORAL EVIL TO LIVE ON, AND PERPETUATE ITSELF. His early failings and propensities clung to him. The foundations of truth had been early shaken, and there was much in his character of the worldly-wise and calculating, the crafty and fictitious to Xthe very last; as if he never could get altogether disentangled from the coil of the inward foe. The foul wrong cannot be incarcerated within bars--chained to the hour or place of its committal; it cleaves with remorseless tenacity; do what you will to be rid of it. The violated conscience, like the broken mirror, cannot be pieced together again so as never to show its flaws; the chime-bell, when once cracked, can never again give forth the same clear ring of goodness. By a natural and moral law, deteriorYation--unless arrested by other counteractive forces of which we shall afterwards speak--becomes inevitable. After the horror of the first plunge into sin, every fresh committal becomes easier.\par \par Thank God, however, we can assert the converse too. Just as the base, or unworthy deed leaves the slimy trace of the serpent in its path; so the resolute wrestling, the moral struggle with temptation will preserve the fruits of victory far on in life, yes even to a dying day. The impulses of goodZ as well as those of evil send out their moral vibrations through all space and all time.\par \par You who have the dew of youth upon you, be assured, life is no mimic, mythic battle. If you are to bear heroically the strain of the contest, to conquer the demon-horde of passion, or the dark agony of doubt, look well to your armor and lose no time in proving it. Delay may be perilous. Your safety lies in early and immediate consecration to the divine service. Be it yours, conscious of the danger [of procrastination, to say in the words of one of Bunyan's heroes, as a true recruit in the a great army of the faithful--"Put my name down, sir, for I too am to be one of the host of the Lord." Say not that you are temptation-proof. No man is; and one false step, one deflection from the path, may result in the dreadful plunge down the precipices of ruin. If you try to shape your own destiny independent of God, and the soul, and eternity, be assured destruction is ahead.\par \par How all-momento\us therefore to you are the words which head this chapter--"the outset from home;" the first time alone in the great world with its bewildering surroundings; commencing, each on his own responsibility, to build the giant bridge--the infinite viaduct--which spans immortal being, linking time with eternity--and to determine whether it is to bear traces of untempered mortar and insecure foundation, or whether it be work which is to endure. However gentle and tender the restraints of the parental dwelling jus]t left--perhaps by very reason of these--there is apt often, at this new crisis, to steal over the spirit a dangerous feeling of independence; what I might call a despotic consciousness of self-power. The youthful pilgrim feels himself reveling in a new sphere of untrammeled freedom. The old natural spontaneous obedience is at an end; he is sovereign of a new realm of his own. The world is all before him; he has his own paths to select and his own moral weaknesses to indulge. He has no other arbiter for a^ppeal but the bidding of his own sweet will. Let him beware of too readily abandoning these home moorings, and of drifting out without helm or compass amid the perils of a treacherous sea.\par \par Now is the time to test the strength of character and the stability of principle, when thus confronting alone, unwatched and unwarded, and with no patrol over the Trinity of the world's forces--"the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." When the charmed Tempter lulled asleep _in the tent awakes, then is the time to have courage to repel his insidious wiles, and to show that no new scenes or associations will tempt to swerve from loyal allegiance to duty and to God. The first heroic resistance of temptation, the first stern refusal to capitulate the moral fortress is a noble point gained. The first refusal to resort to the gambling table; the first refusal to conniving at fraud; the first turning away with firm step from the haunt of intemperance; the first firm and loathing re`coil from the siren call of impurity. To be able, regarding one and all of these, to say in the words of good Bishop Hooper at the stake, when he had the offer to barter conscience for dear life, "If you love my soul, away with it!"\par \par All honor to those who show, at once and unmistakably, their colors amid associates of doubtful principle or evil morals; associates who may carry moreover contagion under a fascinating exterior and congenial manners--it may even be in conjunction with cultuare and accomplishment. Specially would I say, in these times, be on your guard against the attempts, under many a subtle form, to tamper with the beliefs of earlier days and often of more trusted teachers; as if it were something noble to doubt, as if it were not something nobler still to believe; groping your darksome way, not to a Bethel with its angel-guarded pillow and heavenly voices, but to some defiled and desecrated portals with their 'Ichabod' of departed glory.\par \par "I do not presubme," said the late Lord Lytton, "to arrogate the office of the preacher; but believe me, as a man of books and a man of the world, that you inherit a religion which in its most familiar form--in the lowly prayer that you learned from your mother's lips, will save you from the temptations to which life is exposed more surely than all which the pride of philosophy can teach." Remember, you have no second trial. Youth comes but once. "The outset" is a solitary landmark in your life history. What would many wcho have been irrevocably ruined by folly and passion give to have your chance again; the shadow moved back on the dial; the white unblotted page yet to be written; the gates of an unexplored and unsaddened future yet to be opened--standing, girded athletes, with the possibilities of a glorious race before them!\par \par At my first visit to the fairest of Italian cities, I was enthralled, as all travelers are, with the two well-known colossal works of Michael Angelo, his statues of "Morning" andd "Evening." Both equally challenge admiration. But there is one marked difference between them, doubtless accidental so far as the great sculptor was himself concerned, but which has conveyed to more than one spectator a suggestive spiritual lesson. The figure of "Evening" is finished. Every feature of the face has received its last touch; the chisel could do no more. It is a type, in breathing marble, of the close of existence, the completed character, the moral expression fixed forever, incapable of alteeration. With the other, the figure of "Morning," it is different. The face there remains in rough outline. We can only discern the initial strokes of the master. All the delicate work of hand and chisel still remain to be completed. Equally significant and expressive symbol of Life's commencement, the outset of the journey--the moral lineaments all unhewn, habits and character, and bias unformed--the character yet to be molded.\par \par Youthful reader, the chisel is still in your own hand. Aref the features to be loving or unloving; generous or selfish; noble or base? When life's evening comes, is the living marble to take the shape of scornful look and sensual lip and lowering brow; or is it to be the calm restful "sleep of the Beloved;"--the image of the Pilgrim-dreamer who begins life's battles with the angels, the bright ladder, and the realized divine presence, and ends with the song of triumph?\par \par Beware, we may still further venture to add, beware, above all, of your BESEgTTING SIN whatever that may be. Keep your eye on the loopholes that require to be specially guarded. Jacob's hereditary tendency, the vice of Laban's family which had transmitted its moral taint to his mother and himself as a fatal inheritance, was covetousness--the lust of gain, the basest, perhaps the most ineradicable of the secondary lower appetites, with its inseparable accompaniment of duplicity, unscrupulous deceit, and degrading selfishness. Let whatever you feel to be your master-temptation form hthe subject of wakeful vigilance and constant self-scrutiny, taking with you the Word of God as your surest weapon of defense in the hour of peril and conflict.\par \par In an after episode in the life of Jacob (Gen. 32:10) he expressly tells us that in this outset from the tent of Beersheba, he had in his hand nothing but a pilgrim staff (Gen. 32:10). Happy for those in an equally momentous epoch, when for the first time alone in the great world, brought to grapple with the stern realities of liife--their head bared to the night and darkness--who have taken as the one trusted prop of their future journey what has proved to thousands better than earthly supports--"Your rod and YOUR STAFF they comfort me." "With this staff," said Dr. Marsh, near the close of a saintly life, as he greeted friends in his sick-room by holding out the Sacred Volume--"With this staff have I traveled through my pilgrimage, and with this staff will I pass over Jordan."\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 Njor can I better close this chapter than in the weighty, earnest words of another illustrious wayfarer whose acquaintance and personal kindness will ever be to the writer a treasured memory. "You are about," said the late Sir James Simpson addressing his students, "to pass into the busy and bustling scenes of active life. The great city of the world is already throwing open her gates to receive you. Through that city you must now pass, whether through its darkness or its splendor, its profligacy or its virktue, its misery or its happiness, and in it all the honors of time and of immortality are to be gained or lost. . . Pursue earnestly and undeviatingly the direct course of Christian and professional duty, and then you need fear not. But tremble if you allow yourself to be drawn aside from it at any one point. Temptations that may at first lure you from your path with the gentle hand of a indulgence or a pleasure, will, if yielded to, soon hold you with the iron grasp of a giant. Your future career is a matter of your own selection, and will be regulated by the conduct which you choose to follow. That career may be one of happiness and of self-regret, one of honor or of obscurity, one of wealth or of poverty. During it the present fond hopes of professional fame and fortune, that breathe in the breasts of all of you, may be won or lost, may be fulfilled or falsified, may be nobly realized or ignobly ruined."\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par } ~I]E05-The Certain Place{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fmV%04-Home Memories and Their Lessons{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 HOME MEMORIES AND THEIR LESSONS.Cnprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE CERTAIN PLACE\par \par "As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep."--Pilgrim's Progress.\par \par "Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun hado set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep." Genesis 28:10-11\par \par We must now follow Jacob on his lonely way, as after successive days of journeying, under the blaze of an eastern sun, the shadows of eventide were gathering round him. As the flaming orb was descending, and the hills of Benjamin were rearing their rounded crests in front, he would naturally assign a preference for his next halt to the place familiar to him by name as his grandfather'ps first camping ground and sanctuary. The gates of Luz had already probably been shut, like those of eastern towns, at the close of day. But it would be no strange or unusual occurrence for the exile to spend the night on a grassy couch under the canopy of heaven. He must have been familiarized to such an experience in his pastoral life at Beersheba.\par \par In the hush of that somber twilight, the spot where he was directing his steps could not surely be approached without emotion. Every relicq of the tent whose image had been stored in child-memory was doubtless gone; but while the movable canvas shelter left no trace behind, the altar-stones would still be there to memorialize the devotion of him who reared them, and to revive and suggest sacred lessons to his chartered heir. These 'stones of Bethel' would be invested with an interest somewhat akin, only far deeper and intenser, to that which is associated with the Register in the Family Bible of modern times--the genealogical record of ancesrtral piety and worth, often the one heirloom of the Christian dwelling. While the ruins of Bethel's Sanctuary spoke of his fathers, may they not also, after the exciting and agitating events of the preceding days, have formed the first mute remembrances of his fathers' God. They may thus have rendered his mind more susceptible to those devotional feelings we shall find evoked by the vision so soon to follow.\par \par In the great pilgrim journey, of which Jacob's was the type, we are in one sensse the creatures of circumstance. The Patriarch, when he left his resting place that morning, must have had a dim premonition where, as a wayfaring man, he would turn aside to tarry for the night. It is not so with us. Often, at least, the turns and windings of the earthly way are very different from those we dreamt of at life's early start. Our own anticipations how often thwarted; our sagest forecastings how often singularly reversed! Those who commenced with firm step and buoyant hope, have been arrestetd before noontide with the unforeseen 'Hill Difficulty,' or made to leave the sunny path to thread the gloomy ravine--while those who began faltering and in darkness, have reached, almost without impediment, the goal of their desires and aspirations.\par \par Each, also, has to tread his own separate and peculiar road with few features of resemblance to that of others. The two youths who may leave their village homes the self-same day to enter on the stern realities of life, may be sundered everu after in their pursuits and avocations, their sympathies and fellowships. Or, to vary the figure, they embark from the same haven, their sails are filled by the same gale; but either they part for different shores; different charts severing them on the great ocean highway; or else, for the one, there is the favoring propitious breeze, while for the other, there is buffeting storm and fatal disaster.\par \par But while all this is true, there is another experience of a different character, as covmforting as it is real, which the words at the head of this chapter without any violent strain in their meaning suggest\endash that is, that there is a Higher Hand and, a Higher Will than our own, that directs this "reaching a certain place;" that no events in our history are fortuitous, but all form part of a divine plan. The Jews had a belief that a guardian angel waited at every birth to attend the spirit through life, its protector, defender, and guide. What may be regarded in their case as only a bewautiful figment of imagination, is at least a sublime reality regarding God. He compasses our path and our lying down, and is acquainted with all our ways. In quaint oriental simile, He is said to "put our tears into His bottle," and to "keep us as the apple of His eye." There is, there ought to be, no such thing in the Christian creed as chance in the appointments of existence. Every turn in the road has a divine signboard and warning, if we would only see it, and read it, and hear it--"This is the way, xwalk in it." The saddest of all things is to crush ourselves on the rock of fatalism. The dreariest of all beliefs is that of an impersonal God, who has relegated His sovereignty to whim and accident; left man to a capricious destiny, to be driven by the wanton winds here and there like the leaves of the forest. The Pilgrim, day by day, follows "the certain road," and eventide by eventide reaches "the certain place."\par \par In the case of Jacob, this Almighty Guide authenticated and verified, yin the after vision, His directing hand and ever-present guardianship. Each future returning night, the sentiment at least of an inspired though yet unwritten legend must have sounded in the dreamer's ears--"I will lie down in peace and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, will keep me safe." (Psalm 4:8).\par \par In one sense we err when we speak of God's 'Providential dealings;' for in doing so, we seem to limit or restrict them to some specific and exceptional experiences--some crisis-hours in life;z while the simple but sublime verity is, that there is no moment when we are exempt from His paternal supervision. In the words just quoted, "He is ACQUAINTED with ALL our ways." Of course it follows that if He interests Himself in the minute and the trivial, much more may we trace His hand and own His guidance in great emergencies.\par \par Take some other analogous Scriptural examples, illustrating what is thus called the doctrine of particular Providence. The woman of Samaria 'arrived at a ce{rtain place,' at the very noontide hour when the weary Traveler (but in truth the Son of God who had redeemed her with His blood) was passing from Judea to Galilee. Lydia, the seller of purple, 'arrived at a certain place,' when she found herself at a riverside prayer-meeting, near the European city of Philippi, some hundred miles from her own Asiatic Thyatira, just at the time when the Great Apostle was present to cheer her heart with the full revelation of God's grace and mercy. The Ethiopian chamberlai|n 'arrived at a certain place,' when, returning from Jerusalem through the Gaza desert, a Pilgrim Missionary confronted his chariot, and, expounding to him truths he had sought for in vain amid the rites and splendors of an abrogated ritual, sent him on his way rejoicing.\par \par Nor need we confine ourselves to Bible instances. Many a youth among ourselves has 'arrived at a certain place' immediately after leaving, like Jacob, for the first time the parental roof. The call to a secular profess}ion or trade, the hope of promotion and advancement, directed his steps to the distant city; but it was the means of taking him to some hallowed dreamland--some Bethel sanctuary, where he had unfolded to him the plenitude of redeeming love. The words of everlasting life came home with saving energy to his soul, altering from that hour the whole current of his mental and moral history.\par \par In these and similar cases there was apparently nothing but accidental occurrences, curious coincidence~s; but the true key to all, "the reading and interpretation of the writing," is to be found in the saying of Jacob's illustrious son--"So then it was not you that brought me here, but God." "The certain place" ("THE place," as it is in the original), was of His appointed choosing; "He knows the way that I take" (Job 23:10).\par \par Reader! be it yours obediently, lovingly, joyfully to conform to the arrangement of your outward circumstances as the decree of Heaven. If conscience within, can countersign the leadings and indications of Providence without, then accept the career, be what it may, which has been opened to you and assigned you. Cast yourself without reserve or hesitation on 'the certain place.' It may be unpromising--not what you yourself would have selected or desired. Bleak and unattractive in its mere outward aspect would that moorland, doubtless, be to Jacob. Tufts of rough and rugged heather, scorched with the remorseless rays of noonday, take the place of verdant meadows with beds of anemone and fragrant thyme.\par \par But, undeterred by the cheerless and unloving surroundings, he sets about preparing his couch. So it may be in your case as regards the surroundings of your daily life. There may be little else than what corresponds in the experience of the Bethel-dreamer to the ledge of rock and the deepening shadow, the drenching dew and the sigh of the night wind; no tent for the traveler, no hospice for the pilgrim. Like the patriarch on an after occasion, you may be tempted even to say in your moments of despondency, "All these things are against me." But, "be still, and know that I am God!" The shuttles may dart ever so capriciously to us, but the weaving of the life-web--is in the hands of the Great Craftsman.\par \par If 'the certain place' He selects be not amid the blooming gardens of Gerar, or by the wells of Beersheba, but in the dreary uplands of Benjamin, He has some wise reason for it, and He will yet, in His own time and way, vindicate the wisdom and rectitude of His procedure. If He sees it to be well, sunlit heights may yet disclose themselves in the wilderness. The rough stones of the desert may yet, as in the case of the sleeper at Bethel, be transmuted into steps for angels.\par \par That was a dreary place in olden-time for the future minstrel of Israel, amid the rocky wilderness of southern Judah, when he was chased like a panting gazelle on the mountains, uttering ever and anon the plaintive soliloquy, "I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul;" but after generations would have been defrauded of the most touching portion of his Psalter, had he known no experience but that of "the green pastures and still waters."\par \par That was a dreary place for Paul of Tarsus, when he was flung a shipwrecked castaway on the rocks of Melita. But there was work to do even on such an inhospitable shore. So, without a murmur on his lips, he gathered his "bundle of sticks," and kindled the fire, and left the morrow, with the unfolding of its yet unknown calls and duties, to that God--whose he was, and whom he served.\par \par That was a dreary--a still drearier place for him, when immured in a Roman dungeon, the itinerant Apostle felt the chain of captivity dangling at his side--his life-work apparently arrested. How would the chafed imprisoned eagle beat his wings against the enclosing bars, and long for freedom to speed as aforetime from city to city! It may have been so at the time, but he could write afterwards on the retrospect--"everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News."\par \par That was a dreary and cheerless exile, when a later but not less illustrious dreamer than Jacob, was confined within Bedford jail--his lips muffled, his message silenced. The Church could ill spare her humble but stalwart champion. Yes, honest Bunyan, it was hard for rough, stirring, enlightened eloquence like yours, to be thus gagged within those silent walls. But be still! The God who sent you to that 'certain place' has work for you to do there. Dream your dream, weave your similitudes--the hundreds of Bedford miss you; but the world's millions will yet bless God, and you in Him, for that cell and that chain!\par \par That was a spot of dreary solitude, the sick-chamber of Richard Baxter, with its experience of racking, excruciating pain. It was hard, amid the cherished activities of a consecrated life, to drag about from day to day that weary body, the gates of death ever ajar, added to other heavy sorrows. But that nook in the dark valley, that gloomy niche in the Temple, was assigned and appointed for reasons unknown to the meek sufferer. These forty years of prolonged weakness and pain enabled him to dream a kindred dream for behalf of the suffering children of God in all future ages--not of the Pilgrim's Journey, but of the Pilgrim's Home. The "Saint's Rest" could never have been written but by one who, with trembling hand and tear-dimmed eye, waited in habitual anticipation of the welcome summons within the Gate into the City.\par \par Perhaps by none are these lessons of 'the certain place' more needed, than by those who are in the thick of the great battle of life--sore pressed in the unequal fight; looking, it may be, with envious eye on fortunate comrades who have already attained victory and promotion, while they are still lagging behind--the base-born spirits of dissatisfaction and discontent, hardest of all to grapple with among a demon horde of like assailants. Even those who have little reason to complain of harassing conflicts, are often too apt to make their allotments the cause of heart-burning. They long for some better, imaginary destiny--something other, at all events, than that which they have. It is the child-allegory of the firefly that was ever moping and fretting because it was not a star; of the marigold and daisy that drooped their heads and refused the light, because they were not the rose and the lily; the spikes of grass and coils of lichen that spurned the rain, and dew, and sunshine, because they were not exalted to the rank of oak and cedar.\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 It is enough to say that He who 'appoints the bounds of our habitation,' knows what is best for us. The Pilgrimage is shaped not by us but for us. "The lot may be cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord" (Prov. 16:33). Do nothing that will tend to thwart the Divine plan, and by seeking some softer pillow and more curtained couch to defraud yourselves of 'the visions of God.' Believe it, it is not outward fullness and prosperity which secure the softest, balmiest rest. There is a striking verse in Ezekiel where God thus speaks of the peace enjoyed by His own chosen people, even when called to a life of outward hardship and endurance--"They shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods" (34:25). If conscience be pure and unsullied, then His lullaby can hush to quiet repose amid the dews of the wilderness, or under the boughs of the forest, as well (often better) than on the couch of down. He can convert the bed of rock into the Gate of Heaven. Yes, and when the end of all is reached, and the Bethel road is retrospectively traversed, the testimony of many a Pilgrim will be joyfully re-echoed as you stand by the gate of the many mansions--"He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation!"\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par } for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep." Genesis 28:10-11\par \par None but those who have been in Palestine, can understand or appreciate the beauty and grandeur of an eastern sunset. The tamest of its landscapes is ennobled and transfigured with the magical light of 'Eventide.'\par \par While many such scenes may occur to the recollection, there is pre-eminently one which, owing to its being seen from so many different points, leaves on the mental vision an ineffaceable impression. I refer to the varied tints on the mountain wall of Moab, when its dull rocks are transmuted by 'the last fires of day' into a delicate mass of purple, amethyst, and gold. These remarkable mountains of the Land of Promise would in all likelihood now meet the eye of Jacob. From the upland territory, along which he hastened, this great trans-Jordanic "bastion" is specially conspicuous. He would watch the melting hues until, one by one, they had died away, and left nothing but the cold grey mass behind. Not an inapt picture of his own inner experience at the moment; when what had given to life its best morning brightness had faded from his sight. "The sun had set!"\par \par And if a Palestine sunset is gorgeous, equally so, also, we may add, is its nightly sky. No wonder the Israelites loved to travel to their great annual celebration when the luster of moon and stars irradiated their path (Isa. 30:29), the pensive hour of thought doubtless adding intensity to their pious enthusiasm. Possibly these brilliant galaxies spoke to Jacob as they could speak to none other. Fugitive as he was, he could not be unconscious of the fact that he had been served heir to the covenant promise. Could he fail to think of those evenings of his boyhood, at Kirjath-Arba, when his aged grandfather had led him forth by the hand, and pointing him upwards to the myriad lights gemming the skies, told him how the God he served had made them the silent prophets and evangelists of the future. "Look now toward heaven, and count the stars, if you be able to number them. And he said unto him, So shall your seed be" (Gen. 15:5).\par \par Nor is what we have now said regarding those hours of night, when "echo slumbers," to be relegated to the domain of mere sentiment. It is the season which brings God and spiritual things specially near the soul. The garish light of day is shut out. The din of the world's traffic and busy industry is hushed. Night is a great temple, in whose courts the Omniscient Presence is specially felt and realized.\par \par "It is a season for the quiet thought,\par And the still reckoning with yourself.\par The night gives back the spirits of the dead,\par And the heart, calling its affections up,\par \par Counts its wasted ingots. Life stands still,\par And settles like a fountain; and the eye\par Sees clearly through its depths, and notes all\par That stirred its troubled waters."\par \par It was "by night" Eliphaz was startled from his couch with the Divine appearance and the Divine voice. Night was the season when the King of Judah rose to his highest inspiration. "I meditate on You in the night watches," has been the utterance of many a devout spirit, since the Great Minstrel sang "The heavens are telling." When Jacob, twenty years later, wrestled with the covenant angel at Jabbok, it was at night. The wrestling continued until morning dawn, when it ceased as if the special season for Divine communication was then over--"Let me go," said the mysterious Personage, "for the day breaks."\par \par May it not have been so with the patriarch now. The natural darkness was preparing his soul the better for the disclosure of inner light. It was the outer portico which conducted him into 'the Most Holy Place,' the haunt of ministering Seraphim. Under the gleam of these celestial altar lights, the sense of the Divine nearness and presence comes over him, and before he left that spot he would be able to add his joyful experience, "I remembered Your name, O Lord, in the night" (Ps. 119:55).\par \par All this, however, has a higher and truer spiritual acceptation. No pilgrim is without his night season. There are moments in every life when, in a figurative sense of the words, "The sun has set."\par \par Such a 'setting' is that, when suddenly summoned to a bed of pain and sickness, when "wearisome nights are appointed." The world, that was so lately clothed with light as with a garment, puts on its sackcloth attire, and the sufferer is made familiar only with the dim lamp, the restrained footfall, the whisper with bated breath.\par \par Such a sunset is that, when some treasured orb in the domestic skies is quenched; when, through the long, dreary night-watches, sleep is banished, and the pulses throb like the heaving of the ocean which cannot rest. Nothing seems to fall on the ear but the dirge over buried love, and a later cry of the patriarch of Bethel is wrung from the broken heart, "I AM bereaved!"\par \par But with many, how often are these, and such like seasons, made the foretastes of the heavenly dream; the introduction to Divine realities before unthought of. It is affliction, in some one of its diversified forms, which has dictated or repeated the utterance of the Beloved disciple in his island prison--"I saw a door opened in heaven, and I heard a voice saying unto me, Come up here!" (Rev. 4:1). The discipline and strengthening of the moral nature cannot be effected amid the distractions and fascinations of broad day; but when the sun of earthly prosperity goes down, in the realized loneliness and desolation which steals over the soul, out come the clustering stars of Divine promise. These require to have the blaze of light withdrawn, in order that they may be revealed to the spiritual eye. The saying becomes true, "God, our Maker, gives songs in the night." The sorrowing come forth comforted, the weak strengthened, the doubting confirmed--yes, and often the gloomy and the selfish are transfigured into the noble, and manly, and sympathetic. "By the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better."\par \par With some who read these pages it may be more than the shades which follow sunset--the gloom of one solitary watch. It may be, as with Jacob, a "tarrying all night." The infinity of darkness may seem gathering and deepening around you, every star swept from your stormy skies. Night-watch succeeds night-watch, but no response of the warder is heard with tidings of the dawn.\par \par TRUST GOD IN THE DARK. This is the highest effort and triumph of faith. Whether it be the darkness engendered by bodily affliction or by inward trouble--physical, intellectual, or spiritual; your "tarrying time," as much as "the certain place," of which we have spoken, is of His appointing. Jesus tarried in distant Perea two days after getting the urgent message from the disconsolate sisters at Bethany. How they marveled (perhaps murmured) at the apparently strange, unusual indifference with which the tidings sent by them were received; instead of hastening, as they expected, up the Jericho valley to emancipate them at once from their anguish. When He did come, His 'tarrying' elicited the reproachful remonstrance--"If You had been here, our brother had not died!" How did that Lord of life and love, however, subsequently vindicate the wisdom and righteousness of His mysterious delay? But for that 'tarrying,' what lessons would have been lost to the family of Bethany--to His own disciples at the approach of the great crisis-hour; to believers in the Apostolic age--to the Church until the end of time. His gentle rebuke to the outspoken child of sorrow is what He whispers in the ear of many still, who are ready in His tarrying seasons to accuse the love and rectitude of His dealings--"Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" (John 11--40).\par \par To not a few, who for the present are thus dwelling on the night-watches of Bethel, instead of the sunny memories of Hebron and Beersheba, the 'needs be' may yet be made apparent even here. At all events, be assured, these gloomy experiences during the exile of earth, are designed only to lead you the more to center your desires and thoughts on "The Better Country"--to endear to you the more the home and harbor of the skies. "Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you. He will make your innocence as clear as the dawn, and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun." Psalm 37:5-6.\par \par "The way is dark, my Father! Cloud on cloud\par Is gathering thickly over my head, and loud\par The thunders roar above me. See, I stand\par Like one bewildered! Father, take my hand.\par \par "The day goes fast, my Father! and the night\par Is drawing darkly down. My faithless sight\par Sees ghostly visions; fears, a spectral band,\par Encompass me. O Father! take my hand.\par \par "The way is long, my Father! and my soul\par Longs for the rest and quiet of the home,\par While yet I journey through this weary land,\par Keep me from wandering. Father, take my hand."\par \par There is a gracious answer--\par "The way is dark, my child! but leads to light,\par I would not always have you walk by sight;\par My dealings now you can not understand,\par I meant it so, but I will take your hand.\par \par "The way is long, my child! but it shall be\par Not one step longer than is best for thee;\par And you shall know, at last, when you shall stand\par Safe at the goal, how I did take your hand."\par \par Youth has often its own exceptional experiences of sunset and night. Not to speak of others, one phase of that darkness, often too among the noblest and most ingenuous minds, is that to which I have already incidentally alluded--the darkness and convulsion of intellectual doubt, an experience so well described by the poet, with Bethel for the foreground and imagery--\par \par "I falter where I firmly trod;\par And falling with my weight of cares\par Upon the world's great altar stairs\par That slope through darkness up to God:\par \par "I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,\par And gather dust and chaff, and call\par To what I feel is Lord of all,\par And faintly trust the larger hope."--"In Memorium."\par \par Religion hitherto has been accepted on trust. But the young explorer, waking up to the consciousness of fresh intellectual convictions and responsibilities, begins to test for himself the strength of the old foundations. Not infrequently, also, we must add, in the traffic with baser minds, disquieting misgivings are at times unhappily insinuated; the stable is made to seem insecure, the strong links of the golden chain seem to pulverize into dust, the vessel of faith is adrift from its moorings. Perhaps worse than all, in the sudden revulsion of family influences, the crushing secret of these devil-born doubts has to be borne alone and unshared, the hand of home sympathy and loving authority and counsel has relaxed its grasp. The future is blank--there is truly a "tarrying all night, for the sun is set!"\par \par What is the panacea (one panacea at least), in ministering to a mind diseased like this? It is prayer to God to enlighten the eyes of your understanding. "Enlighten my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death" (Ps. 13:3). I repeat, that very agony of doubt is not infrequently part of a tribulation through which many of God's best and truest children have to pass--"walking in darkness and seeing no light." Their cry of despondency is "Watchman, how much longer until morning? When will the night be over?" The watchman replies, "Morning is coming, but night will soon follow." (Isa. 21:11, 12).\par \par Be assured the utterance of simple faith--"Lord, I believe, help my unbelief;" "Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Your law," will not be uttered in vain. "Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness." Who is among you that fears the Lord, that obeys the voice of His servant, that walks in darkness and has no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God" (Ps. 112:4; Is. 50:10). "There is, indeed," says Bishop Ellicott, an able scholar and divine, "a quick and living truth in every sentence of the blessed Gospel, and they who read with a loving and reverential spirit shall find it in its fullest measures. Oh! pray fervently against the first motions of a spirit of doubt and questioning. By those prayers which you learned at a mother's knee, by that holy history which perchance you first heard from a mother's lips, give not up the first childlike faith of earlier, and it may be purer days--that simple heroic faith which such men as Niebuhr and Neander knew how to appreciate and to glorify, even while they felt its fullest measures could never be their own. Remember that when faith grows cold, love soon passes away, and hope soon follows it. And oh! believe me, that the world cannot exhibit a spectacle more utterly mournful, more full of deepest melancholy, than a young yet doubting, a fresh yet unloving, an eager yet hopeless and forsaken heart."\par \par Go then, pray on, trust on, believe on, hope on, and "the still, small voice" will in due time come--after the thunder, and the earthquake, and the hurricane have spent themselves. The sun is only below the horizon. "O my God! Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will remember your kindness\emdash from Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan, from the land of Mount Mizar. I hear the tumult of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me. Through each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life." \lang3082 Psalm 42:6-8\par \par \lang1033 And then, in the midst of these night-watches and night experiences, whether in the case of youth, or manhood, or old age; when we think of Jacob--when we think of ourselves--can we fail to make the application which some of the early writers give to this passage, as suggestive of One, who Himself, (and that for no sin of His own) left His Father's house "a Pilgrim," and all solitary and alone traversed the desert of earth! How often did He, also, in a literal sense, stretch His weary frame under the open canopy of heaven, with no other covering but His cloak, to protect Him from the dews of night. How often had He the stone of Palestine, or the coil of rope, on which to rest His head; and at last a harder pillow even than these! In our nights of darkness and sorrow, well may we recall the Divine experience of this Prince of sufferers; the sun set, but no sanctity of stars to relieve the gloom--"My God! My God! why have You forsaken Me? I have trodden the winepress alone." Prayer was His resort in the very climax of His woe--"Father!" "O My Father!" "Being in an agony, He prayed the more earnestly." It turned His night season into a time of invigoration and strength. So also will it be in the experience of His waiting people. "The Lord is near unto all who call upon Him"--"A very present help in trouble." In every Gethsemane of life, an angel will be sent from heaven to strengthen. It is in "the fourth watch," when the darkness is often deepest, that He Himself, mightier than any angel, still comes "walking on the sea." It is when "the sun has set" on the mountains of Bethel, that, as we shall presently find--\par \par "The sky is as a temple arch;\par The blue and wavy air\par Is glorious with the spirit-march\par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 \lang3082 Of messengers of prayer." \par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\lang1033\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par }  MU06-Night Shadows{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 NIGHT SHADOWS\par \par "Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped the restless eye.\par \par "You will, for many a languid prayer\par Has reached You from the wild\par Since the lone mother, wandering there,\par Cast down her fainting child.\par \par "You will be there and not forsake,\par To turn the bitter pool\par Into a bright and breezy lake,\par The throbbing brow to cool!\par \par "Until, left awhile with You alone,\par The willful heart be sincerely to own\par That He, by whom our bright hours shone,\par Our darkness best may rule."--Christian Year.\par \par "The wilderness and the solitary place."--Isa. 35:1.\par \par "Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep." Genesis 28:10-11\par \par The fugitive, having selected his resting-place for the night, would again unbind his belt and open the bag containing the few provisions with which doubtless he had been supplied on his hasty departure. After concluding his simple meal, he betakes himself to his stony pillow.\par \par In the preceding chapter, we have taken the 'night' and the 'sunset' as figuratively descriptive of a peculiar class of sorrows; such as the darkness of personal and family bereavement, or the yet denser gloom of intellectual and spiritual doubt. May we not make the title of the present chapter suggestive of a different phase of trial what may be brought under the category of the hardships of existence--the fight with adverse circumstances--the often hopeless struggle with secular things. This, with many, (though feebly realized by those in affluence and abundance), is indeed a 'pillow of stone.' Hapless seems the destiny of such sufferers! The sun sets placidly on the hamlets in the valley--curling smoke, and gleaming lights telling of peace and serenity, while they are out with Jacob in the bleak uplands, with scanty coverlet and downless couch. Can they fail to contrast that happy fire-glow and the music of child-voices, with the cold of the rock and the sigh and sob of the night wind; perhaps the memory of some Beersheba tent, with similar loving hands and cheerful faces in the far away of life, only adding a fresh pang of bitterness to the experiences of the present hour? We have known not a few of such cases, when the cruel load, pressing like the chill of an avalanche on the soul, seems as if it were greater than could be borne, and the cry of wild despair rises unsuccoured. Why such a fate as this? Why this toiling misery? Why the rod instead of the smile? Why the pitiless rain streaming on the desert rocks, instead of the sunshine falling on the sheltering roof? Why, while OTHERS can warble of\par "Lilies white,\par A painted skiff with a singing crew,\par Sky reflections soft and bright,\par Tremulous crimson, gold and blue."\par \par Or others, of\par "A shining reach,\par A crystal couch for the moonbeam's rest,\par Starry ripples along the beach,\par Sunset songs from the breezy west."\par \par Why should MY experience be--\par "foam and roar.\par Restless heave and passionate dash,\par Shingle-rattle along the shore,\par Gathering boom and thundering crash?"\par \par We cannot reply. It would be presumption to attempt answering the question; and the more so, when the mysterious fact is too patent, that the rough stone seems at times the appointed lot of the brave and loving, the generous and true; while the soft bed and the fine linen are often bestowed on the selfish and grasping, the base and unworthy. It is the old startling perplexity embodied in the plaintive wail of the Psalmist--"My steps had well-near slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world" (Ps. 73:2, 3, 12).\par \par \lang3082 All we can say is, that in the case of Jacob (and is it not so in the case of many?) it was the stony pillow which was followed by the heavenly vision. If we may so express it, it was through an iron, not a golden gate, that he had revealed to him the vista of angels and the dream of God. He was not the first who was able to take up an inspired after-song--"I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God--many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord" (Ps. 40:1-3).\par \par It must be borne in mind, as a key to many enigmas deemed now insoluble, that life, with all, (but with some more than others) is a probation. "I proved you," says God, speaking of and to His Israel (Ps. 81:7). But what is the end of that probation-discipline? Is the burden always to crush? Is there to be no remission of the load, no rift in the cloud of sorrow, no escape from the hard degrading bondage? Is the "thundering crash" to boom in the ear forever? Hear other words of the Divine Speaker in that same Psalm--"Now I will relieve your shoulder of its burden; I will free your hands from their heavy tasks. You cried to me in trouble, and I saved you; I answered out of the thundercloud. I tested your faith at Meribah, when you complained that there was no water." (Ps. 81:6, 7). It has been well remarked that Adam fell, not in a wilderness, but in a garden, while the second Adam conquered, not in a garden, but in a wilderness. The training to "endure hardness" is the true stuff of which men and heroes are made--\par "Oh, fear not in a world like this\par And you shall know, 'fore long,\par Know how sublime a thing it is,\par To suffer and be strong."\par \par That is the noblest victory of faith, which after protracted struggle can convert apparently crushing defeats into trophies; hard trials into material for praise. Just as we have seen a forest tree ravaged by the storm, torn up by the roots, and lying prostrate on the sward with the nests of its feathered tenants scattered pitilessly around--yet the birds, which for a time uttered their wailing cries around the pillaged home, come at last to nestle in the prone branches and to resume their warblings. The man with his head resting on the hardest stone is not to be pitied, in comparison with many whose downy pillows are only inducing a deeper sleep of apathy and forgetfulness--\par "Those hearts that cower\par In willful slumber, deepening every hour;\par That draw their curtains closer round,\par The nearer swells the trumpet's sound."\par \par Better far to have the poet's prayer answered, for the couch of rock and the crude awakening--\par "Lord, before our trembling lamps sink down and die,\par Touch us with chastening hand, and make us feel You nigh."\par \par Another thought suggested by the Patriarch and his desert pillow, is in connection with the loneliness of his present position. He, who, as the great Sheikh's son at Lahairoi, Beersheba, and Kirjath-Arba, had night after night his mat spread and his meals served by scores of willing slaves, was now absolutely unattended. So lonely was he, that these very stones which were to form the night-rest for his head, were carried by his own hands. "He took the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows." One who was habituated from boyhood to the stir of camp life, and the sympathy of friendly voices--accustomed ever and anon to hear the well-known welcome of hospitality to the passing stranger or wayfarer, "Turn in, my lord, turn in" (Judges 4:18), while he was served up in the "lordly dishes" (Judges 5:25 ), is all at once plunged into solitude. The very tinkle of bells on sheep and camels, once so familiar to him, has died away in the far distance. But here, again, solitude was another factor (to use a modern term) which prepared him for the visions which followed. He entered the vestibule of silence, before being admitted into the Inner Sanctuary.\par \par His experience was in harmony with that of the most privileged saints of every age. Loneliness indeed would almost seem to be a necessary condition of receptivity in regard to the loftiest and divinest revelations of a personal God. Moses was alone in the solitudes of Sinai when Jehovah appeared to him in the midst of the burning bush (Exod. 3:1). Eliphaz was alone, (in the passage previously alluded to,) when the mysterious spirit passed before his eyes. He specially notes "There was silence" (Job 4:16). Job was alone on his bed of ashes, resting on a harder pillow than Jacob's, when the near Presence there unfolded itself--and when he thus solitary, the foundation Article in the creed of Christendom was uttered--"I know that my Redeemer lives" (Job 19:25). Elijah was alone in the cave of Horeb, when he became spectator of the great drama of the desert, which began with the mighty wind, and ended with the still small voice (1 Kings 19:12). John was alone in the Isle of Patmos, when he heard behind him "the voice of a great trumpet" and beheld his Lord arrayed in the lusters of glorified humanity (Rev. 1:9). And it was when all other lights were paled, and when, (no other footstep near,) Jacob lay in the darkness away from the trodden highway, that the path of angels was made visible and the voice of God was heard.\par \par It is so, often, with His most favored people still. Periods of loneliness, stated seasons of quiet and retirement, are demanded for the nurturing of the spiritual nature. The finer sensibilities get soiled by constant contact with the world, its fevered heats and tempted hours, and restless turmoil. The soul needs, at times, removal to a calmer atmosphere--"the sphere of silence."\par \par The picture may be recalled of penitent Israel in future times. All the tribes are represented as mourning alone; "every family apart, every individual apart" (Zech. 12:12). But what, are we told, is the immediate result and sequence of that season of solemn seclusion and heart probing--sitting thus alone, in meditative silence? It is the fullest revelation of Gospel grace and mercy--"In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Zech. 13:1).\par \par Not that by any means "frames and feelings" are to be made tests and interpreters of reality in religious experience. But this introspection has its genuine side, as well as its counterfeit. We never surely can suspect the Apostle Paul of being the morbid analyst of mere emotions. He was far too real and practical for that. Yet his exhortation stands recorded--"Let a man examine himself." He knew the tyranny of the secular--the constant friction which wears the wheels of the spiritual as of the physical life. He who had his own lengthened season of solitude and retirement in the desert of Arabia (Gal. 1:17), knew how wise and needful were occasional pausing-places in the journey, to enable the Pilgrim of Eternity to breathe with greater intensity the soliloquy which closes the Old Testament psalm to the omniscient Jehovah--"Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Ps. 139:23, 24).\par \par More than this; there is an instructive lesson surely conveyed, when ONE, greater than Apostle or Psalmist--One who required no such retreat to purge His soul from sin, and who was most habitually conversant with heavenly things, said to His disciples, (and that too in the midst of their round of spiritual activities,) "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." (Mark 6:31). No, who Himself ever preceded what may be called the great crisis-hours of His life and ministry, by silent prayer and communion--alone in the wilderness--alone on the midnight hills around Gennesaret--alone in the moon-lit glades of Olivet. "And He continued all night in prayer to God" (Luke 6:12). "Sit here" (He must be alone) "while I go and pray yonder" (Mark 14:32). The Divine breathings, "O My Father, if it be possible;" "Not as I will, but as You will," were uttered, not amid the holy fellowships of the supper table, but amid the loneliness of Gethsemane.\par \par To return to the solitary dreamer at Bethel. Would the conflict of inner feeling--the sting of bitterly-felt self-reproach--forbid him, before he laid his head on his stony resting place, to, accord with the hallowed usages of his previous life, by kneeling on the bare rock in this open Temple of the Great Universe and invoke the blessing of his father's God? We cannot tell. Perhaps the lustrous, watchful stars gleaming above him--in one sense the chapters and verses of His Bible--would suffuse a calming, re-assuring influence on his perturbed spirit. It might be as if one of the angels of the vision, preceding his fellows, had thus addressed the exile before he resigned himself to slumber--"Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who has created these things, that brings out their host by number--He calls them all by names by the greatness of His might, for that He is strong in power; not one fails. Why say you, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, My way is hidden from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Have you not known, have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary?" (Isaiah 40:26-28.)\par \par And HOW are His people still brought into this silent, secluded contact with the God of Jacob? It is, often at least, by means we have already dwelt upon; through temporary seasons of trial; by having their hearts and homes darkened with sorrow. They are thus impelled to escape from the fever and whirl of life, the passions and interests and engrossments of the hour, and taken out on the lonely Bethel-heights to hold converse with Himself. "Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her her vineyards from thence" (Hosea 2:14, 15). The vineyards would have been unsought and untasted, the "comfortable words" would have been unheeded, but for the wilderness discipline, the wilderness silence--the tearful eye closing on the wilderness pillow. "Come, My people," says the same Divine Being in another place, as He beckons apart from 'the loud stunning tide of human care,' "Come, My people, enter into your chambers, and shut your doors about you" (Is. 26:20).\par \par \lang1033 It is in such moments of often enforced retirement, that they are able to realize the littleness of the frets and annoyances of the way which have too frequently disturbed their serenity and poisoned their peace; and which, moreover, may have dimmed and dwarfed their faith. While it is at such seasons, also, that they rise from the rough stone and the night-watch with fresh incentives for holy duty, and resolutions for a nobler life. They have "seen God face to face;" and a new dignity is given to human existence by vividly linking it with the divine.\par \par "Oh for 'a desert place' with only the Master's smile!\par Oh for the 'coming apart' with only His 'rest awhile!'\par Yes, I have longed for a pause in the rush and whirl of time,\par Longed for silence to fall, instead of its merriest chime.\par \par "Longed for a calm, to let the circles die away\par That tremble over the heart, breaking the heavenly ray,\par And to leave its wavering mirror true to the Star above,\par Brightened and stilled to its depths with the quiet of 'perfect love.'"\par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 \lang3082 --Ministry of Song\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\lang1033\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par \par } mm i=07-The Pillow of Stones{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE PILLOW OF STONES\par \par "And will You hear the fevered heart\par To You in silence cry?\par As the inconstant wild fires dart\par Out of froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE NIGHT-DREAM\par \par "The day is done, and the darkness\par Falls from the wings of night,\par As a feather is wafted downward\par From an eagle in his flight.\par \par "And the night shall be filled with music,\par And the cares that infest the day\par Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,\par And as silently steal away."--Longfellow.\par \par "The dream of Jacob is not merely natural, but prophetic; it is the medium of Divine revelation."--Kurtz.\par \par "Come here with your tongues and pens, all you that have them--sing and play all you that can, that so we may in some small degree comprehend the import of these words."--Luther.\par \par "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."--Gen. 28:12.\par \par "By whom shall Jacob arise," asks the prophet, "for he is small?" (Amos 7:2.) Such might well be the question prompted, as the weary traveler casts himself down at eventide on his pillow of stones on one of the heaths of Palestine.\par \par The question is now to be answered. The rocky uncurtained couch, which even a wandering child of Ishmael would have spurned, has no equal that night on earth. The Pharaohs in their palaces might well envy him. His bleak resting place is to be radiant with a vision of angels; and, while the ornate chambers of Rameses and the other Pharaoh's with their gold and purple have vanished long ago, it still retains its imperishable name.\par \par "By whom shall Jacob arise?" There can be but one reply. He can arise from his weakness and shame alone in the might of his fathers' God. To use the words uttered by himself, at the hour of death, regarding his best loved son, "The arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob" (Gen. 49:24). It is evident the present divine revelation is one which the inspired narrator records with profound interest and wonder; for the interjection, indicative of reverential astonishment, is used no less than three times in the course of the brief description--"Behold," "Behold," "Behold!"\par \par The Lord has in all ages had different methods of communicating His will and purposes to the Church. At one time, as in the case of Abraham, it was through the vision of "a smoking furnace and a burning lamp" (Gen. 15:17). At another, it was by the oracles of the Urim and the Thummin with their mysterious flashing of spiritual illumination. At another, it was through prophetic announcements. At another, and most frequently of all, it was through the medium of dreams. "In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction" (Job. 33:15, 16).\par \par Nor was this instrumentality employed regarding His own people only. It was common alike to Jew and Gentile. Familiar Bible instances may be recalled, from the case of the young sage of Arabia, (whose words we have just quoted) and the kings of Egypt and Babylon (Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and Belshazzar), to the New Testament examples of the Persian Magi, and the wife of Pontius Pilate. On the present occasion, however, it is with no stranger or foreigner, but with the heir of the covenant, the head and representative of His chosen Church and nation, that God adopts the same means to reveal His presence and protecting care.\par \par All of us know the vivid--sometimes the overpowering reality of these visions and pageants of dreamland. The mental nature seems for the time to be abnormally quickened and intensified. Long forgotten scenes are revived and repeopled. In the silent studio of night, when the senses are sealed in slumber, long forgotten faces start afresh from the ghostly canvas, yes, and, from the intensity of revived impression, cherished smiles and sacred tones long since passed away, bring the tear to the eye, and the irrepressible sob to the heart. It is the hour when the judgment abdicates its control and imagination holds undisputed sway--\par "Of all external things,\par Which the five watchful senses represent,\par She forms imaginations, airy shapes,\par Which reason, joining or disjoining, frames\par All what we affirm, or what deny, and call\par Our knowledge or opinion; then retires\par Into her private cell, when nature sleeps."\par \par There are dreams, however, whose combinations are controlled by a Higher power than the caprice of the imagination; taking their rise and shape from the direct influence and inspiration of the Spirit of God. This writing of the finger of Deity on the mind's silent walls was, at least in olden time, the chosen method of the Father's disclosure of Himself to His children on earth.\par \par Such the dream which now broke the trance of the Patriarch's sleep, and environed with divinest phantasms his desert pillow.\par \par It would almost seem (at least we have nothing in the sacred narrative leading us to infer otherwise) that up to the present time, though very familiar with the name and the worship of Jehovah, Jacob had enjoyed no personal, individual communication with Deity. No external visible revelation had been conveyed to him of the purposes of grace, such as were again and again given to his favored grandsire. The first of a long course of devout teaching and training begins with the stony couch. It would be too strong and pronounced a statement to call it 'the night of Jacob's conversion.' But it was undoubtedly the first eventful crisis in his spiritual history--one which dominated all the subsequent ones, and carried its sacred impress to the hour of his departure. He laid himself down, anticipating little else but feverish visions of revenge and blood, that might well banish sleep from a softer pillow. He awoke to the sublime consciousness that he was no longer the alien and the outcast, but in very deed a fellow-citizen with the saints and of the household of God. This midnight transaction has been well called "his formal inauguration by God Himself, into the high and holy position of the heir and child of the promise." Strange spot for so momentous a conference! The first place at which Paul preached in Europe was a river side; the second, a dungeon at midnight. Truly, the Lord is not confined to temples made with hands.\par \par We need not recur to the physical features of the locality, further than to recall to the mind of the reader what was stated in the introductory chapter. These features seem to have impressed themselves on the mind and imagination of the sleeper, and to have given shape and embodiment to his dream. We can, however, have no difficulty or hesitation in discovering what may be called its spiritual coloring. We have assigned to it, indeed, a distinct heavenly origin and inspiration. But the Divine Inspirer produces these passive mental impressions through human associations and emotions. The long wistful gaze over the moaning sea, and the noise of booming billows, are known to give form and substance to the dream of the fisherman's wife, when she falls asleep in the midst of anxious vigils. It was life's waking realities, which, in a similar manner, in the case of the Patriarch, had perpetuated themselves in his hour of slumber. The predominating thought of the past days had retained its hold on his fevered brain, that he was a fugitive for dear life, with guilt on his conscience and terror in his soul. By the revered lips, alike of father and grandfather, he had frequently, from earliest childhood, been familiarized with the truth how near God is. But even the evening prayer, we have supposed, could not enable him to realize the comfort at least of that nearness now. Rather in the opening of the dream was it sadly reversed. A wide and apparently hopeless distance seemed to separate him from the magnificent Presence. The gate of heaven (the "GATE"--the place among Easterns identified with unrestricted communion between ruler and subject, monarch and people) was nowhere to be seen through the impenetrable blank which stretched from the sleeper's pillow to the starry sky. There was brought vividly and hopelessly home to him the sense of his distance and alienation--his exile and estrangement from a greater than earthly parent.\par \par But all at once, lo! from the spot on which he lay, a pathway of divine communication seemed gradually to emerge from the darkness. Whether we call it 'stair' or 'ladder,' that radiant highway seemed to stretch upwards in brightening gradations, from the head of the dreamer to the now revealed portals of glory. The base of this stony ladder "was on earth, and the top of it reached to heaven." Glorious, white-robed beings, as we shall come afterwards more specially to note, thronged it; as if they carried up and down its gigantic steps messages of peace and mercy. And more than all, a voice from the unseen God, hidden in the blaze of light at its summit, seemed to address the wanderer.\par \par There could be little doubt as to the primary object and significance of the vision and its accompaniments. It was to confirm the Patriarch's faith in the existence and providence of Jehovah. It was to assure him that, exile and wanderer as he was, the God of his father Abraham was still with him as "the Mighty God of Jacob;" that he was under the sleepless eye and protecting rule of Israel's unslumbering Shepherd, and that on that protection he might confidently and unhesitatingly rely. 'God sees me,' 'God cares for me,' 'God speaks to me,' were the first simple yet sublime thoughts that would flash across him. 'He is not the God of the Beersheba tent only, with its throng of souls. He condescends to follow me--yes me, alone, to this lonely place, who has forfeited all claim to His favor. For me, He sends a convoy of angels, and utters words of divinest comfort and heart-cheer!' Kurtz, a distinguished German commentator, well remarks, "Thoughts accusing and excusing one another would overwhelm him, and refused to be controlled amid the unusual solitude and loneliness of his position. The dark future before him is as yet unlit by a single ray of promise. The Dream and its Vision are the reply of God to the harassments and anxieties with which he has lain down to rest."\par \par That dream of Bethel was for all times, for all ages, for all pilgrims in a pilgrim world. And this, its primary suggestion, ought surely for each one of us, as for Jacob, to be replete with gladness and consolation--the personal love of God for every individual member of His vast family. Go where we may, we can make the inspiriting strain of that song of an after age our own--"If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me" (Ps. 139:9, 10). The heavenly Shepherd has aa individualized care for each sheep of the fold. As it utters its apparently unsuccoured bleat on the lonely moorland, or amid the thorny thicket of its wanderings, He tracks its truant footsteps, as if it engrossed all His interest, restoring it to the green pastures by the side of the fold.\par \par Yes, there is surely nothing more cheering, more sublime, than the thought of this unwearying tending of the Great Shepherd--this individual (if we can so call it, this microscopic), love of the Great Father. Not the Almighty following the majestic march of the planets in the skies, marking out their orbits--the Omnipotent One riding on the heaven of heavens, giving the sea His decree, piling the strata of the everlasting hills. But God, reading a parable to His people, as He keeps watch over the lichen on the rock, or the lily on the mountain side; tempering His wind to the fragile flower as it trembles on the lip of the Alpine glacier; following the timid bird to its cleft; feeding the young raven's brood; noting the fall of the sparrow.\par \par And then, turning from the tiniest objects in the material creation--from the grass and the lilies and the fowls of the air, to the humblest and lowest of His human family, He says, "Fear not! you are of more value." On that memorable night, when Abraham was led out to contemplate the stars of the skies as the silent expositors of Divine grace and mercy, the future words of the Psalmist might have formed the natural expression of his feelings--"Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations" (Ps. 145:13). But the succeeding utterances in the same Psalm would be the more appropriate exclamation on the part of his grandson as he awoke from his angel vision--"The Lord upholds all that fall; and raises up all those that be bowed down" (ver. 14).\par \par But there was another higher and nobler typical verity unfolded, partially at all events, to Jacob by that night-dream. Abraham, in the scene and sacrifice of Moriah, "beheld Messiah's day afar off and was glad." Though we cannot think it possible that his grandchild--the heir of the promise--could have grasped the full and glorious reality, surely we may well believe that an impressive picture had, at least in dim outline, been presented to him of the crowning blessing of the great covenant bound up in his family, and in the faith of whose provisions he was henceforth to live and at last to die. Here, also, as in the primary lesson of the dream to which we have just referred, there was more than a personal revelation. It was a parable-vision for the Church of God in all time to come, of "the King in His beauty and the land that was very far off."\par \par We may regard the Patriarch, in his loneliness and isolation, as a type of the sinner severed from the home of his heavenly Father; an accusing conscience within, the terrors of a violated law behind, a dark eternity before! Wide, apparently insuperable, is the distance which separates him from God. Is there no way by which that distance can be curtailed--that intervening space abridged? Is he consigned forever to that pillow of despair, to gaze on heights hopelessly unattainable? Is he to sigh in vain for a gleam in the lowering clouds, for the whisper of a voice of love to dispel the environing gloom?\par \par Lo! a firm pathway of communication is disclosed, with its base on the earth, and its summit in the skies--"a new and living way of access into the holiest of all." It is "Jesus Christ evidently set forth." The ladder or staircase had its BASE on the earth. He who is the Divine Antitype was, and is, partaker of our nature--"found in fashion as a man;"--"made like unto His brethren." But "the top of it reached to Heaven," and was lost in the blaze of glory--for His name is "Immanuel," "God with us." It is the connection of that bright pathway with both worlds which makes it so perfect. It would be of no avail--no comfort were it otherwise. By the union of Manhood with Godhead, Jesus is a complete Mediator--all we need, living or dying, for time or for eternity. "I am the Way," is His own gracious utterance--God's way to the sinner, and the sinner's way to God. In His Deity mighty to save; in His humanity mighty to pity and compassionate.\par \par Let us fix our thoughts yet a little longer on these peerless truths--for they may well be regarded as the central point of the Bethel-vision--at all events as they present themselves to us in their fuller antitypical significance--"God in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself;"--suggestive alike of the divine Person of the Redeemer and the completeness of His work. There is no gap or crevice in the luminous pathway. It forms one glorious whole, stretching continuously up to its resting-place in the celestial heights. The lamentation of another Patriarch, no, the long drawn sigh of humanity itself, seems in that symbol to be answered--"Neither is there any arbitrator between us who can lay his hand upon us both" (Job 9:33).\par \par Jesus is such a "Arbitrator." While the hymn of adoring Christendom reaches its climax in the ascription--"You are the King of glory, O Christ! You are the everlasting Son of the Father." It can add also to the loftier strain, that complementary ascription which carries so soothing a cadence to the heart of all He came to redeem--"When you took upon yourself to deliver man, you did not abhor the Virgin's womb." "A MAN shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land" (Is. 32:2). Had He been God alone, we would have been dazzled with His ineffable majesty; we could not have gazed unblinded on that countenance which is "as the sun shines in his strength." His immaculate holiness, His burning purity, His unbending rectitude, His resistless power, would have awed and confounded us in our dealings with One so infinitely removed. But let us rejoice! the ladder which has its top in the brightness around the throne, has its base resting on the platform of earth. He is "THE MAN Christ Jesus." The very lowliness of His humanity, also, seems shadowed forth in the type--whether that may have been the vision of a familiar 'ladder,' or the rough boulders of the desert piled one upon another. Had uninspired poetry been left to fill in the dream, and to delineate the pathway for the God of high heaven to hold converse with His creatures, it would in all likelihood have despised the commonness of the revealed symbol. Golden steps, glittering with sapphire and emerald, would have been taken as more befitting "altar stairs" conducting into the upper sanctuary. But in the vision given, we behold the significant emblem of Him, who, often like the Patriarch that night at Bethel, was houseless and homeless--no couch but the cold earth, no canopy but the sky--His unpillowed head often denied the rest of the lowest of His creation.\par \par Yes, thanks be to God, we can grasp, in its fullness, the comforting truth which Jacob could at best have so dimly and inadequately apprehended. We can exult in the revealed assurance, that in the bosom of that lowly Christ of Nazareth there slumbers the tenderness of humanity. Not a pang can I endure, not a temptation can I encounter, but He has encountered and endured the same. The Great Being who counts the number of the stars, counts also the number of my sorrows, for He felt them all Himself. I can think in all my trials, Jesus was tried; in all my sufferings, Jesus suffered; in all my tears, "Jesus wept." I can love Him as a brother while I adore Him as a God. And then, when once more tracing the pathway up to the heights of glory, I remember that He, "who for us men and for our salvation became incarnate," was "Jehovah's Fellow" (Zech. 13:7)--that His nature is Infinite, His years Eternity, His counsels Immutability, His arm Omnipotence, His wisdom Searchless, His love Unchanging--on that ladder I may fearlessly climb--on that ladder I may fearlessly trust my everlasting destinies. "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich" (rich in all the attributes of Godhead--rich in all the plenitude of divine perfections), "yet for our sakes He became poor" (stooped to the lowest depths of humiliation), "that you through His poverty might be rich" (2 Cor. 8:9). We may appropriately use the words, regarding this wondrous night-dream, spoken at a long subsequent age by one whose eyes had gazed on no symbolic vision, but on the Adorable Antitype--"The God of JACOB, the God of our fathers, has glorified His Son Jesus" (Acts 3:13).\par \par "Unutterable love!" is the exclamation of a pious and learned traveler, as he writes in his tent pitched on the Patriarch's dreamland--"Oh, unutterable love, which has given, in the 'Son of Man,' an imperishable ladder, not only for Bethel and for Israel, but for all the ends of the earth."\par \par But the vision may be made suggestive of other great truths. It has been rightly regarded as typically unfolding the method--as well as the means of salvation.\par \par While we never can forget that it is Jesus who is at once "the Alpha and the Omega"--"the Author and the Finisher;"--that there is none other way by which the sinner can be saved and obtain entrance within the heavenly gate; still, the ladder must be climbed. Hence the figures employed to illustrate faith in the Redeemer seem beautifully to meet in the symbol of the dream--a "fleeing" to Christ--a "laying hold" of Christ--a "leaning" on Christ--a "trusting" in Christ--a "following on to know" Christ; and at last, when the summit is reached, a "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus." Hopelessly could we look for salvation without "the way of access;" and yet as hopelessly, with that way of access, could we attain the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls, if we neglected to make the upward ascent. True religion is no mere mystic, passive dream of devotion--a gazing in rapt reverence, and no more, on the great mystery of Godliness. Its best definition is a 'doing' as well as a 'being.'\par \par That is a spurious faith which is inoperative; which cannot stand the crucial test of "working by love, purifying the heart and overcoming the world." Indeed the more simple and real the belief in Christ, the more unmistakably will it evidence itself by earnest aspirations after holiness, and conformity to the Divine will and image. "Who is he that overcomes the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God" (1 John 5:5). The way to heaven may be beside us--Salvation is offered to us--God standing, as in the Bethel vision, at the portals of glory, addressing us with the voice of pardoning mercy; but never let us cherish the delusion that these heights may be scaled and the gates reached, by remaining, like the Patriarch, slumbering at the ladder's base.\par \par Two ideas, more prominent than others, seem to be brought before us by the symbol.\par \par The first is that of SUSTAINED EFFORT. Later inspired writers, as if with the Bethel vision in view, thus exhort in a variety of figure--"Work out your own salvation"--"Give all diligence to make your calling and election sure"--"Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest"--"Let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober." It is the strenuousness of the combatant pressing on to the goal. It is the fortitude of the warrior with every muscle nerved for victory. It is the toil of the climber scaling the giddy battlements. It is the watchful vigilance of the sentinel who knows that one unguarded moment may be surrender and death. "The immortal garland," says Milton in one of his noble sentences, "is not to be won without dust and heat."\par \par The second idea, one almost involved in that of effort, is PROGRESS. There is no possibility of standing still in the divine life. This is, or ought at least, to be the motto of every Christian climber, "Not as though I had already attained." His eye must be upwards, and his footsteps onwards. No leisure for halting, no loitering or lingering in the ascent. Every day should find him farther from earth and nearer heaven. The history of all Pilgrims to the Celestial City should be that of the worshipers of old crowding to the earthly Jerusalem--"They go from strength to strength; every one of them in Zion, appears before God" (Ps. 84:7).\par \par A saintly patriarch of the last generation, in answer to the question 'when he would rest?' significantly replied, "I shall rest in Eternity." "Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life" ( Rev. 2:10). Elijah's chariot of fire, seated in which he peacefully went up from his tempestuous career on earth to the stormless skies and scenes of "the Better Country," is a true and beautiful emblem of the believer's calm departure, when the good fight has been fought--the course finished, the victory won--repose on the night of battle. But more appropriate to the Christian's daily spiritual history, is the emblem revealed over the couch of the Bethel dreamer--an ascending pathway--demanding toil, labor, progress; a pathway not to be admired and contemplated, but to be earnestly pursued--advancing from grace to grace, from virtue to virtue, from attainment to attainment; breathing an increasingly purer atmosphere, as earth is left behind in dimmer perspective.\par \par Reader, whether young or old, whether at life's morning or mid day, have you fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before you? Or, turning away from this glorious road, are you contented with the poor ascent by which thousands reach their ideal heaven (their only heaven), that of the present? We do not now speak of those baser ladders, scaled by not a few, who are all unscrupulous as to how their sensuous Mohammedan paradise, with its purple, and fine linen, and golden lures, is reached--it may even be by means of cringing flattery or villain imposture--their advancing steps (what is misnamed promotion) sometimes paved with the tears of the widow and the orphan. We speak rather to those who, it may be with fair moral characters and average worldly reputations, are yet indifferent and careless regarding "the one thing needful; whose sole dream is that of earthly success; who have no thought and no desire to knock at better gates, and to aspire at nobler climbings; who are lying pillowed on this cold world--dreamers like Jacob, dreaming and dreaming on, even though whispering voices from the earth itself, are heard continually proclaiming, "The world passes away."\par \par As immortal beings you are not where you should be! You have within you aspirations after the Infinite, and, with these capacities, you cannot be happy until you have found that Infinite One as your portion. We do not pity the insect creeping at our feet. It is in its native element. It was earth-born, and therefore its happiness is in earth. But the wounded eagle that has been cleaving the skies, mounting with bold pinion, if it be seen with broken wing fluttering and struggling on the ground, we pity it. Why? because it has fallen from its native element. That child of the sun--that winged Lucifer--has been hurled, disabled to the dust from its freeborn soarings. While the worm creates no pity, that fallen monarch does!\par \par Such, also, ought to be the sorrow and sympathy for every human soul born for God and eternity yet oblivious to its lofty destinies. "Awake, you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life." If yours still be early years--the starting point of existence, with the ascent still before you--all the more need and urgency to leave the fleeting, the counterfeit, the illusory, the temporal, and to aspire to the glory and grandeur of being a climber for immortality! "Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall--but those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint" (Is. 40:30, 31).\par \par And if any who trace these lines feel repressed by a sadder deterrent and hindrance--a consciousness of the self-forfeiture of Salvation and its blessings by reason of indulged sin; that they have thereby rendered themselves, so to speak, ineligible for attempting the heavenward ascent; let them not be guilty of seeming to create impediment when God has erected none. \lang3082 Rather let past misdeeds and shortcomings serve as incentives for fresh efforts and aspirations after the holy, the good, and the true. Let them listen to the words of the greatest of the Christian Fathers, as they are thus paraphrased and nobly expanded by the American poet--\par "Saint Augustine too truly said,\par That of our vices we can frame\par A ladder, if we will but tread\par Beneath our feet each deed of shame!\par \par "All common things--each day's events,\par That with the hour begin and end;\par Our pleasures and our discontents\par Are rounds by which we may ascend.\par \par "The low desire, the base design\par That makes another's virtues less;\par The revel of the giddy wine,\par And all occasions of excess!\par \par  "The longing for ignoble things,\par The strife for triumph more than truth,\par The hardening of the heart that brings\par Irreverence for the dreams of youth!\par \par "All thoughts of sin--all evil deeds\par That have their roots in thoughts of ill;\par Whatever hinders or impedes\par The action of the nobler will.\par \par "We have no wings, we cannot soar;\par But we have feet to scale and climb\par By slow degrees--by more and more--\par The cloudy summits of our time.\par \par "The mighty pyramids of stone\par That, wedge-like, cleave the desert airs,\par When nearer seen and better known\par Are but gigantic flights of stairs.\par \par "The heights by great men reached and kept\par Were not attained by sudden flight;\par But they, while their companions slept,\par Were toiling upward in the night.\par \par "Nor d eem the irrevocable past\par \lang1033 As wholly wasted--wholly vain,\par If, rising on its wrecks at last,\par To something nobler we attain."\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 Finally, let us all seek to be animated by the thought of multitudes who have already scaled the steps of the Heavenly stair, who are now lining the battlements of the sky, witnessing to its security and strength. Many of these were once weak and helpless and perishing as we. Yes, and by that Divinely provided way of access, the chief of sinners have reached their crowns. The thief on the cross is there--he stoops to tell that none can climb too late. The woman from the city is there--she stoops to tell that none can climb too vile. Saul of Tarsus is there--he stoops to tell what God's grace can do in transforming the blaspheming persecutor into the devoted apostle and the glorious martyr. Prophets call us! Saints call us! Departed friends who have fallen asleep in Jesus, call us! They testify that there is still an open door of welcome--room for all--grace for all--blood for all!--crowns for all! Can we decline the summons of the mighty multitude gone to colonize the many mansions? Let us not be slothful, but "followers of them (the true seed of Jacob), who, through faith and patience, are now inheriting the promises!"\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par } ""M q909-The Ministering Angels{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fontt mU08-The Night-Dream{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\bl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE MINISTERING ANGELS\par \par "Creator of many servants who stand in the higher worlds, and who proclaim aloud with reverence the commands of the Living God, may Your Name be magnified forever! They are all of them lovely, chosen, and mighty."--Daily Jewish Morning Service.\par \par "As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down on it." Genesis 28:12\par \par The exile at Bethel was not a stranger to the ministry of angels. Doubtless, one of the most memorable stories of early childhood, rehearsed by the lips of his grandfather, would be that of the advent of celestial messengers at his tent door in "the plains of Mamre in the heat of the day" (Gen. 18:1). The grandson is now to become a personal spectator, in his night-vision, of these divine delegates from the upper sanctuary, thronging the staircase which rose above his couch of stone.\par \par God has in all ages adapted the revelations of Himself to the character and circumstances of His people. To another fugitive of sterner mold, to whom reference has already been made--the bold-hearted Elijah--He manifested His presence in the earthquake and tempest, the fire and the whirlwind. To Jacob, until now the gentle domestic man, a tender home-flower unused to storms--ill-fitted, we may suppose, to grapple with the roughnesses of life, He reveals Himself in a dream of angels. Glorious spirits are sent to tend his lonely unsolaced pillow. He beholds no symbols of terror. He listens only to the "still, small voice." So, also, at an after period of great strait and emergency in the Patriarch's history, when solace, comfort, and direction were greatly needed, we are told these same ambassadors of God, in double phalanx, again met him, "and he called the place Mahanaim (two hosts)" (Gen. 32:2). In the present case, a needful and merited rebuke may have been conveyed to the erring fugitive. The God of his fathers, and his own covenant God, would tell him that these messengers of Providence, with their divine ministrations, would accomplish his destiny better far than his own cunning plottings and crooked policy. How Jacob came ultimately to feel and to own this, see how at Peniel, twenty years after, he wrestled with a Mightier than any angel, though in angel-form, and would not let Him go unless he received a blessing! (Gen. 32:24.)\par \par In the preceding pages, we have spoken of the wanderer as forming in his own person, on that memorable eventide, a type or picture of fallen humanity--man lying helpless on the outcast earth; while the ladder of salvation is let down to the pillow on which he slumbers, opening up a way of communication with the Heaven he had forfeited, and the God he had offended. The present chapter brings before us a new and interesting topic for consideration. The vision would seem to intimate that the human race, in cutting themselves off from fellowship with their Maker, had also been severed from all that was good, and holy, among the loftier orders of intelligence. But Christ, "the second Adam, the Lord from heaven," has, by His incarnation and death, not only re-established a way of approach to the presence of the Holiest, and re-instated the lost in the divine favor, but He has also made, once more, the ministry of bright, pure, unfallen spirits possible to a sin-stricken world.\par \par He Himself, in His enigmatical saying to Nathanael, is the best interpreter of the early type. For there can be no doubt that it is Jacob's dreamland and Jacob's radiant pathway which is referred to in the saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter (or as that may rather be rendered, 'from this time forth'), shall you see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man" (John 1:51). The Great Apostle still further expounds the same beautiful truth, that it is alone through the mediatorial work of the Redeemer, the sinner on earth and the angel in heaven can once more resume intermitted and forfeited fellowship. It is "by Him God the Father has reconciled all things to Himself, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven" (Col. 1:20). "Who has raised us up together, and made us sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (or "among the celestials") (Eph. 2:6). It is by Christ "you are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels" (Heb. 12:22).\par \par Thus, then, as we see the angel shapes flitting up and down in the dream of the Patriarch, we may warrantably infer that to them is delegated some subordinate office, as agents in the economy of Redemption; or, in the words of Scripture, "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who shall be heirs of salvation?" (Heb. 1:14).\par \par We learn, from the same source, the profound interest these bright spirits have taken, and are yet taking, in the gradual unfoldings of the Scheme of Grace, from the hour of creation's birth, when "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy," down to the time when they shall gather the immortal sheaves reaped by their sickles into the garners of heaven. Behold! as He whom that ladder typified came down to our world an Infant of days, angels heralded His birth, and sang, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men" (Luke 2:14). Behold them, the attendants in His sufferings; strengthening Him after His temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:11); supporting Him in His agony, and watching His dreadful struggle in the garden (Luke 22:43). Behold them in glistering clothing, the guardians of His vacant sepulcher, proclaiming His work finished and the victory won--"He is not here, He has risen, as He said" (Luke 24:4). Behold them in His triumphant ascension, forming a glorious retinue, conducting Him to His throne--"God's chariots are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels" (Ps. 68:17). And once more, when the Son of man shall come in the glory of the Father; when His throne shall be set, and the Books opened, "all His holy angels are to be with Him," as assessors on the Great day; gathering in the tares and the wheat (Matt. 25:31).\par \par It opens up a more attractive theme still, to think of them as interested in the salvation of each member of the redeemed family; the incessant attendants of each pilgrim-climber, from the hour when he first plants his foot on the ladder until they leave him in glory. It is interesting to think of them in connection with the words of the Redeemer Himself--and in harmony with the legend of the Jews we have previously noticed, as in some mysterious way keeping watch and ward over individual souls--"Their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 18:10).\par \par It is interesting to think that they are present, and no unconcerned spectators, in the mighty conflict waging, which issues in the soul's conversion--when they carry up to heaven the tidings of a sinner weeping at the cross, and which causes their brother-angels to rejoice before the throne; from that moment encamping round about him, watching his every footstep in the unseen yet stupendous conflict with the powers of darkness. In the magnificent Temple-visions of Isaiah, they are represented as swift of wing; ever ready alike for lofty and for lowly service (Is. 6:2). Now they come to some humble shepherds keeping watch over their flocks in the hills of Judah; now it is to unloose the chains from a captive apostle; now it is to whisper into the ear of another in the midnight sea words of heart-cheer and safety; now it is to do battle against demon-passion and degrading selfishness; now it is to support the bereaved in their hour of sorrow, or to point to the healing virtue in some troubled Bethesda; or in the closing scenes of the pilgrimage, waiting on by the death-couch, serenading it with "songs unheard by duller ears," ready to waft the spirit into the Savior's bosom; following the body to the grave; and watching the sleeping dust until the trumpet of the archangel quickens it into life.\par \par In one of the most beautiful of modern poems, we have a succession of these "Angels of the stair of heaven" graphically depicted as descending to earth under the different designations of "the Angel of life"--"the Angel of joy"--"the Angel of pain," and "Angel of death;" and each in turn greeted with welcome on the part of the believer as the messenger of God. We can only find space to quote in a fragmentary form--\par "Who is the angel that comes?\par Life!\par Let us not question what he brings,\par Peace or strife,\par Under the shade of his mighty wings.\par "We will arise and go forth to gree t him,\par Singly, gladly with one accord--\par 'Blessed is he that comes\par In the name of the Lord!'\par \par "Who is the angel that comes?\par Joy!\par Look at his glittering rainbow wings,\par No alloy\par Lies in the radiant gifts he brings.\par "Soon he will leave us; but though for others\par All his brightest treasures are stored--\par 'Blessed is he that comes\par In the name of the Lord!!'\par \par "Who is the angel that comes?\par Pain!\par Let us arise and go forth to greet him;\par Not in vain\par Is the summons come for us to meet him.\par "Let us say still, while his bitter chalice\par Slowly into our heart is poured--\par 'Blessed is he that comes\par In the name of the Lord!'\par \par "Who is the angel that comes?\par Death!\par But do not shudder and do not fear;\par " Hold your breath,\par For a kingly presence is drawing near.\par "Then let us, baring our hearts and kneeling,\par Sing while we wait the angel's sword--\par 'Blessed is he that, comes\par In the name of the Lord!'"--A. Proctor\par \par Manifold and multiform indeed, beyond what we can specify, may be the missions and services of these divine delegates to the family of God. It is easy to give rein to imagination on such a theme as this. The prose #as well as the poetry of all countries, and of all creeds, has weaved out of it pleasing conceptions and fantasies. Take one such suggestion, though purely conjectural, from an old writer on sorrow. He is discoursing on that mysterious speculation which rises before the soul in its hours of bereavement--the cognisance which redeemed saints in glory have of those they have left behind in the valley of tears.\par \par \lang3082 Who knows (is the hypothetical reflection to which we have referred)--$but that these blessed "ladder angels" may be employed in embassies of fellowship between the still toiling and erring pilgrims below, and the ransomed friends and relatives above--bearing upwards the intelligence of all that would impart joy; keeping back all that would create sadness or dim the eye in a tearless world; carrying aloft the tidings of an earnest faith, calm resignation, loving self-sacrifice, noble strife with evil; but suppressing the revelation of unguarded moments, when the fortress may% have surrendered--when the joints of the armor may have been pierced--the heavenly climber stumbled or fallen?\par \par Nor can we omit to add one other conjecture that the holy traffic between heaven and earth, at present so concealed and mysterious, may expand in future and brighter times into wider and more visible manifestations; so that the agency we speak of now, may be regarded as a mere installment of yet diviner and more frequent ministrations between these lofty beings and the redeeme&d tenants of a regenerated world.\par \par We are aware that this "doctrine of angels," which has thus challenged a passing consideration in connection with the Patriarch, is regarded by some with suspicion. But although, as is well known, an interesting Bible truth has been diverted by the Church of Rome to dangerous and unscriptural uses, that is surely no justifiable reason for its being eliminated from the Protestant creed. A superstitious abuse of a revealed dogma should rather lead us to d'isentangle it from the perversions to which it has been subjected, and endeavor to restore it in its undoubted place in the spiritual Temple. The distortion of the doctrine was as early as Paul's time--"the worshiping of angels" evoked from him a solemn warning and protest (Col. 2:18, 19).\par \par The Gnosticism, so prevalent in that early age, sought to incorporate Pagan mythology and Athenian philosophy with the Christian system. Among the false tenets thus held, was the alleged impossibility( and presumption of approaching the Deity save through the intervention of angels. It was an easy transition from this, to the worship of these as mediators; and thus was necessarily imperilled one of the cardinal and foundation truths of the Gospel--the all-sufficiency of the intercessory work of the ONE only mediator. The Dream of Bethel puts the doctrine into its right place in "the proportion of faith." The angelic part of the vision is a mere accessory, not for a moment eclipsing or overshadowing the) far loftier and grander verities therein set forth. Those burning spirits are no more than heavenly sentinels and messengers, pointing to the true means of ascent, and saying, "This is the way, walk in it." They are the mere satellites of the Great Central Sun--Christ Himself, the all and in all.\par \par The same Scripture indeed, which sanctions belief in angelic agency, expressly prohibits the offering to them, in any shape, divine honors. It will be remembered that, when an inspired Apostle*, in a moment of pardonable impulse, fell down in an act of worship at the feet of the angel, the offered devotion was at once rejected and repudiated\endash "Don't do that! I am your fellow-servant--(worship not me)--worship God" (Rev. 19:10). Oh! it is not angels that can give comfort to a sinner. Mary of old, as she entered her Lord's sepulcher, found herself in their presence. They found her weeping; and, as has been well remarked, "how did they leave her? Weeping still." Yes! a Mightier than angels' +hand is required to save a sinner's soul, and dry a sinner's tears, and speak peace to a sinner's bosom, and smooth a sinner's death pillow. The highest and holiest among the created "Sons of God" could not wipe away the guilt of a single transgression.\par \par Let us close with the elevating, inspiring thought suggested by the foregoing considerations, the greatness and grandeur of the human destiny--the magnificence of the human temple even in its ruins. Sad, indeed, is humanity's fall! Terri,ble is the sinner's isolation! But it is the very contrast between the sleep on the desert boulder and the vision stretching overhead in vistas of golden light, which reveals the transcendent glory of salvation--the "translation" (as it is well called) "out of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son" (Col. 1:13); while the steps, rising to infinite heights, would seem to indicate the soul's capabilities for endless growth and expansion.\par \par If there be one reader of these pages who sees- in the lone Patriarch and his surroundings, only a too faithful picture of himself--exile, self-forfeiture, and outward gloom--it may be, even inward shame bordering on despair--here is a Gospel vision disclosed in the midst of earth's most desponding seasons. These bright inhabitants of the World of spirits, who, when the sun had set, rang the vesper chimes of hope in the ear of that one lone worshiper in his desert sanctuary, are waiting to do the same for you. With holy vigils and holy eyes they are l.ooking down upon you; the sentinels of your slumbers. They tell, that you are not, as you suppose, disowned, unwatched, forgotten--still less surrendered to the spell and sway of the powers of darkness. No, rather, that the God they serve has given them "charge concerning you, to keep you in all your ways." They are commissioned, in the supreme crisis-hour of danger, to track your steps to the brink of the giddy precipice, down whose serrated rocks you might inevitably be hurled, but for their loving supe/rvision. They would unfold to you the horror of the downward road, with its deflection from honor and virtue, and the bliss of that pathway of divine light and love, by which countless multitudes which no man can number have already entered within the gate into the heavenly city. By loving, and by doing, what is "true and honest and of good report;" by cultivating and maintaining purity of heart, integrity of purpose, unselfishness of aim, consecration of life, you are thereby "entertaining angels unaware0s." Moreover, if, like the Pilgrim of Bethel, you have existence, with its struggles and emergencies, mainly still before you; the greater is the call to forestall these, by appropriating the divine realities of the vision.\par \par It is a beautiful idea, which either poetry or painting has somewhere embalmed, the Angels of human life represented as standing, not by the brink of the full-volumed rushing river, but rather at its earliest fountain-head, as it trickles through the reeds and moss a1nd gleaming pebbles of its source, there helping the youthful travelers to gird up their loins and to ease themselves of their burdens. Begin your pilgrimage, not, as with many, by an ignoble descent to darkness and death, scaring away the angels that are ready to beset you with their environing wings; but rather, by a glorious climbing of an upward path lined with immortal forces, who are doing battle, and will continue to the end to do battle for your soul against the powers of evil. "The angel of the L2ord encamps round about those who fear Him, and delivers them. O taste and see that the Lord is good--blessed is the man that trusts in Him" (Ps. 34:7, 8).\par \par "God's own children pure and holy,\par You the messengers He sends;\par 'Tis an ever sweet remembrance\par That you are our guardian friends--\par That you watch our life-long journey,\par That, unseen, you often are near,\par Holy thoughts and deeds to strengthen,\par Or3 to dry the mourner's tear.\par \par \lang1033 "Who would not retreat in terror\par From the evil yet undone;\par Who not turn with shame and mourning\par From the evil course begun;\par Who would e'er be found forgetful\par Of his calling and his vow,\par If the thought had only risen,\par 'Angels are among us now'?\par \par "Rise, my soul, in heart to meet them\par When this world would claim you fast;\par Rise among these freeborn spirits\par When her coils are round you cast.\par Be courageous! 'tis your journey\par Out of darkness into light;\par God and angels are around you--\par Tremble not, but rise and fight."\par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 --Hymns from the Land of Luther.\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par } 5rauders, protected only by the Guardian of Israel."--Kalisch.\par \par "God found him in Bethel, even the Lord God of Hosts; the Lord is his memorial."--Hosea 12:4, 5.\par \par At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone for a pillow and lay down to sleep. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down on it.\par \par An behold, at the top of 6the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, "I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I will give it to you and your descendants. Genesis 28:11-13\par \par There was something grander, more glorious still, awaiting the Patriarch than a heavenly staircase, and the footsteps of celestial messengers. "Behold a ladder!" "Behold the angels!" But, yet another "Behold" is added, to reach the climax.\par \par 7 The Lord of angels, in some majestic, mysterious form, was seen by the desert-dreamer at the summit--"And, behold, the Lord stood above it." At another eventful occasion of his history, delegates from the spirit-land met him. But in the present instance, in the remarkable words of the prophet Hosea, quoted among our motto-verses, "GOD found him at Bethel!"\par \par Delightful and comforting, indeed, must have been the first part of the dream to the weary, downcast fugitive--the luminous ascend8ing way thronged not with avenging angels, but with radiant forms keeping loving watch over his pillow. Now, however, he receives proof that he is the object of a love and regard mightier far than that which ministering seraphim could render. The guardianship of the heavenly host is eclipsed by "a brightness which excels,"--the vigils of the great Jehovah Himself--"The Lord is your keeper." It is not the white-robed Levites of the upper sanctuary on whom he now gazes. The true Holy of Holies is unveiled t9o his enraptured gaze. He sees what Onkelos renders in his paraphrase, "The glory of the Lord." If we have spoken of the angels' visit on the plains of Mamre as one of the stories to which childhood listened in the tent at Kirjath-Arba--another, more memorable still, rehearsed by the same revered lips, would now rise before his mental vision--that of the averted sacrifice on Mount Moriah; when no mere created angel's voice was heard arresting the sacrificial knife, but the magnificent accents of Jehovah H:imself--"Abraham, Abraham!"--when, in token of heart gratitude for his loved one's deliverance, the aged man called the place Jehovah-Jireh; as it is written, 'in the Mount of the Lord it shall be seen.' (Or, as that is rendered in the Septuagint, On the mountain Jehovah appeared.")\par \par Jacob could now say the same. These heights of Bethel were, in his heart's holiest sanctuary of thought, consecrated for evermore; for he had for the first time "seen God face to face, and his life was prese;rved." "He heard the words of God and saw the vision of the Almighty" (Num. 24:16). Often before, in gazing on this beautiful world both by day and night, he had assuredly thought of it, in some magnificent way, as roofed in and canopied by the Divine Presence and protection. But that Presence had not as yet been fully realized by him as that of a personal God. Had it been so, he would doubtless have lived and acted very differently. The base-born plots and deeds of earlier and recent years would have beetive to nobler and heavenlier ways. He would doubtless say of Bethel and its vision, what the Psalmist, in an hour of spiritual depression, said of localities specially associated with experiences of the Divine favor, "O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore will I remember You from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar." "Why are you cast down, O my soul? and why are you disturbed within me? hope you in God; for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countena?nce, and my God" (Ps. 42:6, 11).\par \par Solemn, in the case of each one of us, as with the Patriarch, is our first meeting with the Almighty. We do not refer to the revelation (always to be reverted to with reverence) made of Him in the nursery, or on the mother's knee--but we speak of subsequent seasons--crisis-hours in life, for which these earlier teachings may have paved the way; when summoned, it may be by startling providential dispensations, into "the secret of His tabernacle," and led @to cry out with another old-world Pilgrim of the desert, whose name has more than once been already mentioned--"I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You" (Job 42:5).\par \par Hitherto (as probably with Jacob), God has been no more than a distant abstraction--an incomprehensible Being, invested with certain august attributes which only seemed to render Him more dreadful and inapproachable. We have had our dream of Him; but not the dream of the Psalmist David, or of tAhe Evangelist John, as with eagle wings they seem to soar into divine fellowship. We thought of Him, it may be, as childhood is at times unhappily taught to picture Him, with His dwelling above the stars, the thunder His voice, the clouds the dust of His feet, walking on the wings of the wind, shrouded in the dread mystery of Eternity. But now we have had disclosed to us the present God, actually in view; standing above the ladder in His glorious personality--the living One, the controlling One, yes, the Bloving and sympathizing One--"the Shepherd of the Stone of Israel."\par \par "Clouds were Your chariots, and I knew them not,\par They came in solemn thunders to my ear;\par I thought that far away You had forgot,\par But You were by my side, and heaven was near."\par \par "Most men," as it has been expressed by Robertson in "Sermons," in words of great force and pathos, "know nothing beyond what they see. Their lovely world is all in all to them; its outer bCeauty, not its hidden loveliness. Prosperity, struggle, sadness, it is all the same. In all this strange, deep world they never meet, or but for a moment, the Spirit of it all, who stands at their very side. And it is exactly the opposite of this that makes a Christian. Move where he will, there is a Thought and Presence which he cannot put aside. He is haunted forever by the Eternal Mind. God looks out upon him from the clear sky, and through the thick darkness--is present in the raindrop that trickles dDown the branches, and in the tempest that crushes down the forest. A living Redeemer stands beside him, goes with him, talks with him, as a man with his friend. The emphatic description of a life of spirituality is, 'Enoch walked with God;' and it seems to be one reason why a manifestation of God was given us in the flesh, that this Livingness of God might be more distinctly felt by us." We may be content, while the world is bright, and plans are prospering, and the pulse beats strong, with the mere superEficial creed--acknowledgment of the existence of the God with whom we have to do. But each one of us must be brought at some time into close contact--face to face with Him. Whatever dim and uncertain meaning the patriarch of Uz attached to his own words, we assuredly may say--shall it be with joy or with trembling?--"Yet in my flesh shall I see God."\par \par Other hours of personal dealing with the Almighty One we may evade. There is one we cannot. It is that most solemn--that most lonely of tiFmes and seasons, the dreadful meeting-place between the irreparable past and the eternal future; when we come to be wrenched from all created objects of interest; when earthly voices grow fainter, and earthly presences dimmer; when, the feverish distractions of the world over, we stand waiting to have the gates of death unbarred, and to pass into the Infinite vision! What will avail us, if we have never, until then, reverently listened to the voice of Him, who, through long misspent years and forfeited opGportunities, has been addressing us from the heights of glory?\par \par On the other hand, how happy are they who, through all the events and vicissitudes of chequered life, have been able to keep the eye of faith firmly fixed on this God above the ladder--God at the summit of His own creation, directing and controlling all that befalls both His Church collectively, and believers individually.\par \par You that are just commencing the all-momentous life-journey, seek especially to carrHy that lofty elevating truth with you from the very outset of the pilgrimage, that high above the stony stair is the searching eye of the All-Seeing One. The angels of the Patriarch's dream, (if we make them, as they are sometimes considered, the types and symbols of Providence,) are in His hand, under His control, doing His bidding, "hearkening to the voice of His word." It recalls a kindred vision, given at a later time of Hebrew history, to the prophet Zechariah--"I saw by night, and behold a man ridinIg upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle-trees that were in the bottom (of the valley); and behind him were there red horses, speckled, and white" (Zech 1:8). What is this motley retinue, but providences--the varied dealings of God with His chosen; varied in their hues, "red, speckled, and white"? White--those whose meaning is clear. Speckled--those whose design is not so patent or easily discerned. Red--those which seem to suggest deep gashes, bleeding wounds--dealings which are mysterious and iJncomprehensible. But mark, they are all "behind" the divine Horseman of the vision. HE marshals, arranges, controls these subordinate retainers. They can lop no branch of the myrtle-trees. They can discharge no dart of affliction, until He gives the commission. He comes between the myrtle trees (His own people) and these "ministers who do His pleasure." He is, to all that myrtle-grove in the earthly valley, "a shelter from the storm and a covert from the tempest."\par \par Oh, joyous assurance! KGod foremost among the horsemen; God high above the ladder! No, represented in Jacob's symbolic vision as not 'seated' but 'standing!' He whose dwelling and watch-tower is in the everlasting hills, tracking our Pilgrim way in the upward toilsome climbing; warding off the demon foe who would seek to find us off our guard, and hurl us down; cheering us with the assurance, "I will not fail you nor forsake you." In dark and mysterious dispensations, He reveals Himself as holding the balances in His hands; proLclaiming that He has not surrendered the rule of His world to chance or fate, the accidents of nature or the caprice of fortune; but that He has a wisely-ordered plan in all He does, however unexplainable and inscrutable to us. No more, that He personally loves us; and that when He chastises He chastises because He loves; making the true philosophy of Christian resignation that which was breathed of old from the depths of a crushed and broken heart--"I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because YOU did it!"M (Ps. 39:9.)\par \par "Know well, my soul, God's hand controls\par Whatever you fear;\par Round Him in calmest music rolls\par Whatever you hear.\par \par "And that cloud itself, which now before you\par Lies dark in view,\par Shall, with beams of light from the inner glory,\par Be stricken through."\par \par "Let us seek to grasp," says a master in Israel, "the true notion of Providence, for in it there is peace and deep Nrepose of soul. Life has often been compared to a drama. Now in a good drama there is one plot, variously evolved by incidents of different kinds, which, until the last act, show only entanglement and confusion. Vice has its temporary triumphs, virtue its temporary depressions. What of that? You know it will come right in the end--Life is God's great drama--It is on a gigantic scale--There seems to be entanglements, perplexities, interruptions, confusions, contradictions without end; but you may be sure tOhere is one ruling thought, one master-design to which all these are subordinate--You know that the mind which organized this drama is Wisdom. You know more, you know that it is Love. Then of its ending grandly, wisely, nobly, lovingly, infinitely well for them who love God, there can be no doubt."\par \par Let every climber of the ladder, (all the more so if youth be still nerving the arm, and years have ploughed no furrow on the brow) take home these thoughts of surpassing comfort. Believe it-P-even what may at first sight be regarded as hindrances and impediments in the upward ascent, may only, after all, be part of the plan and purpose of which I have spoken, of that "Shepherd of the stony pillow." Trust Him. The very voices of the night, sounding like the moan of the tempest, may turn out to be the disguised yet tender "voices of God," calling away from all earthly props, to mount with greater singleness of eye and ardor of aim the alone ladder of safety and peace--upwards, onwards, heavenwards, homewards!\par \par "Not yet, you know how I bid\par Each passing hour entwine\par Its grief or joy, its hope or fear,\par In one great love-design.\par \par Nor how I lead you through the night\par By many a various way,\par Still upward to unclouded light,\par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 And onward to the day." \par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par \par }  Qm11-Jehovah's Name{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fR) yi10-The God Above The Ladder{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE GOD ABOVE THE LADDER\par \par "Jacob sleeps in the open field, exposed to the attacks of wild beasts and ma4Sprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 JEHOVAH'S NAME\par \par "O my Father! it seems to me sometimes, as if You forgot every other being, in order to think only of my faithless and ungrateful heart!"--Madame Guyon.\par \par "And those who know Your name will put their trust in You."--Ps. 9:10.\par \par At the top of the stairway stood the Lord,T and he said, "I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father, Isaac." Genesis 28:13\par \par The theme of our last, forming as it does the climax of the vision, was suggestive of truths so solemn and momentous, that we may be pardoned for prolonging and expanding, under this new heading, the same topic. It admits of a still higher Gospel and spiritual application.\par \par "What is Your Name?" was the urgent interrogation of Jacob, twenty years later, whUen he was alone at midnight grappling with the mysterious Presence, in the deep gorge of the Jabbok. Doubtless it was the same question which rose now in the mind of the Dreamer as he beheld the majestic Form at the summit of the stony ascent. The long familiar, and yet, in another sense, the only partially realized, God of the Tent and the Altar was now before him in the revealed majesty of His glory. How natural the silent promptings of the newly-illuminated soul, even though he gave no audible expressiVon to them. 'Who are YOU?' "Tell me YOUR Name?"\par \par The answer, or rather the voluntary declaration, was immediately given--"I am the Lord God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac." It is worthy of special note, that it is the incommunicable name of JEHOVAH which is here used. More than that, this holy designation--so holy, that the Jews came scrupulously to avoid, as they still do, the very mention of it as too dreadful and hallowed for mortal lips--is only on this and on one otherW occasion employed by God in the revelation of Himself--that other, being at one of His earliest interviews with Abraham, when He ratified to the patriarch His grant of the covenant land (Gen. 15:7). In subsequent personal revelations, the title of El-Shaddai (God Almighty) is adopted; the same word which last fell on Jacob's ears, on leaving the Beersheba home, when his father's voice was heard pronouncing the parting benediction "God Almighty bless you" (Gen. 28:3).\par \par It is of great impXortance and interest to advert to this specific name employed by the God above the ladder, as it gives a beautiful unity and consistency to the type we have been unfolding. Some learned writers hold, we think on substantial grounds, that the designation of Jehovah, employed in patriarchal communications, has reference to the first Person in the ever-blessed Trinity; while the El-Shaddai (the Almighty One, invested also with the attributes of Deity) denotes the delegated "messenger of the Covenant." In harYmony with most; indeed nearly all ancient expositors, we have assumed the vision of the Patriarch to be a prefiguration of the great coming Redemption; and while the ladder forms a symbolic representation of the El-Shaddai as the Divine Way to the Father--in the Jehovah standing at the summit, we have the similar figurative representation of the adorable Father Himself--the glorious "Revealer;" the supreme "I am:"--"God in Christ."\par \par How cheering to Jacob would be the first accents emanatZing from the Being on whose Form he now gazed in trembling emotion, and who announced His name as the "Jehovah-God of Abraham your father." And it was not only Jehovah, made known as very near--looking down upon the very pillow on which he slept--but the God also who had a tender cognisance of those nearest and dearest to Him--the Lord whose eye was at the same moment on the heath of Bethel and on the tents of Beersheba--"The God of Abraham your father." How, at once, would memory begin to re-traverse the[ hours and scenes of childhood and youth, and recall the manifold story of Divine grace which must often have fallen from the lips of his saintly grandfather--that grandfather whose body slept in the cave at Machpelah, but whose spirit seemed to be still in the presence of that Almighty One he had so faithfully served on earth. For the words of the Divine Speaker are not 'I was,' but "I AM the God of your father Abraham." "The God" (as Christ's own interpretation expounds it) "not of the dead, but of the \living" (Matt. 22:32).\par \par Could Jacob wish for more? The whole vision was a reassuring one--just at the time, also, when he urgently needed such help and invigoration. At the later, darker experience of his history, it was God--the 'Dreadful,' the 'Mysterious,' with whom he came in contact, wrestling with Him as if in a life and death struggle; indeed leaving him maimed in the conflict. Now, it was God the Protector--God the Forgiver--the God who, by varied personal acts of condescension a]nd kindness, had showered blessings on the household of his relatives--the Jehovah of the "everlasting Covenant, well ordered in all things and sure;" "the Shepherd of the stone of Israel:"--the same God who was most fully revealed to him at the close of all; when, with the word 'Salvation' on his tongue, and probably reverting to this earliest vision of it, he was ready to die.\par \par All that, has been noted now regarding the Patriarch and this 'revelation of Jehovah,' may be transferred to ^ourselves. Most beautifully, and with a deep insight into human experience, has it been said, "We move through a world of mystery, and the deepest question is, 'What is the Being that is ever near, sometimes felt, never seen--that which has haunted us from childhood with a dream of something surpassingly lovely, which has never yet been realized--that which sweeps through the soul at times as a desolation, like the blast from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our lonelines_s--that which has touched us in our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our mortal affections have shriveled up with pain--that which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness, and conceptions of superhuman excellence.'\par \par Shall we say 'It,' or 'He'? What is It? Who is He? Those anticipations of Immortality and God, what are they? Are they the mere throbbings of my own heart, heard and mistaken for a living something beside me? Are they the sound of my own wishes, ech`oing through the vast void of nothingness? or shall I call them God, Father, Spirit, Love? A living Being within me or outside me? Tell me Your Name, you dreadful mystery of Loveliness; that is the struggle of all earnest life." (Robertson's Sermons, Vol. i p. 51.)\par \par The revelation is made to us\endash\par \par I. "I AM"--"I am Jehovah." Jehovah bending down from the heights of heaven over this ladder of salvation; every step in the ladder (rock-like) an inviolable promise. \lanag3082 JEHOVAH your covenant God! Not like the fabled king of gods and men on Olympus, only on rare occasions coming down to mortals from his realm of drowsy light, armed with the lightning and thunderbolt. Not like the God of the modern philosopher who has stamped on His world certain immutable, though profound laws, assigning pathways and orbits to the planets, filling the quiver of the sun with golden arrows, giving the sea its tidal decrees, painting the prismatic colors on the rainbow, piling earth's bstrata upwards from primeval granite, appointing the seasons to be the four evangelists of nature; but who, as "the Great Unknowable," has retired behind the visible curtain into a pavilion of awe and darkness, and left the vast machine to its own complex evolutions and revolutions. Not the God (though that be true also) who holds the scroll of the future in His hand, in which are inscribed the destinies of nations, but who has no time to care for the individual nned, or to support the solitary soul trembcling on the verge of temptation. Not the God of many a modern Church system--the inexorable avenger, the stern taskmaster "reaping where he had not sown, and gathering where he had not strewed," exacting impossible sacrifices, and imposing unrighteous burdens. But, the ever-present, never absent; ever-living, ever-loving, personal Jehovah--who "dwells in light, and with whom is no darkness at all;" "our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble;" whose supervision is not fitful, capricious, incodnsistent; but faithful as that of a father, and tender, "as one whom his mother comforts." "He that keeps you will not slumber; behold He that keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." Truly "the name" of this Lord (Jehovah) "is a strong tower" running into which we are eternally safe (Prov. 18:10). We can echo the refrain of Hezekiah's great hymn of victory--"The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of JACOB (the God of the Bethel-dreamer), is our refuge" (Ps. 46:7).\par \par But we have not eto deal on this peerless subject in mere vague statements and generalities. We can understand, in more unmistakable language, what God means, when He says, "I am Jehovah," "Your God." A full unfolding of His character has been given to us. The question has been answered--"What is Your Name?"\par \par That manifestation, need I say, was made in the cities and villages and plains of Palestine, by a gracious Being, eighteen centuries ago, clothed in mortal form. That covenant land, on a portion of fwhich Jacob slept, received, in diverse ways, an ampler revelation than by dream or vision of Jacob's God. Now it is at Cana with its associations of joy. Now it is at Nain with its memories of sorrow. Now it is on the Mount of Beatitudes with its mingled code of inflexible ethics and loving benedictions. Now it is while calming the disciples tossed on the stormy lake; now it is when feeding the hungry seated on the desert grass. Now it is at hallowed Bethany; now in the hush of the Paschal Supper room; ngow in the moonlight of Gethsemane; now amid the mysterious pangs of Calvary; now in the farewell words breathed on the Mount of Ascension.\par \par Yes! To the eager cry of inquiring humanity, "What is God?" "Show us His face;" "tell us His name;" "disclose to us His moral attributes;"--the dark, uncertain, unsatisfactory guesses of heathendom are not what we have to rely upon, with their incarnations of terror and vengeance, often of impurity and sin. These queries are answered by listening to hthe utterances and beholding the deeds of Him who is 'the Image of the Invisible God,' the covenant El-Shaddai of Jacob's vision--"manifest in the flesh"--"Immanuel"--"God with us."\par \par As we track His holy footsteps, we hearken, indeed, ever and anon to words of warning and vengeance against the persistent scorners of grace and mercy. But His pathway is truly, from first to last, one of gentleness and goodness. He scatters blessings wherever He goes--giving sight to the blind, and hearing ito the deaf; calling the shunned leper to His side; wiping the tear from the eye of penitence; whispering forgiveness in the ear of the sin-stricken; breathing hope into the weary of life; healing the broken in heart; reclaiming the fallen, the despairing, the lost. Even when disciples would send away with the churlish word and the rejected petition, He opens wide the arms of His mercy. The Good Samaritan of His own parable, He finds humanity lying bruised, wounded--half-dead. Stooping over the mangled frjame, He pours in wine and oil.\par \par Such is GOD! "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." "He is the brightness of the Father's glory, the express image of His person." "No man has seen God at any time, the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father He has declared Him." "We beheld His glory," says the most favored of all the spectators of Incarnate Deity, "the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."\par \par Both the closing sktatements of this latter verse unfold a name unrevealed to the patriarchal dispensation, and reserved for us, on whom the ends of the world have come. Christ is the revelation of the FATHER. "My Father and your Father, My God and your God." "He that has seen Me, has seen the Father. From henceforth you know Him and have seen Him." Jesus, in His longing to allure the world back again to the God it had either misapprehended or rejected, seems to delight in interweaving that paternal name with parable, and mliracle, and intercessory prayer, and last agony, and first Resurrection words. It was something more comforting and endearing still, than "the Shepherd of the stony pillow."\par \par How many forfeit the joy, at all events of their spiritual privileges, by entertaining hard, false, unscriptural thoughts about the Almighty. In the case of not a few, it is to be feared that unjust and repelling views of the character of God (to repeat the remark made in the preceding chapter) are imparted in earlym training! By an inversion and perversion of Bible teaching, must not the well-meaning mother, in order to deter her child from sin, at times be convicted of revealing more of the 'shadow' than of the glorious 'brightness' of Him "who is light and in whom is no darkness at all"?\par \par We do not, indeed, (God forbid), in the spirit of many modem systems, discard from our creed one cardinal aspect of the divine character--God the Holy, the Just, the Righteous, the True--the Guardian and Dispensner of laws based upon principles of everlasting rectitude. We dare not divest Scripture of its plainest meaning, by eliminating all that is retributive in the government of the Great Supreme.\par \par But we speak now of those who, like Jacob, are gazing upon the God standing on the summit of the Heavenly stairs--God seen through the appointed way of salvation, "reconciling the world unto Himself." We speak of those who, in accepting the free and gracious offers of the great Redemption, behold eovery attribute of His nature magnified, and every demand of His law "made honorable" in the cross of His dear Son; those who can look up with confidence and hope to the mightiest of all Beings, and call Him by the endearing name of Father; who from the clefts of the Rock of Ages, like Moses in his mountain watch-tower, have seen a sublime vision and heard a sublime voice which can inspire no servile terror--"The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious" (Ex. 34:6). The thought of God may be dreadful to tphose who habitually despise or dishonor Him; but the realization of that Father, speaking through the Elder Brother--this union of ineffable paternal and filial love, is the most comforting doctrine of Scripture, and takes the sting out of all the sorrows of life.\par \par Jehovah--the Omnipotent One--yet Jehovah the Loving One. Oh, to feel in your dreams of DARKNESS and SUFFERING that you have God in Christ, and Christ in God, your constant though Invisible Guardian! Many are the crushing trialqs with which your kindest friend dare not intermeddle--his best-meant words only grate on your sensitive spirit; you know too well that he cannot probe your wound or measure the depths of your agony. But when, as in the case of Jacob at Bethel, the lonely hour, the desolate hour overtakes you (shall we call it the hour of the mourner's watch?); when you hear no footstep of angel on the ladder but the Angel of Death; when you are unwillingly wrenched from all that made life happy--the festal timbrel exchanrged for the muffled harp and the silent chamber, there comes back from the Lord of angels the gentle reproof, as if borne on seraph's wing, to every such tearful dreamer--"Not alone! for the FATHER is with you!" 'and I, the Brother-man, the Son of the Highest'--"I know your sorrows!"\par \par Father! Brother! how it puts the rainbow of calm trust into the darkest future, and rocks the angriest waves to rest. The key-note of the divinely taught prayer is--"Our FATHER who is in Heaven, hallowed bes YOUR NAME!" Christendom, in the best known of her uninspired utterances, responds--"You are the King of Glory, O Christ; You are the everlasting SON of the FATHER!"\par \par Take another experience of a different kind, in perhaps a sadder, gloomier hour still--the hour of your SIN. You who are painfully conscious of being wounded in the strife--shall we suppose some young pilgrim with a stain on the once spotless armor of early innocence--a blot on the hitherto white page of the early life-histtory, which all your tears cannot wipe out--the inward wail rising in the silent corridors of conscience, "My sin is ever before me!"--how little can you often depend on help or commiseration from others in the carrying of your burden. If you unbared your heavy secret even in friendly ears, in many cases you would receive nothing but the settled frown in return. The conventional world is harsh and unrelenting in its judgments--slow to make allowance for sudden temptation. Thousands have never felt the sweeup of the hurricane themselves, and they cannot understand how others should succumb to it. Like the Jew, who, having incurred defilement by accidental contact with the dead, was cast out as unclean, so many still, who have bent before the storm, have the similar brand of society put upon them. Simon of old, is still the type of those who would remorselessly crush the tendrils of the broken flower beneath their feet, spurn penitence from their presence, break the bruised reed, and quench the smoking flax!\vpar \par You are in better hands with the God of the Heavenly highway. "He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds." "HE knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust." Of the Prodigal--the self-exiled, the feeder on husks, the hunger-stricken, the perishing it is said, "he arose and went to his father." God's thoughts are not as man's thoughts--as it is written "Jacob" (the crafty, the deceiver, the unworthy one, the supplanter, whom man would have denounced as unfit for Angelic twutelage and guardianship); "Jacob," says the great Being who came to him in these Bethel night-watches, "Jacob have I LOVED! (Rom. 9:13). "Let me fall into the hands of God, for great are His mercies; but let me not fall into the hands of man."\par \par Sinning one--abandoned one, despairing one, Trust HIM. In the darkness and isolation of your spirit, lift your drooping soul, like the battered sunflower, to the great Giver of light and life, saying, "When I am afraid I will trust in You:" takinxg refuge with one of the later prophets in the elevating assurance--"The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and HE knows those who trust in Him" (Nahum 1:7).\par \par And yet, before we close, let us not lose the beauty and comfort of another part of Jehovah's name, in this tender and loving revelation--"The Lord God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac." "Our FATHER'S God," the God of our families--The God whose name and love are associated with the sleeping dead--with thye Great and the Good who have been gathered to their kindred--with those who served Him in their lives; and who have left behind them, as the dearest legacy, that of an undimmed faith and a priceless example.\par \par \lang1033 All of us have such memories. Indeed no heirloom in our households is so precious as those holy traditions of the departed--the Fathers and Mothers, Fathers and Grandfathers--who first unfolded to us the blessed verities of the Patriarch's dream, and who themselves, havinzg reached the radiant summit, are beckoning us to follow after. O God of our fathers! let us not live--let us not die--unworthy of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises! But rather, like the Athletes of old in the Grecian race, who caught up the smouldering torch of the exhausted runner, let us snatch up the torch of faith and hope and glowing deed, which sainted ones have let drop from their death-grasp, and bear it for their sakes bravely on, until we too sink in the contest, and han{d it to our successors.\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 Let this, moreover, be our comfort and encouragement, that the God above the Heavenly stair has promised, whether it be figuratively to run the race, or scale the stony steep, to "make His grace sufficient for us." If you have too good reason, amid the vicissitudes of all that is human, to weave the mournful soliloquy, "Our Fathers, where are they?"--the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, "the GOD of our Fathers," is still the same--infinite, immutable. We can make our appeal from the past to the future. "We have heard with our ears, O God, our Fathers have told us, what work You did in their days, in the times of old." "Our Fathers trusted in You." We can write over the vanished tents of Beersheba and Hebron, over the Bethels of our wandering--over the Machpelahs of our dead--"They shall perish, but YOU remain!"\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par \par \par } }an\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE PROMISE\par \par "He has not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither has He seen perverseness in Israel--the Lord his God is with him."--Numbers 23:21.\par \par "And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of My mountains; and My elect shall inherit~ it, and My servants shall dwell there."--Isaiah 65:9.\par \par "The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I will give it to you and your descendants. Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will cover the land from east to west and from north to south. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants." Genesis 28:13-14\par \par The voice of Jehovah having been heard at the summit of the bright stairs, announcing His Name as the God of faithful Abraham, we wonder what will form the tone and subject of further communication! It cannot surely be, that language of unqualified encouragement and heart-cheer is to be addressed to one, whose past life has so abundantly evidenced that neither natural nobility of character, nor spiritual grace are hereditary; on the contrary, who has proved himself all unworthy of his illustrious pedigree. Can these words of the Almighty fail to be mingled at least, with merited reproof, answering and echoing the thoughts and accusings which must have haunted the dreamer himself, when he laid his head on his pillow? Indeed, could we be greatly astonished, (after the tale of previous falsehood and treachery, plotting and counterplotting) had the Being he had dishonored now been heard canceling, by one righteous sentence, every covenant blessing hitherto promised; reversing the oracle of the younger son's predicted greatness, and reinstating the wronged and injured Esau in his right of first-born?\par \par "I am the Lord, I change not, therefore (JACOB and) you sons of Jacob are not consumed!" (Mal. 3:6.) "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure" (Is. 46:10). "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion" (Rom. 9:15). All the unworthy past of that unpromising, and unlovable wayfarer is to be consigned to oblivion; and without a word of reproach he is to be reclaimed, strengthened, cheered, comforted. The words of the Prophet, descriptive elsewhere of the retributive dealings of Jehovah, are in his case reversed--"For all this, His anger" is turned away, "and His hand (of mercy and loving-kindness) is stretched out still!"\par \par Although the lesson has run, like a golden thread, throughout the whole preceding narrative; this may be a befitting place for us to pause, and more specially to admire and magnify the Sovereignty of God's Grace.\par \par Many other sleepers there were that night in the Holy Land, who could have asserted a better claim on the divine regard than the wanderer from a home which he had embittered and disgraced--a home in which, as we now know well, he had left passions smouldering, which deceit and treachery had kindled, along with stifled purposes of revenge. We might have expected, therefore, the Keeper of Israel, in His universal watch, to have piled the Angelic stair over some worthier recipient alike of His temporal and spiritual blessings--leaving the wayward fugitive of Beersheba--(the "Underminer" as his name has been literally rendered)--to be haunted in the night with visions of anguish and terror; in which, prominent would be, a duped father, an incensed brother, and, worse than all, the alienated face of the Infinite Being he had offended.\par \par But here, as in manifold other cases, the Lord would show that the divine and the human methods are often in conflict. "It is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God who shows mercy." The Patriarch dreamer's is the old, old story, that "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." At that hour, this man of like passions is pronounced, by the lips of Jehovah Himself, to be the chosen recipient and inheritor of honors such as no mortal ever shared before or since. We have vividly recalled to us the story of the erring sheep in the New Testament parable. Instead of that truant of the fold being left to its own estrangement, to plunge ever deeper into the thorny thicket of its wanderings, the unwearying shepherd follows after it "until he finds it;" and, "when he has found it," there is no anger in his look, no displeasure in his voice. In silent love "he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing." Such, in the later Gospel delineation, was a picture of God's present dealings with this exile on the bleak wilds of Bethel. He rehearses nothing in his ear, but the wondrous favors he had for him in future possession and enjoyment; anew proclaiming that he was the appointed heir to the Abrahamic covenant; recognized as the representative of the chosen seed--above all, that he was the selected ancestor of the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of mankind. The promise itself is so far couched in the same terms previously employed to Abraham and Isaac. But it embraces also a wider sweep. It tells of the cosmopolitan character of the wondrous race that was to spring from his loins, as stretching "westward, and eastward, and northward, and southward."\par \par Strange destiny, for that lonely wanderer on that lonely moorland! to be father of the multitudinous people, who, in addition to past annals of peerless interest, are at this hour found by the banks of every river, and within the walls of every city in either hemisphere; unmingled and unassimilated with Gentile blood and Gentile customs, and with a proud and noble destiny still to be unfolded for their children's children. "The land you are lying on belongs to you. I will give it to you and your descendants. Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will cover the land from east to west and from north to south. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants." (Gen. 28:13, 14).\par \par It has been well noted, God accommodates the very words in which the promise is couched to the condition of His servant. Not only does He say, 'I will give you the land;' but, "The land you are lying on." 'The land, all of which you can tonight claim as your own, is the stony pillow on which your head reclines--this land, as far as eye can reach, is your predestined and covenanted heritage. That stone you are about to leave behind you will remain a pledge of My word--"I am the Shepherd of the stone of Israel!"' In the words of Matthew Henry, "He seemed to be plucked off as a withered branch, yet he is to become a flourishing tree that shall send out his boughs unto the sea." "Who can count the dust of JACOB?" (Num. 23:10.)\par \par On leaving the Beersheba tent, his own father had pronounced on him a similar blessing, almost indeed in identical words (Gen. 28:3, 4). It is now endorsed by his father's God, and has put upon it the sign and signature of Heaven. Although, therefore, he had neither by priority of birth nor elevation of character any title to so magnificent a spiritual possession, yet Jehovah seems literally to address to him the after-words of the Great Prophet--"But now thus says the Lord that created you, O Jacob, and He that formed you, O Israel, Fear not--for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are Mine" (Isa. 43:1). And well might he have responded in the words used by himself at a later period--"I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which You have showed unto your servant" (Gen. 32:10).\par \par It is specially deserving of still farther note, that whatever were the vicissitudes and trials of his subsequent life--the name of this erring fugitive, far more frequently than in the case even of the nobler and saintlier Abraham, is identified with that of Jehovah--"the God of Jacob"--"the mighty God of Jacob." He lives, through long subsequent years, the chartered inheritor of unparalleled blessings. He dies, at last, "the Soldier of God." This was the distinctive name by which the Jewish nation were to be known--"You seed of Israel His servant, you children of JACOB, His chosen" (1 Chron. 16:13). "All you seed of JACOB glorify Him and fear Him" (Ps. 22:23). The beatitude, not of the Hebrew people alone, but of 'the Church throughout all the world,' runs thus--"Happy is he that has the God of JACOB for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God" (Ps. 146:5).\par \par How continually in the inspired pages are we reminded of God's absolute sovereignty in the calling and election of His people--a truth so contrary and antagonistic to human dealings and experience! Limiting ourselves to New Testament examples, is it not the woman of Samaria, the despised tax-gatherer of Jericho, the fierce demoniac of Gadara, the felon on the cross, the fiery Cilician bigot and persecutor, who form the conspicuous trophies and monuments of the Redeemer's love and power and compassion? \lang3082 "The chief of sinners," they "obtained mercy."\par \par Such, also, are God's dealings with multitudes still. "I loved Jacob" (Mal. 1:2), is the strange legend written under many a name conscious in itself of having forfeited all claim to the divine favor. Still He meets the exile in the far country--the prodigal at a distance from his Father's house, when character is blighted, principle shaken, purity lost--the soul apparently surrendered hopelessly to some demon power. Oh, even then, at times, a voice is heard amid the maddening hurricane of passion--it is the lullaby of Everlasting love--"Come unto Me, you weary and heavy-laden one, and I will give you rest!" The Lord above the ladder suddenly reveals Himself; the closed heavens seem mysteriously to open; the dreamer has suddenly flashed upon him the long-deadened--the almost extinguished sense of his high original destiny. He feels within him, in a moment, the yearnings after a nobler, truer, diviner life--wakes up to the consciousness of the irresistible presence of some divine Influence or Power hitherto evaded, fought against, resisted; which, as with the grasp of a giant, has now "apprehended him." It is the veritable touch of the Invisible God. The wandering star is reclaimed from its devious orbits, and set within the sphere of the divine regards. The loaded cloud breaks, not in storm, but in a shower of benedictions!\par \par And what is the avowal and confession accompanying such visions of the Almighty? whether it be in rousing the sinner from his sleep of indifference and death, or awakening the backslider from his season of torpor and lethargy; when faith and hope have been burning with a feebler flame, and the consciousness of God's presence has been forfeited by indulged sin or omitted duty--whether, also, the means employed be by startling providences or by feeble instrumentalities? "This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes." "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Your name we would give glory." "By the grace of God I am what I am." "So slow is He to anger," says an earnest believer of the past generation, in speaking of this wondrous theme--"so ready to forgive, that when His prophets lost all patience with the people so as to make intercession against them; yet even then, He could not be made to cast off His people whom He foreknew, for His great name's sake." (Lady Powerscourt's Letters.)\par \par The beautiful words which inaugurated the Gospel era, may well be written as the motto and superscription over many a life-history from that of the Patriarch-dreamer to the present hour--"Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Day-Spring from on high has visited us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace" (Luke 1:78, 79).\par \par Yes, here is the only possible solution and explanation of these mysteries of grace in the case of each individual soul--"The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love--therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn you" (Jer. 31:3). Listen to one, not of life's dreamers, but of her noblest workers, when laid indeed on his pillow of outward darkness, but irradiated and encircled with a diviner light than the constellations above the Bethel Pilgrim--"The text, 'God is love,' has kept me thinking for the last twenty-four hours; and the more I think of it the more wondrous and marvelous it grows. In some of our clear northern nights, the heavens above sparkle with countless numbers of bright and beautiful stars. The pages of the Bible sparkle with countless numbers of bright and beautiful texts. But I fancy, for the future, I shall deem the text "God is Love" as the greatest and grandest in the great and grand skies of texts; a kind of pole-star, around which, as around the pole star in our heavens, the other starry messengers and sayings of the Bible revolve." (Sir James Simpson's Life, p. 416.)\par \par The Hebrew of future ages, in bringing to the Tabernacle or Temple his offering of first-fruits, was to accompany the dedication with words which kept in perpetual remembrance the sovereign grace of Jehovah to Jacob--"You must then say in the presence of the Lord your God, 'My ancestor Jacob was a wandering Aramean who went to live in Egypt. His family was few in number, but in Egypt they became a mighty and numerous nation.'" (Deut. 26:5). How many, in bringing their eternal thank-offering into the heavenly Temple above, will accompany it with the confession and ascription--"Unless the Lord had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in silence." "I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart; and I will glorify Your name for evermore; for great is Your mercy toward me; and You have delivered my soul from the lowest hell" (Ps. 86:12, 13).\par \par  The magnificent promise God here given to the Patriarch, is delivered in a grander and more enduring form to us. There is a better Canaan in reserve for those who are spiritually "the seed of Jacob." As believers in Christ, we have already partaken of the closing portion of the Bethel blessing, the blessing promised through the Divine Messiah to all earth's families; and with this in present possession, we have the other in future promise.\par \par There is a solemn exhortation addressed, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to "look diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God." And the special example of warning is taken from another member of the Beersheba tent with whose name we are already familiar. It is the case of one who made light of temporal advantages, and suffered by their rejection irremediable and irreparable loss. Let us see to it that ours be not the self-forfeiture of Esau. His is the picture of those who dally and trifle with their soul's best interests--who, in the absorbing love of the present, are willing to barter their immortal felicity, for a bowl of earthly pottage; degraded votaries of the Epicurean creed, "Who snatch the pleasures of the passing hour."\par \par How vividly are such characters reflected, in the brief but most graphic delineation of the elder brother, by the inspired pen--"Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and lentil stew. Esau ate and drank and went on about his business, indifferent to the fact that he had given up his birthright!" Genesis 25:34\par \par Young pilgrims on the way to Zion! seek to be ready with the reply to all earthly solicitations, "If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." (Heb. 11:15, 16). As from this outset hour at Bethel, onwards through the future years of his pilgrimage, the promised birthright blessings are ever before the mind of Jacob, stimulating him in all his efforts, raising him superior to his sorrows, cheering him in his exile, sustaining him in his bereavements, softening the harshness of his character, bracing him to noble endurance--So be it with you. Take, as your watchword and motto, "We look for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God;" remembering that "what He has spoken He is able also to perform."\par \par \lang1033 And, whether young or old, let us ever seek joyfully to recall and rehearse the ground of our title-deed to "the Better Country"--"the smiling fields" beyond Jordan. It is ours alone through Him who is "the Way, and the Truth, and the Life." "If you be Christ's (if you have found the true antitypical ladder of the Patriarch, by which you can to the Gates of the city) then are you Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal.3:29). Striking and beautiful are the words of the psalmist as he invokes the blessing of "the God of Jacob," and names Him as such. On what does he found and urge his plea at the mercy-seat? He supplicates that the eye of the great Jehovah, averted and repelled by his unworthiness, may rest on the alone All-worthy ONE. "O Lord God of Hosts, hear my prayer--give ear, O God of JACOB. Behold, O God, our shield, and look upon the face of Your Anointed" (Ps. 84:8, 9).\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 As we hear the God of the Patriarch saying from the ladder-summit, "To you will I give it," let us lay hold of the promise in all the grandeur and magnificence of its spiritual meaning. Be it ours as the children of Jacob (the inheritors of that great covenant of grace ratified on the heights of Bethel), in reverent faith to say, "I will hear what God the Lord will speak--for He will speak peace unto His people and to His saints" (Ps. 85:8).\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par } "B!q14-The Waking, and Waking Exclamation{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl Q aQ13-The Given Presence{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\e E12-The Promise{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\from|f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE GIVEN PRESENCE\par \par "And behind the dim unknown\par Stands God within the shadow,\par Keeping watch above His own."--Anon.\par \par There is a promise to particular saints\endash "I will never leave YOU, nor forsake YOU."--Philip Henry.\par \par "By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin."--Is. 27:9.\par \par With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands, and encourage those who have weak knees. Say to those who are afraid, "Be strong, and do not fear, for your God is coming to destroy your enemies. He is coming to save you." Isaiah 35:3-4\par \par "I will be with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. I will someday bring you safely back to this land. I will be with you constantly until I have finished giving you everything I have promised." Genesis 28:15\par \par Jehovah had addressed Jacob not only as heir of Promise; but He had coupled his name with the other two representative fathers of His covenant people.\par \par That promise, however, glorious and comprehensive though it be, was of a general kind. It related to the number of his offspring--their marvelous extension; the yet more marvelous blessing which in them was to embrace "all the families of the earth." The question therefore still remained with the dreamer, 'How is the Almighty Speaker to deal with me? What share am I individually to expect in His divine guardian care? Am I, the fugitive wanderer, included in this magnificent spiritual heritage which is in reserve for coming generations?'\par \par God proceeds thus to assure him--"I will be with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. I will someday bring you safely back to this land. I will be with you constantly until I have finished giving you everything I have promised." It is the Father of the prodigal giving to his lost son the most unmistakable pledge of welcome and affection, by bringing forth robe, and ring, and sandals; and making the paternal halls echo with festal jubilee. The banquet of divine love is now spread personally for the Pilgrim in the desert. An unknown future was before him--a future whose dramatic changes he, at present, happily little anticipated. How cheering to have the conviction, that, whatever these tragic pages might be in his yet unwritten history, the Omniscient One above the ladder knew them all. The vision and the voice together would, like a panoply of armor, strengthen and prepare him for every subsequent vicissitude. With the assurance, "I AM WITH YOU," the fugitive could rise, as we shall find him doing, from his stony pillow, and say, in the buoyant spirit of one whose experience was singularly identical with his own, "I will go in the strength of the Lord God." Have we not reason to believe that, in the most trying scenes of his after life, those moments, for example, of deepest emotion, when he gazed on the blood-stained evidence of his beloved Joseph's violent death--he would recall the present tokens and visible assurances of the divine nearness and protection--the glorious appearance and the sustaining words--not only, "Behold, I am with you," but "I will not leave you"?\par \par And this is the way of dealing on the part of "the Keeper of Israel" with His people still. By special communications of His grace, He often nerves them for their hours of unexpected trial. He gives them the vision of the ladder, before the perilous journey across the border-mountains--their Gethsemanes are often preceded by Transfiguration glimpses--they are caught up into the third heavens, to prepare them for the buffeting "thorn in the flesh." Even when their Isaacs are called to the Mount of sacrifice, the summons is given in words of paternal tenderness--"Abraham! Abraham!" "He calls His own sheep by NAME, and leads them out!"\par \par It was specially important for Jacob to receive these assurances at an early stage of his journey--before his hands began to hang down and his knees to be feeble. Perhaps at no time is the conviction of the gracious personal interest and supervision of God more valued--more needed, than in those circumstances to which we have often previously referred, as corresponding with the Patriarch's--the outset in life. When home ties are sundered--yes, and when the bright hope of revisiting the old hallowed haunts goes far to repress the tear and mitigate the struggle on leaving the threshold, what words are these, just quoted, to "brace and cheer!"--they seem to meet every aspiration of the young heart.\par \par This method and sequence of God's dealings, also, is in accordance with human experience. He manifests Himself, to youth specially, as the Forgiver, the Comforter, the Father. In after years, Jacob had a different revelation. Not the luminous ladder, the heavenly sunshine, and the loving accents--but in the deep valley of Jabbok he meets with the wrestling Angel. He is maimed moreover in the struggle--a combat all night until the morning dawned. These are some of the entries at a long subsequent period of his history. "Jacob tore his clothes;" "Jacob put sackcloth on his loins;" "Jacob's heart fainted." Reader! before that wrestling time and that sackcloth time, which in one form or other are sure to come, take firm hold of this tender revelation of the divine character, as "the Shepherd of the stone of Israel." He does not put the youthful recruit all at once in the forefront of the battle. He does not expose the shorn lamb to the untempered wind. He reverses Elijah's desert experience. The still small voice precedes the sterner symbols--"He shall feed His flock like a shepherd; He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young" (Is. 40:11). Seek to climb now the upward ladder-way, high as you can, that when the after-tempests of life are raging, you may be found above the warring elements, bathed in the light of God. Hear His own divine words for your encouragement--"I will go before you, and make the crooked places straight--For Jacob My servant's sake, and for Israel My elect, I have even called you by your name" (Is. 45:2, 4).\par \par And surely, whether for young or for old, it is, as in the case of Jacob, a gracious provision of your Heavenly Father--"You know not what shall be on the morrow." The morrow and all its changes and trials are mercifully screened from view. Had it not been so, many a pilgrim would falter on the very first step of the rough, rocky stair; and recoil, fearful and dismayed, from the dizzy heights above him. But while happily our futures are unrevealed--wrapped in impenetrable mystery--we can take comfort, not only in the assured truth that Jehovah and His angels are with us, but that that gracious Covenant God will make our strength equal to our day; enabling us to cope with all exigencies, surmount all difficulties, endure all trials, and finally be made more than conquerors.\par \par The promise of the Bethel-dreamer was thus translated to another, whose eyes had just been opened to similar heavenly visions, but who also at the same moment realized his position as a struggling climber--"My grace is sufficient for you; for My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). Note, in the case of the Patriarch, the varied links in the chain; the successive assurances of continual as well of individual care and supervision. "I am with you," "I will keep you." "I will bring you again." "I will not leave you until I have done." He might well have appropriated the future words of a great descendant\endash "There is no one like the God of Israel. He rides across the heavens to help you, across the skies in majestic splendor. The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you. He thrusts out the enemy before you; it is he who cries, 'Destroy them!' So Israel will live in safety, prosperous Jacob in security, in a land of grain and wine, while the heavens drop down dew." (Deut. 33:26-28).\par \par But how, it may be asked, can these glorious truths, in the case of others, be realized? How can this vision of God be seen? How can this voice of God be heard? How can these utterances of God be brought to vibrate like chords of music in the soul, and cause it to thrill with the consciousness of a present Deity? What we have been contemplating is beautiful in sentiment; or as an inspired patriarchal picture. But is it not altogether abnormal--removed from the region of the possible and the actual? If not, tell us how can it be brought within the category of ordinary spiritual experience.\par \par We answer--There is one at least, among other ways, by which you can make these 'voices of God' as real as in the case of Jacob. You can do so by PRAYER. You can go, in the same way as patriarchs, and saints, and holy men did of old. You can resort to the mercy-seat; and pointing your finger to the divine, immutable promises, can thus invoke the Hearer of prayer--"Remember the word unto Your servant upon which You have caused me to hope." In the well-known and appropriate lines of Cowper--\par "Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw,\par Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;\par Gives exercise to faith and love,\par Draws down all blessings from above."\par \par All the more encouraging thus to approach a God of grace, and a throne of grace, when we remember that the dreamer of the desert, on whom these blessings were showered, was the representative of the spiritual wanderer--fugitive and sin-stricken. God's promises are not alone for the good, and the virtuous, and the well-doing; but, in their full and royal amplitude, are for all penitent souls who have the humbling consciousness that they have forfeited every claim on the Divine consideration. "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts--and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon" (lit. 'multiply to pardon') ( Is. 55:7).\par \par In this 'divine portrait' of the ladder-vision, the God of Heaven seems to stoop over the sinner as he lies forlorn and outcast in the sleep of death, saying, "Prove Me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour out a blessing for you, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." The Lord's blessings, indeed, in answer to prayer, at times may not appear to be blessings. The very reverse. He seems to blight our hopes; to cross our schemes; to blast our gourds. He leaves vacant seats in our households, and yawning chasms in our hearts. We are forced to ask, 'Can the God of the olden dreamland--the God who spoke to Jacob these words of surpassing tenderness--can He be other than the God of Baal "asleep, or on a journey?"--has He not "forgotten to be gracious?"' Trust Him. The voice may, like that of Jacob's beloved son (Joseph) to his brothers, appear to be rough, but it is the voice of disguised kindness. Be it yours to accept His dealings, and all His dealings, as appointed discipline for the soul's life.\par \par The description of the inspired annalist of "His ways to Israel," is as true regarding "the spiritual seed of Jacob" as it ultimately came to be of the exiled Patriarch, when the pillow of stones and the bleak moorland were memories of the distant past--"He found them in a desert land, in an empty, howling wasteland. \lang3082 He surrounded them and watched over them; he guarded them as his most precious possession. Like an eagle that rouses her chicks and hovers over her young, so he spread his wings to take them in and carried them aloft on his pinions. The Lord alone guided them." (Deut. 32:10-12).\par \par The day at last arrived when Jacob came to turn over the varied leaves in the volume of his life, with incidents and entries that might well have crushed hearts even of a sterner mold. His long and wearying servile labor as a Mesopotamian shepherd; the feverish anticipation and dread, through all these years, of exile and bondage, of fraternal vengeance for early wrongs--this danger scarcely over, when the deeper pang of a family disgrace had to be endured; then the tender sorrow in losing his beloved wife; then the severance from the two main solaces of his widowhood and old age--when first Joseph and then Benjamin were wrenched from him, and he himself was taken away, from the land he loved, to die! Sad and mingled as the retrospect was, doubtless he would be brought to own all, as needed parts in the plan and purposes of Infinite Love. It seemed to require no ordinary instrumentality to root out the baser elements in his nature--the outgrowths of early subtlety and worldly wisdom. Milder, less stern and severe discipline might have done for others, not for him--"I will not leave you," was the divine promise of his Almighty Leader and Guide, "until I have done what I have promised you." Genesis 28:15.\par \par By implicitly surrendering ourselves to God's leadings, and His blessing accompanying us, we must be safe, we must be happy, independent of all place, all circumstances, all changes. Let us realize Him too, as the words we are now pondering specially suggest, as ever present. Let us see His loving form, and hear His loving voice not only in the midst of great sorrows and emergencies--the "fever-heats"of existence--its solemn passages and pauses, but "in all places where you go." That directing and overruling Hand should be recognized even in what may be deemed the trivialities of existence; its petty scenes, and petty duties; the daily journey, the daily business, the daily walk, the casual meeting. Not only amid the broad highways and thoroughfares of life; but in its hidden nooks, its bypaths, and byways--not amid its "loud stunning tide" only, but in its silent valleys, and lonely recesses, and solitary shores.\par \par \lang1033 He has a corresponding comfort in His treasury for every thought of His people, be these thoughts great or small--"In the multitude of my thoughts within me, Your comforts delight my soul" (Ps. 94:19). The feeblest, as well as the strongest, form the objects of His solicitude and care. "Fear not, you WORM-JACOB, and you men of Israel; I will help you, says the Lord, and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel" (Isa. 41:14). Without Him, you will tread the journey with a desolate heart. With Him, however dreary that path, you will have what will fill all blanks, atone for all sacrifices, supply all losses. Without Him, no worldly advantages will avail you. They will not minister to a soul diseased. They will cure no heart-wound. They will dry no tear. They will smooth no pillow either of pain or of death. But with Him, you can envision yourself heir to the Apostles' paradox, "having nothing, yet possessing all things"--peace of conscience; the blessed sense of forgiveness; calm contentment with your lot--under the glad assurance that the Great Ruler is alike a rich Provider and a wise Sustainer, in whose hand you need have no anxious thought for the future.\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 Yes, and anticipating the closing hour of all--when human scenes are dimming, and human voices are growing fainter; when human aid falters and fails, and the hour of supreme loneliness has come--you can hear the unfaltering, unfailing voice, whose music has been heard (fitfully it may be, yet breathing its sympathetic cadences through all the years of the pilgrimage). It is the voice of the God above the ladder--the Lord standing by the opened gates of glory and saying, "I will bring you (I have brought you) into this land, for I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you of!"\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par } ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE WAKING, AND WAKING EXCLAMATION\par \par "The Pilgrim laid down in a large upper chamber, whose window opened toward the sun-rising--the name of the chamber was Peace. There he slept until break of day, and then he awoke and sang."--Pilgrim's Progress.\par \par Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God"? Isaiah 40:27\par \par "When I awake, I am still with You." Psalm 139:18.\par \par Then Jacob woke up and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn't even aware of it." He was afraid and said, "What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God\emdash the gateway to heaven!" Genesis 28:16-17\par \par This is an interesting transition and turning-point in our sacred chronicle. Among the group of Biblical illustrations in the Memorial chapel at Windsor, which magnificently enshrines and illustrates the virtues of England's departed Prince, is included that of the Patriarch and his dreamland. The point of time, however, selected, differs from the usual treatment. It is not, as generally, when the wayfarer lies fast asleep on his pillow of stone, with angels over his head. The artist has chosen rather the moment which we have now reached\endash that is, when, waking from his sleep, he looks wistfully and hopefully upon the clear heaven, as if in the act of uttering the exclamation which precedes this chapter.\par \par We can picture and realize the scene--the tender light of a Palestine morning when the sun was just purpling the sky above the somber wall of Moab--the dew lying thickly on the grass around him--the last of the night-stars just vanishing from the sky, and the last of the night-breezes fanning his brow.\par \par "The dawn--the dawn has died away,\par And east and west, without a breath,\par Mixed their dim lights, like life and death,\par To broaden into boundless day."\par \par He rises from his pillow; and with no eye or thought for the unfamiliar landscape around, the one fresh memory, or rather the present vivid and overpowering impression, inspires the first words which break upon the solitude--"Surely the Lord is in this place! I laid me down last night, lonely and joyless, sad and fearful. I saw no friendly form, I heard no friendly voice. Bleak wasteland and desert-stones appeared to be my sole silent companions. But I am conscious now that I had Divine watchers. I thought the God of my fathers had only His special consecrated haunts and His saintly favorites; that, though condescending to reveal Himself by the tent and the altar, He never would have deigned to own common-ground like this, on which I sought repose for my weary body. But, surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. This place! I supposed it only the rough couch of a wayfarer--lo! I find it a habitat of Angels, as if Eden were spread out around me, and the God of early Paradise talked with me. This is none other but the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven!"\par \par Thus was the evening dirge of the exile turned into a morning of praise.\par \par And yet, how natural, also, were the feelings of the moment, and the farther utterance they prompted! It seems, from his waking words, as if he could hardly realize all he had seen and heard. Though it be only momentarily, he is in a state of strange bewilderment, no of positive fear. "He was afraid." We are reminded of other Bible instances descriptive of similar emotions, under similar circumstances. Gideon, on first waking up to the consciousness of having seen a heavenly visitant, exclaimed, "Alas, O Lord God! I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face" (Judges 6:22). The Greatest of the Prophets had suddenly revealed to him, in the Temple-courts underneath the winged seraphim, "the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up." Overpowered with the splendor of the vision, he breaks forth with the utterance, "Woe is me! for I am undone\endash my eyes have seen the King--the Lord of hosts!" (Isa. 6:1-5.) Another favored Israelite of a more distant day, as he beheld an angelic form standing by the altar of incense, "was troubled, and fear fell upon him" (Luke 1:12). The beloved Disciple, when in the opening vision of the apocalypse he gazed, in His ascension-glories, upon the Christ on whose bosom he had leaned on earth, "fell at His feet as dead" (Rev. 1:17).\par \par But in the case of the Patriarch, as of his descendants, the first moments of fear were speedily displaced and superseded by very different feelings. As he starts up from his couch, the words of the no longer trembling Zacharias scarcely seem inappropriate in his lips--"Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Dayspring from on high has visited us!" (Luke 1:78.) No more sense now of loneliness and friendlessness--no more cause, for the present at least, to cherish emotions of dread. No need of the oblivion-power of sleep to cancel sadder memories--no more anticipation of feverish visions of revenge and blood, which might well banish slumber from a softer pillow. After the shock of amazement and wonder is past, all such agitations rock themselves to rest. Better still, as the assured child of the covenant whose inalienable blessings have been ratified to him, there is an end to further plottings and counter-plottings--to questionable human devisings and subterfuges. He has ONE with him, above him, around him, with resources mightier than if all the tents of Kedar had mustered sword and bow on his side--"The Lord of hosts" is with him, "the God of JACOB" is his "refuge."\par \par The Patriarch's experience has its parallel and counterpart in that of many still, who can tell of their times and crisis-hours of "revival"--an intensified religious fervor--when, as with him, there is a quickening of spiritual apprehensions; a waking up to a more vivid consciousness of the realities of life; and more especially of the Great Unseen Presence in whom we live, and move, and have our being. The emotions of such could not be better delineated than by the picture of a dreamer rising from his pillow and exclaiming, "surely, the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not!"\par \par These solemn memorable wakings come in various forms and with various accompaniments. At times they are the result of DELIVERANCE FROM GREAT TEMPTATION--owing to some sudden but successfully resisted invasion of a spiritual foe. The soldier, made alive to the vigilance of the enemy and the imminence of danger, rises from his perilous camp-slumber, exclaiming, "It is high time to awake out of sleep"--"Let us put off the unfruitful works of darkness, and be clothed with the armor of light."\par \par Take, without figure, the season specially dwelt upon in these pages--YOUTH'S OUTSET IN LIFE--the commencement of the Pilgrim path--when some of those legion foes, under the garb of pleasure, have presented themselves--done their worst to assault and enfeeble the soul, and then to crush and ruin it. The antagonist forces of right and wrong, good and evil, vice and virtue, confront one another. They have joined in the clang of battle--the hot and deadly strife. But virtue has come off triumphant. Trembling on the verge of the precipice, the imperilled one has been graciously rescued--the keel of the vessel was just grazing the rocks when, by a timely turn of the helm, it was saved. Then comes the grateful realization of deliverance. From that hour the charter of duty, "the solemn league and covenant" of obedience to God, loyalty to conscience and honor, is anew signed and sealed. "One will say, 'I belong to the Lord'; another will call himself by the name of Jacob; still another will write on his hand, 'The Lord's,' and will take the name Israel." (Isa. 44:5).\par \par That crisis-hour puts into the lips a votive hymn of praise and new obedience. "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my foot upon a rock, and established my goings. And He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God" (Ps. 40:2, 3) "Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yes, our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple--I was brought low, and He helped me. Return unto your rest, O my soul; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living" (Ps. 116:5-9).\par \par But most frequently such soul awakenings are produced by means and instrumentalities already more than once referred to--those SORROWS and AFFLICTIONS which, in every stage of life, occur in the course of God's all-wise but often mysterious Providence. How many a child of trial can bear testimony! Existence, and its solemn responsibilities, had previously been feebly and imperfectly realized. Immortal truths had lain dormant. As barren creeds--dead dogmas, into which true vitality had never been breathed, they exercised no influence on the character. In the case of some they met only with the incredulous smile, or sceptic sneer.\par \par But by reason of sickness, worldly disappointment, personal or family disaster, there has been a new and before undreamt-of apprehension of the sanctities of life and the grandeur of its destinies--along with this, a kindling up of faith, and hope, and spiritual aspiration. The awakened dreamer looks with a new eye on all around. What before were absorbing earthly interests, now dwindle into nothing compared with the interests of the Soul and Eternity. Emancipated from the tyranny of the present, he is undisturbed by trifles which formerly were used to vex and annoy. He has no ear for the little waves furrowing the sands and murmuring at his feet--his eye is on the wide horizon and the gleaming distance which the mist had hitherto obscured. A new atmosphere enwraps his being. He has "seen God." Long content to be outside divine influences, or to hover in the dim twilight, he is now, like the Apocalyptic Angel, "standing in the Sun." The instincts of immortality have been roused within him. To that immortality he now belongs as he never did before. Enlisted in the army of great souls, "all old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new."\par \par Take the most common and startling of these messengers of God sent to rouse the spiritual sleeper--BEREAVEMENT. Hitherto the world was paramount--its vanities, its ambitions, its hopes. His vision was bounded by its haunts of pleasure, and marts of gain; his life-motto was, "This is my rest forever." But, "he awoke, and behold it was a dream!" Like the man opening his eyes in the dull grey morning-dawn on the festal-hall, recently brilliant with gay lights and floral devices, now silent, deserted; its floor strewn with withered bouquets--"the fashion of this world passes away!" He has been touched to the quick; but these incisions he feels to be the living, loving probings of his Heavenly Father. He has learned by that sore discipline the secret of true existence. "My flesh and my heart fails--but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever" (Ps. 73:26). Yes, and bereavement too may have appealed to his human, yet immortal instincts, in still another form. His spiritual waking-time may have been, when he saw those he loved vanishing from sight within the gates at the radiant summit! The severing of dear earthly ties may have been the means of opening up the first vista-views of a glorious future--an infinitude of being and of bliss undreamt of before. One of the angels on the ladder has pointed on high to those once mourned as 'loved and lost,' but now thought of only as loved and glorified; or lost from sight only to be found again.\par \par "Oh what were life, if life were all? Your eyes\par Are blinded by their tears; or you would see\par Your treasures wait you in the far-off skies,\par And Death, your friend, will give them back to thee."\par \par The mourner's citizenship is transferred to heaven. He is like the imprisoned flower in the dark cellar, turning its blanched leaves towards the crevice in the roof above. Where the treasure is, there will his heart be also.\par \par Reader! If God has roused you from your perilous dream, even though it may have been by "terrible things in righteousness," be grateful for it. You have reason only for joy, whatever be the means employed, if you have woke up with the great "Eureka! I have found Him whom my soul loves!" If you can say with the Psalmist, be the cost what it may at which such an awakening was secured, "I awake with Your likeness."--"When I awake, I am still with You," then your pillow may be the rock; your food may be weeping--the cherished ones in the Beersheba tent may be far removed; some of them--the Abrahams, and Isaacs, and Rebekahs of your early love and reverence--may have vanished for the forever of time. It may not be Beersheba, but Machpelah, where thoughts and memories now most fondly center. It matters not. That angel of sorrow has led you to the vision and fruition of God; and though on a couch of tears on earth, you are truly at "the Gate of Heaven".\par \par But an important practical question, similar to that of last chapter, here suggests itself. How do we know when we can, with some good measure of lowly confidence, appropriate the words of Jacob and breathe his waking exclamation--"Surely the Lord is in this place"?\par \par There might be many answers. A first and prominent one which may be given is this--We may conclude that we are in the enjoyment of God's presence and nearness, when we are conscious of an aspiration after the holiness and purity He loves, and a corresponding aversion to the sin which He dislikes. "Walk in light;" "Be the children of light." "Walk before me and be you perfect," was the patriarchal direction to insure being thus habitually encircled in the felt presence of the Holy One. That "God is with you of a truth" you will discover by your higher, better lives; by the increasing agreement of your wills with His. "You are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. If any man defiles the temple of God, him shall God destroy--for the temple of God is holy, which temple you are" (1 Cor. 3:16-17). The "God-frequented temple" will be known by the subjugation of self, mastery of passion, purity of thought, nobility of purpose, unswerving loyalty to truth; love of love, and hate of hate; the humble walk, the mellowed temper, the tender conscience; in one word--by the holy life--making the beatitude of the Great Teacher your constant aim and aspiration--"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."\par \par With these upright aspirations--fusing the secular and the spiritual; protesting against the divorce of what God has joined together, when He wedded the duties and demands of earth to the sanctities of Heaven, you will be visited with the Dreamland Voice and Presence, go wherever you will. Not within consecrated walls alone; but in the every-day place of business; the realm of duty, wherever it is--the field, the office, the counter, the lonely lodging. What a preventive against temptation--what a stimulus to the performance of whatever is true and honest, and just, and lovely, and of good report, is the Psalmist's directory for daily walk--"I have set the Lord always before me--because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved" (Ps. 16:8). The heart, the thoughts--even in the midst of the world's activities--gravitating ever towards Him as the central Sun of being and blessing.\par \par Oh! noble souls, young or old, whether in a higher or a humbler lot, faithfully battling with evil, and having earnest strivings after what is righteous--keeping your hearts as an inviolate shrine--rejoice in the assurance that the God you love is very near you--not dwelling only in the habitats of nature--aloft on the everlasting hills, or in sublime solitudes beyond the stars--but anywhere--everywhere. "You compass my path" (in the day-time), "and my lying down" (in the hours of darkness and its silent vigils).\par \par The duties of earth thus blended and united with heaven, it will be no mystic or dreamlike stair that connects you with the upper sanctuary. You will see that Gate of glory standing open before you, in all you do, and wherever you go. Common places will be transfigured into Bethels. And whether you close your eyes on your nightly pillow, or open them in the morning light, you will be able, not in figure of speech or with the thought of exile, to say, "Surely the Lord is in this place."\par \par Young Pilgrim (if I may again, in passing, address to you a special word), there is but one spot, one occasion when you need to exclaim "How dreadful is this place!" It is when by evil influences; when, yielding to the momentary feebleness or indecision of the will, you are decoyed into the border-land of temptation; stifling conscience--perverting your capacities for goodness--when, allowing yourself to cancel better memories and resolves, you drift from the old, safe, and happy anchorage. This part of Jacob's waking exclamation may well be taken as the handwriting on the wall, which, unless timely heeded, is prophetic of doom and disaster.\par \par Remember how many vessels, once freighted with promise, are now lying with splintered spars and gaping sides on the sands or rocks, hopelessly sundered from the retreating wave that might still have borne them buoyantly to sunny shores! Believe me, (to return to the symbol of the Dreamland,) if you thus abandon yourself to spiritual slumber--if you surrender the intellect and conscience and will to be drugged and stupefied with moral narcotics, the time will come when you will have no eye for the ladder and its angels, no ear for the heavenly voice! Lying on the edge of a volcano--"How dreadful is this place!"\par \par Time, the prelude to an undying existence, is rushing on like an arrowy river. In some cases (possibly in your case) that river may be nearing the Eternal ocean, the boom of whose billows may already be falling on your ear; and with the thought of these great waves ever nearing, and no shelter yet sought or found for the frail bark--"How dreadful is this place!" And when death overtakes the irrevocable hour, and you feel that the world you had made your home and rest and portion is being wrenched from your grasp--"How dreadful is this place!"\par \par Awake! arise! chase away these dreams of indifference, presumption, and procrastination. An old writer well says "indecision is a dreadful place"--living in a border-land, half-way between the regions of light and darkness. If bygone memories be those of sin, departed goodness, defiant unbelief, ungodly companionship, or unholy haunts--"Come out from among them, and be separate." Above all, do not for a moment allow yourself to lapse into a state of hopelessness. Never allow that word from the abyss "Too late" to grapple with efforts to rid yourself of an unhallowed past, and an unhappy present. Exorcize the devil-born thought of abandonment to fatalism and despair. There are bars of gold in yonder eastern sky which tell you, as they did Jacob, of a coming dayspring. If yours be the fear and dread of a first awakening, hear the voice of Him who never discourages, but ever stirs the pulses of the languishing soul by bracing to nobler deeds--"Be watchful and strengthen the things that remain which are ready to die."\par \par Accept unhesitatingly and without delay the gracious overtures of ONE who loves to meet the outcast, the exile, the fugitive. Your trooping images of terror will gradually vanish before faith's steadfast musing on the stair of heaven, the footsteps of Angels, and the voice of God. With these, you will rebuild the collapsed purpose, the half-surrendered fortress; and out of weakness may yet be strong, "wax valiant in fight and turn to flight the armies of the aliens."\par \par There is one other blessed and hallowed means here suggested of recruiting spiritual strength, and consolidating your resolutions of new obedience. The words of Jacob would seem to recall and enforce the Apostolic injunction--"Not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is." "The House of God"--the earthly Temple--is made, in the experience of many, as 'the Gate of Heaven.' And as the forfeiture and abandonment of the means of grace is not uncommonly the first step in the decay of the spiritual life, (neglected weeds allowed to grow up and choke the unfrequented footpath to the Sanctuary)--so is the return to the Place of Prayer and its stated services, often the first symptom and token of revival. The response once more to the Sabbath bell and its thousand memories is frequently the first means of re-awakening--stirring the decaying embers of the soul and fanning them into a flame. These Angels of the Patriarch's ladder, beckoning the dreamer upward, may be regarded as no unfit emblems of God-appointed instrumentalities to help us on our heavenly way. "The Lord loves the gates of Zion, more than all the dwellings of Jacob." It is on "the mountains of Zion" the dew of His grace and blessing specially descends--"There I will meet with you." "There He commands the blessing, even life for evermore." The name of every Temple-court, where there is a gathering of holy hearts, is "Jehovah-Shammah--The Lord is there."\par \par Who among us have not hallowed remembrances of these 'Hills of blessing'? Drawn there, not for any poor conventional reason; but leaving, dusty and travel-stained, the hot and sultry highway for the bracing mountain air, to plead common needs, to bewail common infirmities, to obtain strength for daily duty and the endurance of daily trial. As we listen to the deeds of 'the Great ones of the olden time,' to realize what the sanctity of life is; to think of our departed--those who have dreamt their dream, and scaled their ladder, and who, endowed with immortality, are bending over those still left behind amid the desert stones and the wilderness path, to battle with windy storm and tempest. Above all, to ponder the mighty truths gathering around our own everlasting futures--that great Eternity for whose shores, following the wake of others, we must sooner or later set sail--"the land that is very far off," but which Psalm and Prayer and Litany bring to the eye of faith very near!\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 Fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God! Members of a brotherhood extending to all countries, and embracing all time, bear witness! Is not this oftentimes your experience and testimony? "A day in Your courts is better than a thousand"--"My soul longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where no water is, to see Your power and Your glory so--as I have seen You in the Sanctuary"? Yes, and if the Gate of Heaven be thus blissful and glorious, what will Heaven itself be? If these angel-visits of earth be thus hallowed, what will be that Temple of which the earthly courts are the feeble emblem and reflection?--the House not made with hands--the Sanctuary of holy hearts in a celestial world, where there is no recruiting of exhausted energy, no flaw or discord in the seraphic music! May it be ours to attain these glorious heights of the symbolic ladder.\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par } l over it." Genesis 28:18\par \par The Patriarch had fully realized the solemnity of the occasion, and the holiness of the ground which he had made his couch of repose. He felt it was no mere illusion of which he had been spectator. At all events the assurance grew with his waking thoughts, that his dream manifested divinest spiritual verities, of which he was himself the privileged partaker.\par \par He obeys the first and natural impulse of these moments of mingled joy and dread. God has spoken to him; and, as the recipient of wondrous and undeserved mercy, he now makes preparation to address his divine Sustainer in return. He rises at dawn of day, when the fleecy clouds are still skirting the hill-tops and the earth around is "sown with orient pearl." The northern journey must before-long be resumed. Before, however, taking up his staff, he proceeds to erect a memento of this night of hallowed memories. Not only does he desire to set up a pillar of consecration; but, on the expectation of return from his distant pilgrimage, he would by this means also identify the spot whose associations would ever be the most sacred of his life. With the stones so abundantly lying around he would have wished, perhaps, to rear a commemorative "heap" of larger dimensions and worthier of the occasion. Being, however, alone and without aid, he must defer any permanent memento. Meanwhile, all he can venture to accomplish is to take the boulder which he had used for his pillow, and place it, as best he could, in an upright position. This crude monolith will be the pledge of some more conspicuous and enduring monument in time to come. No chisel had he to carve any inscription, even had the stone admitted of this.\par \par As it was customary, however, for all travelers in the East, as it is to this day, to carry with them a flask of oil for mixing with their food, as well as for external use, he pours some of the contents of his "skin bottle" on the extemporized pillar. It is the first consecration of notable places of which we read in sacred story--the setting apart of the rough rock of this upland from a common, to a holy use. If the grateful dreamer can engrave no lettering on its unhewn base, he can at least pronounce over it the name that has ever since sent its multiplying echoes through all ages--all lands--all believing hearts--BETHEL--"the House of God." It was the Jehovah-Shalom (Judges 6:24), or the Ebenezer (1 Samuel 7:12) of a future period--a STONE of everlasting remembrance. It was specially in connection with this incident, that the God to whose name and glory it was erected, had added henceforth to His other venerated titles that to which we have already made more than one allusion--the "Shepherd of the stone of Israel."\par \par It may be worthy of remark in passing-- that, whether borrowed from the example of Jacob or not, the employment of 'commemoration stones' became common in all countries. "Crude stones and posts were the first memorials of the Phoenician people. Near Cadiz, heaps of stone used to be indicated as the famous 'Pillars' which are said to have commemorated the expedition of Hercules to Spain. The ancient people of the North preserved the memory of events by placing stones of extraordinary size in particular places, and this method is still used by the American savages, among whom writing is unknown. The manner in which such monuments were made subservient to this purpose is clearly described in Joshua 4. Parents explained to their children the object of such memorials, and instructed them in the facts which gave occasion to them. In this way tradition supplied in some degree the place of written records." (Pictorial Bible.)\par \par The custom was specially prevalent in the East. Sacred spots and events were identified and memorialized by one--or it may be a group of stones; while oil, sometimes combined with wine, sometimes with blood, was poured for a libation on the top, as the symbol of dedication to God. "I had often observed," to quote still further not only the words but the personal observation of Dr. Kitto, "such stones, without being aware of their object, until happening one day to overturn one that had been set upon another, a man hastened to replace it, at the same time informing me that to displace such stones was an act unfortunate for the person so displacing it, and unpleasant to others. The writer afterwards observed, that the natives studiously avoided displacing any of these stones 'set up for a pillar' by the wayside."\par \par Let us note the instantaneous assent given by the Patriarch to the first impulse of his revived and reinvigorated soul. The voice of God begets an immediate and willing response. No time is wasted that might endanger the displacement or absorption of waking thoughts! No question or wonderment as to whether all he had seen was fantasy or reality until the very vision itself had been dreamed away and passed into nothingness. Neither was there any needless moping over a guilty past; no questioning of the sincerity of the divine assurance of forgiveness and mercy. He resembles the prodigal of the later parable, of whom it is said that when he came to himself "--in the first flash of conviction--the first dawn of nobler purposes--"then he arose and went to his father." Or it recalls the prompt resolve of the royal Psalmist--"I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Your testimonies. I made haste, and delayed not to keep Your commandments" (Ps. 119:59, 60).\par \par In this we see one of the compensating features even in the natural character of Jacob, that of energetic purpose combined with immediate action. It accords with his vehement wrestling, in after years, with the Angel at Jabbok. He was resolute of will, alike in spiritual and in secular matters, and that despite of every hindrance and discouragement. These are qualities which go far to make alike the noble and the successful man. Many a fair life of promise is ruined by irresolution and procrastination. The iron cannot be welded which is allowed to cool. The waverer, driven by the wind and tossed, seldom reaches the "Fair Havens." The men who climb to the pinnacle are alike prompt in deed and undeterred by difficulty. Not infrequently with a covert sneer they may be called impulsive. Be it so. It is they, nevertheless, who thus make thought germinate at once into purpose; who are the true heroes in the strife; for whom the world has been the better while they lived, and whom the world has honored when they died. Yes, we repeat, the victorious and laurel-wreathed in higher than earthly battles, are those who, acting on impulse if you will, the voice within responding to the voice without, have sprung resolute from the pillow of sentiment and ease and drowsy contemplation, to erect their stone and vow their vow. David was conspicuously, of all Bible characters, a man of impulse--(the Peter of Old Testament story). See how he resolves on rearing his pillar, and pouring upon it consecrating oil--"He swore unto the Lord and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob; Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes, or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob" (Ps. 132:2-5).\par \par Our Patriarch's conduct seems to teach farther, that each great crisis of our life should be sanctified and hallowed by the invocation of the divine blessing. Whatever be the new path we are to pursue, the new relation we are to form, the new duty on which we are to enter, the new scheme we are to undertake, whether it be domestic or public, personal or relative, let it be 'consecrated,' by at once seeking the Divine guidance, and hearing the Divine voice saying, "This is the way, walk in it." Let youth especially bear in mind that Jacob's was a morning dedication. There is little fear of the later period in one's life, if the altar-stones be reared and the anointing oil poured upon them in life's early dawn, before the great journey be undertaken. It was a noble motto and watchword bequeathed to us by the great Psalmist--"I shall be anointed with fresh oil" (Ps. 92:10). Thus anointed, in the very grappling with evil and temptation, you will become morally strong; just as the oak, in wrestling with the tempest, moors its roots all the firmer and deeper in the rock. Other inspired words form an appropriate invocation in beginning or renewing your pilgrimage--"Your Spirit is good, lead me to the land of uprightness." "Take not Your Holy Spirit from me." You can look undismayed along life's vista, when you have this all-glorious triple benediction to gladden the way--"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit."\par \par And what Jacob did one morning, be it yours to do every morning--setting up the pillar and pouring upon it the consecrating oil. "My voice will You hear in the morning, O Lord! In the morning will I direct my prayer unto You and will look up!" Seek to wake, day by day, with the consciousness of the grandeur of life; armor yourself for its spiritual battles. The allegorical idea of a great painter of the Middle Ages is one specially appropriate for every Pilgrim commencing or renewing the spiritual journey. In Giotto's well-known picture in the Arena Chapel of Padua, Faith is represented at morning dawn with a cross in her right hand and the creed in her left. A key is suspended at her belt, while she stamps under foot the horoscope of the astrologer. The thought conveyed by this religious teacher of his day may be thus interpreted in words--Christ crucified the young believer's hope; the word of Jesus his trust; all false confidences disowned and trampled upon the key of prayer ever at hand to open the rich treasure house of the Promises and make them all his own!\par \par And oh! be it remembered, as we had occasion to note in last chapter, that there is, on the other hand, such a thing as the desecration of life's early morning--when the vision is given, the dream dreamed, the voice of God in childhood heard and unfolded by a mother's lips--but the Bethel-land is left, and the early perilous road is traversed without erection of pillar or consecration of holy oil. Can we wonder, when such is the case--when the knee is unbent in prayer--when religious opportunities are shunned and evaded; when every dream of heaven is blotted out with low counterfeit dreams of earth--that the moral courage falters, and moral strength becomes enervated--that the dark doubt displaces the simple faith; and the departure of child innocence is before-long detected by the restless eye and the lowering brow; the familiar, open, innocent countenance--the fellowship with true and faithful souls--exchanged for the embarrassed look and the questionable companionship. Can we wonder, that, caged in darkness, away from the light of Heaven and God, the eye of the young eagle should film and his wing droop--that the clear ringing voice should come gradually no longer to tremble at a falsehood, or to startle at the name of wrong-doing or impurity?\par \par One other thought suggests itself at this part of the vision--that "every place is hallowed ground." This Bethel dreamland was the first spot which was actually named "the House of God;" and in this sense, though preceded by other Patriarchal altars, it may be regarded as the earliest church of the Jewish nation, the prototype of the churches of future Christendom. How destitute it was of all ecclesiastical accessories and attractions we have already seen--a single stone--a crude monolith in a bleak sheep-walk!\par \par We are not of those who discard all that is chaste and befitting in places of earthly worship, or who venture to denounce such as a return to the Jewish "beggarly elements." On the contrary, we never can see that true piety or genuine devotion is incongruous or incompatible with grandeur of form, or loveliness of ritual. But it is a comfort and consolation also for those who, from local, geographical, or other circumstances, are denied these external "beauties of holiness," to see in the case of this lonely exile, that the Divine Being is "not confined to Temples made with hands." The true Temple is not the 'holy building'. To that place belongs the real consecration where souls are saved and God is glorified. On the one hand, a man may worship in a cathedral, with all the accompaniments of embossed aisle--cloistered seclusion--luscious music--intoned litany--and yet remain cold a nd unmoved as the speechless unimpassioned stone or pillar at his side.\par \par While on the other hand, some humble worshipers may be gathered in lowly mission-tent, or Highland barn; in African Kraal, or Australian log-house. They may show, by look and garb, that they are able to claim poverty as their only birthright. To cultured eye and ear, their ritual may be unadorned and repelling; their music may be dissonance. But yet, in the eye of God and angels, the latter may be the truer Bethel o f the two--its "pillar" not the less accepted, because it is composed of rough stones instead of marble--its oil not the less holy, because it is not contained in golden vessels.\par \par No, more--there may, and often is, a danger in the one which is not in the other. True devotion may be counterfeited and travestied. There may, by mere outward attractions, be the perilous appeal to imagination and sensuous emotion. An idol may be made of gaudy forms, voluptuous sounds, and 'dim religious light .' The evening rock of Jacob may be, in truth, the better and safer altar-stone. At all events, we repeat, that we may gather from this record of the world's earliest Sanctuary, that the House of God--the most honored and hallowed Bethel--is where God Himself is, and where the Gospel-ladder is most faithfully set up before the spiritual eye.\par \par In other words, where Christ, the one only Way to the Father, is most fully proclaimed in the united Majesty of His Godhead and the tenderness of H is humanity. The Temple He loves is that whose fumes of incense are heart-breathed prayers and praises; whose true font is the invisible baptism of the divine Spirit; whose true apostolic succession is the succession of Christian virtues; whose altar-fires consist of devout desires kindled, and noble life-purposes formed; whose most radiant altar-lights are glimpses, revealed by the torch of faith, of the better Church above.\par \par Let every 'sick one whom Jesus loves'--every lonely bed-ridden child of weakness and suffering--remember, that it is not within earthly Sanctuaries alone, or to the summons of the Sabbath-bell, that Cowper's well-known lines apply--\par "Here we may prove the power of prayer\par To strengthen faith and sweeten care,\par To teach our faint desires to rise,\par And bring all heaven before our eyes"--\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 but that in the darkened chamber, and by the pain-stricken pillow, if there be a sincere believer there, there is a prayer-hearing, and a prayer-answering, and a covenant-keeping God. Loneliest vigils may themselves thus form the truest worship. Unseen choristers from the upper Sanctuary may be gathering within these curtains and hovering around that aching head. The Lord of Angels can make the house of mourning, and the bed of languishing, as the 'House of God' and as the 'Gate of Heaven'!\par \pard\fs22\par \cf1\f1\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par } Y}E15-The Morning Consecreation{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE MORNING CONSECRATION\par \par "The next morning Jacob got up very early. He took the stone he had used as a pillow and set it upright as a memorial pillar. Then he poured olive oi Then Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father's house, then the Lord will be my God and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth." Genesis 28:20-22\par \par We left Jacob, in the preceding chapter, setting up a memorial-pillar. He now proceeds to make it a votive one. God had spoken to him in wondrous mercy and grace, he now desires to make a return-avowal to his Almighty Protector and Friend. It is the voluntary declaration of new and devoted obedience on the part of a son to the loving Father who has tracked his wandering steps, and spoken to him "comfortable words."\par \par In this recorded vow which accompanied the erection of the stone, the Patriarch has been much misunderstood. He has been credited with entering into the unworthy compact with his gracious Benefactor, that only on certain conditions of temporal good bestowed, he would "take the Lord for his God." Moreover, that on the same stipulation, (the fulfillment of this guarantee of divine guidance,) he will make corresponding acknowledgment and restitution. In other words, that his resolve does not take the shape of the free spontaneous offering of a trusting heart; but is expressed rather in the terms of a selfish contract, containing certain specified conditions, the deal of the old bargain-making, worldly-wiseman. He vows a vow, but it is only on the presumptuous understanding that the Divine Being will first of all redeem His own pledge. Add to this, that his mind is so engrossed with the thought of temporal good and personal protection, that all reference is excluded to the more glorious spiritual blessings promised to his posterity.\par \par We concede that such a harsh interpretation would not be altogether out of harmony with Jacob's antecedents. But we dismiss the thought of his thus degrading and desecrating the noblest moments of his life. Surely that ladder-dream and its accompaniments had taught him little, if, on his first waking moments, he were led thus to mock the divine Revealer with a requital like this. We may well cease, then, to regard the words as the compact of a hesitating man, doubtful whether he could, after all, take Jehovah as his Divine Benefactor, offering a loyal allegiance only on certain stipulations and contingencies. No; we are abundantly warranted to take them rather as the utterance of unswerving trust; the simple acquiescence in God's own terms; the recital of God's own declaration. As it has been, in brief, expressed by a scholar--"the saying of Jacob was not a promise for the future, but a reasoning upon the past."\par \par If we might venture to give a paraphrase in modern language, the whole might read thus--'Lord, I take You at Your word. Your pledged promise, given by this wondrous vision, I know is faithful and true. I stagger not through unbelief. You have Yourself signed this charter of temporal good and spiritual blessings. You have said that You will be with me; that You will keep me in all places; that You will bring me again to this land; never leaving me until all Your promises and purposes regarding me be fulfilled. Be it so--I insinuate no doubts; I accept the terms, and joyously subscribe article by article of Your covenant. Since You will, indeed, in wondrous love thus be with me--thus keep me in my pilgrimage-wanderings; thus feed me with food and clothe me with clothing; above all, bring me back again from my exile, first to this dream-land and then to my father's tent in peace, thereby enabling me to call You and rejoice in You as 'my God,'--THEN I shall, even more than now, be in a position to utter the memory of Your great goodness by erecting on this spot an enduring monument of Your faithfulness. The pillar I have now set up will meanwhile remain a pledge of what is to follow. I shall rear on the spot, at some future day, an altar of sacrifice, whereon with burnt-offerings I will pay You the vows my lips have uttered and my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble. Yes, and as a further testimony to Your mercy and loving-kindness, "of all that You shall give me, I will surely give the tenth unto You." "O Lord, truly I am Your servant; I am Your servant, and the son of Your handmaid; You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord"' (Ps. 116:16-18). "It was not, then," says Mr. Blunt, "as has been falsely represented by the enemies of revelation, the shrewd compact of an avaricious man to bind the Deity to his interests; but the overflowing of a grateful heart anxious to bind itself to its God." Or, to sum up with the words of Matthew Henry, the best of commentators, as he thus briefly expresses all we have said, "Jacob had now a gracious visit from heaven. God had renewed His covenant with him; and the covenant is mutual. When God ratifies His promises to us, it is proper for us to repeat our promises to Him."\par \par Nor is this all. We still further fail to see the mercenary spirit which has entailed such heavy censures on the character of the Patriarch, when we note the moderation and simplicity of his desires. He just had had ratified to him the wondrous promises of the covenant. He had awoke with the intensified conviction that he was heir of the Holy Land. Yet the whole boon he asks is humble pilgrim's fare. No superabundance; only food and, clothing--willing to submit to any other privations. A divine lesson to many among ourselves who are apt to give way to peevish fretfulness and discontent in the midst of abounding mercies and even luxuries. "If God gives us much," says the same devout commentator last quoted, "we are bound to be thankful, and to use it for Him. If He gives us but little, we are bound to be content and cheerfully to enjoy Him in it."\par \par In the future there would be many vicissitudes and trials now unforeseen by Jacob; but he lets the unknown ills of tomorrow slumber quietly until tomorrow comes; knowing that the God who guides him and feeds him will give the morrow's grace for the morrow's emergencies.\par \par Moreover, it is of special moment and interest to observe the effect which the consciousness of "having the Lord for his God" had upon him. It braced him for duty. He was not content with the first effect of the vision--simply rousing his religious emotions, causing him to speak of the House of God and the Gate of Heaven. Sentiment, in his case, as in the case of all God's true Israel, passed into deed. Half the glory and grandeur of this desert-revelation--the most useful part of its lessons, would be lost to us, if there had been no more than the bright staircase and the heavenly visitants. We like to ponder the sequel, when we see the soldier of God, as he awakes from his camp, putting on the spiritual armor, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, "praying always." That is an unhealthy atmosphere in which to move where sentiment and contemplation form the staple of the spiritual life--where there is the weekly Sunday vision of the Most High, accompanied with appeals which rouse the sympathies and sensibilities, but when, for these awakened emotions, there is no practical vent or outlet. Feeble resolutions are allowed to filter through the soul. Truth and duty are listened to, but not fulfilled. Existence is resolved  into a mimic battle--a mimic pilgrimage. There is the Bethel dream-land with its dream, but without its pillar of consecration and its votive resolves. "Good and faithful servant" will never be spoken regarding what was "well seen" or "well purposed," but what was "well done."\par \par What pillar can I set up? ought to be the question of each heaven-bound traveler. It behooves each faithfully to find out what is his peculiar vocation; in what sphere or direction he can best serve his Lord and M!aster. There is "to every man his work,"--to every servant his stewardship. Happy is he who finds out what that work is, the peculiar and allotted place in the Temple to which he can consecrate a portion at least of time and talents. Few can be engaged in the more conspicuous services of the altar. To most must necessarily be allocated the humbler duties of hewers of wood and drawers of water. But what a nobility is given to life, when each, recognizing his peculiar sphere and gift, can say--"This stone I" have set for a pillar!" God will not reject the offering because of its lowliness.\par \par In a beautiful passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, hear what the Apostle says regarding one form, among many others, which that pillar may assume--"For God is not unrighteous, to forget your work and labor of love, which you have showed toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister. And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence, to the full assurance of h#ope unto the end that you be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises" (Heb. 6:10-12). To all who have thus ministered to the needs of the needy, or given other practical illustration of their faith, the words are equally applicable which were uttered to the Patriarch twenty years after the night of his dream--"I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar" (Gen. 31:13). That visit to the sick bed; that gift to the widow and orphan; that word of comfo$rt to the bereaved; that salutary reproof to the scorner or the careless; that text taught to the lisping child in the Sabbath-school--these lowly pillars are all remembered by Me. "These stones shall be for a memorial"--"A book of remembrance was written, for those who feared the Lord and that thought upon His name."\par \par Nor must we omit to emphasize (what, indeed, is the special topic of this chapter), that Jacob embodied all these utterances and resolutions in the form of a vow. The pill%ar he set up was a votive pillar; the anointing with the oil was, as it were, the subscription with his hand to the covenant-deed.\par \par Few there are among us who cannot recall similar seasons; times of emergency, imminent peril, threatened misfortune, or apparently impending death; when the solemn vow is recorded, though, it may be, unlike that of Jacob, without any conspicuous outward symbolism.\par \par Some who read these pages may remember the hour of sickness, when wearisome &days and nights were appointed--when excruciating pain or wasting fever were threatening to rend the earthly tabernacle, and they had the solemn possibility brought before them of being laid on a couch from which they were never again to rise. When life was then "balanced in a breath," and the herald symptoms of dissolution were gathering around your pillow; do you not recall the vow then recorded, that if existence were spared and prolonged, by God's mercy it would be dedicated to His praise? Or, is the 'retrospect rather in connection with the critical illness of some beloved friend--when the sand-glass seemed to be hurrying to its final grain, and you had all the unutterable sadness before you of anticipated bereavement--an empty chair, a broken heart, a desolate home? Do you remember how you then vowed the vow, that if God would bring back the shadow on the dial, and renew the lease of a valued life, future years would become one thank-offering to the Great Restorer? In both cases the vows were accepte(d, the prayers were heard, the solicited blessing was graciously given!\par \par How have the vows then registered in heaven been kept on earth? Ewald, a distinguished writer, from whom we have more than once quoted, speaks in connection with a subsequent passage in the life of Jacob, of "the erection of a watchtower (Mizpah), as if for a watchman, on the part of that God who looks down from His height to keep watch over oath and covenant." What shall the Watcher of Israel, in His searching scru)tiny, have to say regarding your covenantings? If He were to appear now, as He did on that future occasion to Jacob, after the lapse of a score of years, and confront you with the words then employed, what would be your response? Would it be, that soul and body have been presented ever since as living sacrifices? that, amid much conscious unworthiness and shortcoming, you have been true to your solemn engagements? Or would it be the reverse? Would it be to tell that passions which should have been quenche*d have been pampered--that besetting sins which should have been slain have been nurtured--that you have refused to hear the voice at the ladder's summit--spurned from you the good angels thronging its steps, and invited a horde of demons in their stead--the fragments of the broken pillar--the smouldering ashes of the desecrated votive altar lying scattered around? In a word, that your vows have been like the morning cloud and the early dew--resolutions vanished like snowflakes falling in the wintry sea, +or "as a dream when one awakens"?\par \par Even Jacob, when he stood on that Bethel ground again, had reason to mingle tears of self-reproach and humiliation with grateful offering. The recollection of God's goodness was dimmed and darkened by the memories of his own defections and shortcomings. If such should be our experience--if we be waking up to a sense, it may be, of long and blameworthy failure, let us listen to the solemn admonition of Him 'who walks in the midst of the golden candlestic,ks,' as He points to the far-reaching vistas of existence with their fleeting opportunities and solemn responsibilities--"Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the first works" (Rev. 2:5). With new thoughts--new resolutions of obedience, be it ours to say--"In God have I put my trust--I will not be afraid of what man can do unto me. Your vows are upon me, O God--I will render praises unto You. For You have delivered my soul from death; will not You deliver my feet from falling,- that I may walk before God in the light of the living." \lang3082 (Ps. 56:11, 12, 13).\par \par Jacob added yet one more substantial evidence of the practical character of his faith and trust--"And of all that You shall give me, I will surely give the tenth unto You" (ver. 22).\par \par This TITHING of substance was in accordance with primitive Jewish practice. We find Abraham, as he met Melchisedek, on coming up from the slaughter of the kings, making over to him a tenth part of the .spoil which he and his courageous band had taken from the aggressors. In the patriarchal age, it would seem to have been a free-will offering--a voluntary obligation. Under the Mosaic dispensation, the Tithe, as it was called, was rendered obligatory for the support of the Levitical priesthood. In Gospel times, the proportion of giving is left to an enlightened conscience--"as God has prospered us." Not, indeed, that it should be made casual, fitful, precarious--a matter of mere impulse, evoked by emotion/al appeal and momentary caprice; but in harmony with the other requirements of the spiritual life, regulated by plan and system. The Apostolic rule and principle is thus briefly enunciated, "Let every man, according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Cor. 9:7). Christ's own rule and direction in His great ethical discourse should be paramount as to the mode as well as principle of giving. "But when you give to the needy, do not0 let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (Matt. 6:3, 4). Secret giving meets with no open reward; but it has a better, deeper, richer, than any conspicuous recompense in the face of the world. The brazen trumpet is carried and sounded before vaunting, self-glorious givers, "the hypocrites"--in that they have their poor reward. But the true, acceptable, and accepted donor has his reward-1-in what? In nothing visible; but in the silent testimony of a good conscience, the unnoticed approving smile of "the Father who sees in secret."\par \par You who are going forth, or who may have lately gone forth, on the great pilgrimage of life, I close this chapter, as I have done others, with a word to you. Take as your model, alike the simplicity of the Patriarch's requests and the practical form in which his waking thoughts were embodied, as he set up his pillar and recorded his vow--not a2spiring after great things; thankful if a gracious Providence puts them in your way; but rather feeling that true happiness (truer than you think) is found in the limited aspiration of Agur, whose ambition, like Jacob's, was bounded by a modest competency--"Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me."\par \par On the other hand, seeking to embody religious sentiment and creed in some substantial form; embarking your youthful energies in some object of religious or ph3ilanthropic interest that will please God and do good to men; desirous, with reverent hand and effort, to disentangle the world from some of its elements of discord and confusion; lifting the burden off some of its aching hearts, and helping to redress some of its crying wrongs. Depend upon it, these practical ends of religion will aid you all the better in the fulfillment of the early vow 'to be Christ's servant and soldier unto your life's end.'\par \par \lang1033 If, like Jacob, you trust God4 in little things, He may answer you by great things. He is a bountiful as well as a wise Provider. Many years later, in the retrospect of this very hour, the Patriarch could say, "He answered me in the day of my distress." And how did He answer him? "With my staff," said he, "I passed over this Jordan; and now I have become two bands" (Gen. 32:10) What an encouragement to prayer! Jacob asked little--God gave him much. Jacob's aspirations were bounded by daily bread, and common clothing, and immunity from5 danger and assault--God gave him riches and blessings beyond what he could have conceived. He made the fugitive Dreamer a lordly Prince of the land.\par \par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20 So may it be, in a better sense of "prosperity," with you. Spreading out your petitions at the Mercy-seat, He may not answer them in the form given to the Patriarch, but He is as able and willing now, as ever, to give to His waiting, believing children "exceeding abundantly above all that they ask or think." His are no miser fountains that feed the clouds. "The shower shall come down in its season, there shall be showers of blessing." It may not be "openly;" it may not be in accordance with the recompense most valued and appreciated on earth. Wealth may rear no golden ladder. Fame may sound no blast of clarion. But "the Father who sees in secret" will reward you with "the riches of His glory by Christ Jesus."\par \pard\f1\fs24\par \cf1\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox \par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par }  3e17-The Renewed Journey{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{7Q5}16-The Vow{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang1033\f0\fs22 THE VOW\par \par "The purified righteous man has become a coin of the Lord, and has the impress of his King stamped upon him."--Clement of Alexandria.\par \par 8\f0\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}{\f2\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang3082\f0\fs22 THE RENEWED JOURNEY\par \par "Arduous is the conflict, but abundant the strength--hard the toil, but glorious the reward. O forsake not me, Your child, when walking through the great tumultuous crowd, who know not Your Name. Wide is the sea through which I have to steer my cours9e, and high its swelling waves; but grace is the breeze that fills the sails; my compass is faith, and my pilot, Christ."--Tholuck's "Hours of Devotion."\par \par "Let me set forth anew, O Lord, as a pilgrim on the earth, with my rod and staff, and so set my heart on You, that in all places You may be my dwelling-place and home, until I return here to my last resting-place."--Memorials of a Quiet Life.\par \par "Then Jacob went on his journey."--Genesis 29:1.\par \par We cann:ot do better than begin this chapter in the words of Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress"--"Who can tell how joyful this man was when he had gotten his roll again! For this roll was the assurance of his life, and acceptance at the desired haven. Therefore, he laid it up in his bosom, gave thanks to God for directing his eye to the place where it lay, and with joy and tears betook himself to his journey."\par \par So it was with the Pilgrim Dreamer of Bethel. "He went on his journey," or, as the;se words literally mean, "he lifted up his feet." They are rendered in the Jewish Commentary--"His heart lifted up his feet." The waking dread and terror had given way to reassured peace and joy. Vows of covenant love having been interchanged between him and his God, like a desert wayfarer of Apostolic times after a similar Gospel revelation--"he went on his way rejoicing" (Acts 8:39). The spirit and sentiment of the unwritten 121st Psalm might well, from first to last, be his. Indeed, there is strong gro over your coming and going\par both now and forevermore.\par \par "Jacob went on his journey."--These words, in connection with the Patriarch, may suggest to us, in an emblematic form, some further practical thoughts regarding the life-journey which each of us is pursuing.\par \par I. It is in the active prosecution of the journey--in other words, the earnest spirit in which we discharge our various duties and obligations to God and man--that we go either with "lifted up" or ?with lagging feet and heart. Life is, or ought to be, at least, no dreamland. It is the idle, purposeless existence which breeds morbid thoughts, and moping feelings, and peevish reflections on the Divine dealings. "Go," said God to another Wayfarer, whose case has already suggested more than one parallel with that of Jacob--"Go on your way; Return to duty. Leave juniper-trees and deserts behind you. Go anoint Hazael; Go anoint Jehu; Go anoint Elisha; and in the resumption of assigned life-work, languor a@nd misgivings will take to flight" (1 Kings 19:15, 16).\par \par The cobwebs of unbelief and incredulity, discontent and melancholy, are swept away by opening the windows of the soul to let in the breath of heaven. And this is as much a spiritual as it is a natural law of our being. It was in proportion as Paul "pressed toward the mark for the prize" that he "forgot the things that were behind," the brooding memories of sins and shortcomings--vain, remorseful regrets over a vanished forfeited paAst. He braced himself for present duties. He had no time to waste, counting his lost paces and feeble pulse-beats and fatal stumblings, when the goal was still to be reached. He does better than weep over irreparable bygone days, by redeeming the moments of a yet available future--the pettinesses and shortcomings of his former aims and aspirations are lost in the truthfulness and earnestness of present purposes. Laying aside every weight, he runs with patience the heavenly race.\par \par In starBting on your journey, or rather, to carry out the parallel of Jacob, recommencing a journey already begun, resuming it with new and nobler resolves of duty and obedience, get yourself thoroughly indoctrinated with the same truth we sought to enforce in last chapter, that whatever your future be, whatever your lot and sphere in life, it will have its opportunities, however lowly and inconspicuous, of doing good to your fellows, and of glorifying Him in whose name you have vowed your vow.\par \par C We repeat, the humblest duties may be exalted, elevated, transfigured. Motive dignifies action. "Whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ." Above all, whether much or little, strive to perform it worthily; to give the talent if you can; the mite if you have not the talent; and the willing heart and pure purpose if even the mite be not possessed. God has room in His kingdom for tDhe "feeble folk" as well as for giant souls; for the infant learning to walk as well as for the swift-footed Asahel. "When Israel was a child, I loved him as a son, and I called my son out of Egypt. It was I who taught Israel how to walk, leading him along by the hand." (Hosea 11:1-3).\par \par "Thus I with faltering footsteps journey on,\par Watching the stars that roll the hours away;\par Until the faint light that guides me now is gone,\par And, like another life, tEhe glorious day\par Shall open over me from the empyreal height,\par With warmth and certainty and boundless light."\par \par With none of us, that journey should be a lounge, a summer day's walk. Life is an tremendous talent; and duty, as connected with life, is measureless. It has a center, but it knows no circumference. Its center is in God; its emanations reach into infinitude. Cease to imagine that you are an isolated planet, lost in the great system--a star dwelling aloneF. Rather feel that hour after hour you are circling round a glorious center, which not only gives you light, but expects you to reflect back light in return. Depend upon it, in the recognition of obligations, perhaps before renounced, now discharged with faith and courageous trust, you will acquire not only nobler views of duty, but of real happiness. The proverbial 'leisure with dignity' has a ring of reality in it, but it has a deeper dirge of falsehood. Among other discoveries the day of fresh spirituaGl awakening makes to receptive minds is, that the true dignity of life is not ease and luxurious rest--the poor artificial existence which consists in quaffing from hour to hour and from day to day the bowl of pleasure--but in that angel-work of traveling up and down the ladder, doing the will and fulfilling the purposes of the Father who loves you and the Savior who died for you. How many there are who spend their early days in irreverent and defiant independence of God and the soul--a poor Epicurean lifHe; the 'absorbing present' all in all; and then, when the evening shadows begin to lengthen, there is an effort to assume the Pilgrim garb and begin the Pilgrim journey. In other words, they give the best of their strength, and the best of their time, and the best of their hearts to sin and self and the world; and then presume to offer to God the crumbs and the sweepings of an existence from which the zest is gone.\par \par How can there be "the lifted-up feet," how can there be joyous harvests Ior vintage, when the soul has thus scorned its spring-time--when the young furrow has closed its pores against "the early rain" and reviving sun; the seed scattered either in the drought of the ended summer, or amid the chill blasts of the waning year? Be it yours to make another Pilgrim-prayer of the Psalmist your own on each returning day or at each fresh milestone of the road--"Cause me to hear Your loving-kindness in the morning; for in You do I trust--cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; fJor I lift up my soul unto You. Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies; I flee unto You to hide me. Teach me to do Your will; for You are my God--Your Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness" (Ps. 143:8-10). Thus, with the feet 'uplifted' in God's strength, will trials be made easy and burdens light. "It is God that girds me with strength, and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like hinds' feet" (Ps. 18:32-33). "Though he fall, yet shall he not be utterly cast down--for the Lord upholds him wKith His hand" (Ps. 37:24).\par \par Nor, in speaking of helps for "the prosperous journey by the will of God" (Rom. 1:10), can we forget the promise so specially brought before us in the ladder-vision.--"For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone" (Ps. 91:11-12). Who are the leaders in that viewless band? May we not think of each angel, excelling in his own peculiar strength, speciallyL delegated on his allotted mission to the several Pilgrims to Zion? The Angel Faith, with gleaming eye; the Angel Courage, with fiery wing and burnished shield and flaming sword; the Angel Ardor, with fleet foot urging the wayfarer upwards and onwards; the Angel Patience, with gentle visage and white vestment and folded arms, sent to whisper resignation in the hour of sorrow; the Angel of Victory, high above all, holding in one hand a palm, and in the other a crown. Shall we add a beautiful conception of Man old Florentine painter--two gleaming Angel-warders at the gates of Paradise, putting garlands on the heads of the saints as they enter the Celestial City!\par \par Another and very different lesson and reflection may be gathered from Jacob's resumed journey. It is suggested by connecting his present with his future experience. The dreamland and its time of blessing was in strange contrast with the dreary, servile years of drudgery and discipline (must we add of spiritual retrogression), in MeNsopotamia.\par \par As with him, so with us. Our seasons of Divine elation and ecstasy, Bethel-visions, are not to always last. The booths are not allowed to be permanently pitched on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter and his brother-Apostles had to descend the hill at dawn of morning for stern duty and trial; alas! too, as it proved, for the manifestation of faltering and unwatchfulness, and the surrender of holy trust! Even Paul had to return from his heavenly "revelations" to "the thorn in Othe flesh," to the arduous race--the fierce battle-field.\par \par And there are occasions which come to all of us, when with pain and sorrow we have to subscribe to the truth and reality of his recorded experience--"There is a law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members" (Rom. 7:23). God does not change towards us, but we may be too conscious of a change towards Him. There may be fluctuations, no, sensible reductiPons, in our peace and joy in believing, and that, also, by reason of our own unfaithfulness and shortcomings. Like the sunlight dying from the mountains\endash the everlasting hills are the same; but the glow upon them for a time has faded; the roseate hues have paled into the cold grey. "Bunyan's Pilgrim," says Dr. Cheever, "in going up his Hill Difficulty set out almost with running, so full was he of zeal and hope, of animation and impulse; but he soon got to walking, and thence fell to climbing on hisQ hands and knees, and that with such weariness that it seemed as if he could not go on."\par \par Not infrequently, also, as in Jacob's case, it is after times of great spiritual enlargement that there is special danger of reaction and slumber. There is often but a brief way between the clear visions of the mountain and the mists hovering in the valleys. That very day of the Patriarch's renewed journey was itself emblematic of the spiritual history of his own future years. He must have had many Ra sigh for rest, as with blistered feet and beaded brow he sat on the lonely rocks by the wayside, or, after quenching his lips by scanty pools, he pursued his way over the stretches of burning sand. At night he had to descend the gorges of the Jordan and grope with his pilgrim-staff through its bristling bushes and rushing waters. Such also is the experience of every spiritual pilgrim. As an old writer has it, his way lies "uphill, downhill, to the city which has foundations." Not only has he, at times, Sgreat trials to encounter--heavy shackles to impede the "lifted-up feet"--but his faith is daunted; his peace and joy are impaired and rudely shaken by mere trifles--little things (what might be called life's undignified worries)--which in the retrospect he is ashamed he so allowed to fetter him, but which have nevertheless proved hindrances and stumbling-blocks--the infirmity of temper; the fretful word; the hasty speech; the peevish murmur; the uncharitable reflection; some old habit reasserting its vicTious claim, whether that be allied to sloth or covetousness, to frivolity, or selfishness, or passion.\par \par It is melancholy to think how this renewed and re-awakened Patriarch (whom we have found at eventide at Heaven's gate, then at break of day 'lifting up his feet'--bounding along with elastic step, as if the physical frame participated in the joy that filled his inner nature)--was so soon drawn within the old coils of the Beersheba tent--giving way (the last thing he ought to have done)U to distrust in the fidelity of a promising God. Alas! we see too plainly the lack of that lofty element in his grandfather's steadfast simple faith, "accounting that God was able" (Heb. 11:19). In sinful forgetfulness of this ability, we find him tempted to resort occasionally to former human and unworthy expedients, revealing the "ruling infirmities" of his earlier life--or what may apologetically be called his "constitutional bias." While manifesting, indeed, high-principled submission under aggravatedV provocation, we discover at the same time the familiar scheming, bargain-loving nephew, trying to outwit the bargain-loving uncle, "a trial of wits," as Ewald expresses it; "wherein subtlety is fitly matched against subtlety."\par \par A further course of discipline, extending over twenty years, was needed, before the 'Supplanter' is finally driven out of him, and he comes forth the fully-armored "Prince of God." The first stage, at least, of that discipline seems completed at Jabbok. Until theWn, he refused to altogether let go of his old, crooked, distrustful policy. But on that occasion he thus proclaims the unconditional surrender--"I will not let YOU go." He has no boon now to ask, but one--that an undefined spiritual blessing may be given to him by the God of the heavenly ladder. In the spirit of a later wrestler on the same territory he seems to say, "My soul longs for YOU in a dry and thirsty land where no water' is!"--'Lord! O Shepherd of the stone of Israel! show me a token that You arXe my Shepherd and I shall not lack. Reveal Yourself to me as my portion, and I shall need no other!'\par \par Thus was he brought to see and to own that the Jehovah of Bethel to whom he had erected the pillar and vowed his vow, was the only Being and Friend who could truly prosper his way and bring him in peace to his Father's house. We know, indeed, that the Divine discipline did not end even with Jabbok. God saw that there was still much needed, before the education could be complete. AccordinYgly He dealt with him as He speaks of doing with the figurative Jacob of the Prophet. Though "redeemed" and "called by his name," he was to pass through varied and diversified trials, under the expressive figure of waters, rivers, floods, fire, flames (Is. 43:1, 2). In another sense the Bethel words were true, "I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you of!"\par \par And so it is in His probation dealings with all His spiritual Israel. The rod is required in some, morZe than in others, to subdue the defiant and obdurate will, to put an end to all schemings and compromise, and gain the heart to an unconditional surrender. "If Jacob," says Bishop Hall, "were willingly consumed with heat in the day and with frost in the night to become the son-in-law to Laban; what should we refuse to be made the sons of God?" "He has his tools," Rutherford says, "on the stones He wishes best polished for His Temple." To carry out the latter emblem, the Divine Sculptor, with each successi[ve stroke of the chisel, has the great end in view of bringing out His own image in the soul, deepening in it the love of goodness, truth, purity, kindness. And while not one stroke of that chisel is an unnecessary one, He will not cease nor intermit His work until the spiritual marble has been fashioned so as to reach perfectly and forever His own ideal--\par "No sign that the marble was white,\par 'Twas only a block at best,\par But the artist with inward sight\par Lo\oked further than all the rest;\par And saw in the hard, rough stone\par The loveliest statue the sun shone on.\par \par "So he set to work with care,\par And chiseled a form of grace,\par A figure divinely fair,\par With a tender, beautiful face;\par But the blows were hard and fast\par That brought from the marble that work at last.\par \par "So I think that human lives\par Must bear God's chisel keen,\par ] If the spirit yearns and strives\par For the better life unseen;\par For men are only blocks at best,\par Until the chiseling brings out all the rest!"\par \par Go then, spiritual Pilgrim! on your journey--cheered with the memories of your night-vision, and with the given and promised strength of your God. Seek to make life henceforth (and all the better if from its earliest morning hours) a consecrated thing--that so, when the sunset is nearing, with its murky vapo^rs and lowering skies, the very clouds of sorrow may be fringed with golden light. Then will you feel in the conscious possession of God's presence and blessing, that you are in fellowship, not with a stranger--but with a familiar gracious Friend; whose bounteous hand has given you the daily bread of temporal mercy, and the better bread which endures to Eternity. Thus will the song in the house of your pilgrimage be ever in truest harmony. It will be composed of no jarring discordant notes--but with all i_ts varied tones will form one sustained, life-long melody--dropped for a moment in death only to be resumed with the angels, and blended with the everlasting cadences of your Father's house.\par \par "Traveler! faint not on the road,\par Droop not in the parching sun;\par Onward, onward with your load,\par Until the rest be won.\par \par "Swerve not, though your weary feet\par The pilgrim path would leave;\par From the burden and the heat\par You shall rest at eve.\par \par "From the petty cares that teem\par Turn from with prophetic eye,\par To the glory of that Dream\par Which shall never die!\par \par "Hark! it is the Father's voice;\par Welcome, Pilgrim, to your rest,\par Now within the gate rejoice,\par Sealed and bought and blest!"\par \f1\fs24\par \cf1\lang1033\f2\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox \par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par \par } ad4\uc1\pard\lang2058\f0\fs22 BETHEL REVISITED\par \par "Grants of mercy call for returns of duty; and the sweet communion we have with God ought ever to be remembered."--Matthew Henry.\par \par "Therefore fear not, O my servant Jacob, says the Lord; neither be dismayed, O Israel--for I am with you, says the Lord, to save you."--Jeremiah 30:10, 11.\par \par God said to Jacob, "Now move on to Bethel and settle there. Build an altar there to worship me\emdash the God who appearebd to you when you fled from your brother, Esau." Genesis 35:1\par \par We revisit with emotion localities which have been consecrated to us in early years; all the more so, after a long period of absence. Whether it be the lowly cottage of the hamlet, or the residence in the busy city, or the more splendid ancestral dwelling. Some one special scene or haunt, also, may have its more hallowed memories; the tree whose shade vividly recalls childhood's playful hours; the murmuring stream and pendentc willow where youth's first aspirations were formed; "the upland lawn" or "accustomed hill" where in the company of some cherished friendship "the early dews were brushed away;" the Church whose walls listened to the silent vows of a new spiritual life--the room where those now numbered with the dead spoke tenderly and lovingly of filial duty, and who have left behind them imperishable examples of holy living and happy dying.\par \par The human heart is the same in every age--and akin, therefored, to the emotions just described, must have been the feelings with which Jacob once more stood among the stones of his former couch at Bethel.\par \par For the previous nine years, he had encamped at Succoth and Shechem. At the latter place he set up an altar "in the grove of Moreh." In connection with it, however, he had no divine personal remembrances. It was sacred to him only as associated with his grandfather's primitive altar, erected 160 years previously, on the occasion of first receivineg the Covenant promise. It was different altogether with the spot which had awakened within his own breast his deepest religious fervor, and witnessed his own earliest vows of heart-consecration. What a change had passed over his history during the three decades! To how many vicissitudes had he been subjected since that never-to-be-forgotten morning, when, with elastic tread, he went forth fresh from the voices and visions of heaven on his unknown pilgrimage!\par \par Then he was all alone--no cfompanion but a bag and a pilgrim staff--now, he returns, the head and center of an imposing Eastern caravan. Whatever these varied experiences had been, one thing he could gratefully testify, that the Great Being who had spoken to him had been true to His promises. He had not failed him. He had 'kept him in all places where he had gone,' and had 'brought him again into that land.' It was a retrospect of covenant faithfulness. What Moses, in an after age, said in his dying admonitions to Israel, might haveg been appropriately addressed now to their illustrious progenitor--"You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led you--in the wilderness, to humble you and to prove you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments, or not" (Deut. 8:2).\par \par In accordance with the divine direction, the Patriarch now willingly returned to the old votive ground, anew to pledge his faithfulness to the God who had 'answered him in the day of his distress.' Nine and a half hyears previous to this, the recollection of the ladder-dream had been vividly brought before him. On the other side of the Jordan, just as he was approaching the borders of Canaan, the Angels of that heavenly Stair had again appeared. We may perhaps infer, that not during the twenty years of his exile, had they been visible to the outward eye of the Pilgrim Shepherd; but in that night of awe and trembling at Jabbok, an angelic revelation was again given. The exile "went on his way" from Mesopotamia, and (ion reaching Canaan) the "angels of God met him" (Gen. 32:1).\par \par Standing now upon the spot where formerly these radiant Beings had revealed themselves in a dream above his pillow of stone, he would gratefully recall, in addition to the bestowment of positive mercies, the evasion of many and great perils. There would be his escape across the Euphrates from the morose and exacting Laban. There would be the averting of the anger of his once vengeful and vindictive, but, as he had proved, highj-minded and generous brother. There would be the deliverance from more recent reprisals at the hands of the Canaanites, in consequence of his son's breach of faith in the exterminating massacre of the citizens of Shechem (a treacherous and perverse deed in which he himself had no complicity). Above all, there was Jehovah's own gracious meeting with him at the frontier river; a meeting which might truly be called the second birthday of his soul. He had been spiritually born at Bethel, but he might be said kto have been born again at Jabbok. A soldier before, he was there panoplied with new armor. From that memorable crisis-hour, indeed, we note that he becomes truer, more real, more unselfish, more affectionate, more God-fearing. Ewald graphically remarks, "Then was accomplished the true spiritual triumph of the great hero, made a new man through such superhuman conflicts; though as the chronicle finally concludes, he receives a lameness, a memento of the mortal combat he has passed through, and a reminder lof bygone weakness; as if the moral deformity of 'The Crafty' had passed into the body, and were henceforth to attach to that only."\par \par A new altar we are told was erected on the dreamland, apparently by his own hands, and the name bestowed on the place twenty years before received a fresh and solemn confirmation. "He called the place El-Bethel" (Gen. 35:7). Jehovah once more appeared to His servant. In all probability that appearance on the present occasion was in visible form. The same vmoice, however, which of old spoke from the stair-summit, again addresses him. First renewing the covenant blessing; and then farther signalizing both the place and the occasion by the reiteration of the new name bestowed at Jabbok. Jacob "the Supplanter" is changed into "Israel"--"the Prince of God." "And God said unto him, Your name is Jacob--your name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be your name; and he called his name Israel" (Gen. 35:10).\par \par As a fresh motto and wantchword for the pilgrimage, the honored Patriarch listens to the additional announcement from the lips of his gracious Protector, "I am God Almighty!" (Ver. 11.) After certifying to him that the promise previously made on the same ground is to be made good, "to you and to your seed after you will I give the land"--farther, that he was to be the father of a company of nations and of a line of kings; (ver. 12); we read "God went up from him in the place where he talked with him" (13). Another, probably moreo carefully built pillar was then erected to commemorate this new revelation of the Divine Being--"a pillar of stone," on which the customary libation was poured, consisting of a "drink-offering and oil" (35:14).\par \par This scene and occasion has perhaps been truly called, "the time of Jacob's greatest happiness." His cup certainly was full as it had never been before. It was the pride of the wealthy sheep owner with his vast flocks and herds--of the chief surrounded with his clansmen--the Shepikh by his servants--the joy of the exile returning to his native hills; of the father in the midst of his numerous family and dependants. There was the lively recollection of the divine condescension and kindness in the past; and the renewal of the divine promises for the future. We may even picture his household, who had lately renounced their idols (Gen. 35:4), assembling around the votive pillar, and uniting in the simple rites of worship.\par \par No anticipation of coming trial broke the tqrance of present bliss--Bethel, during these memorable days, must have appeared, even in an earthly sense, as the Gate of Heaven. The "Goodness and Mercy" of the future Psalm (as if two of the radiant Angels of the ladder) would seem about to follow him all the days of his life.\par \par Alas! for the instability and insecurity of earth's best blessings! Jacob knew not (as we know not) what a day may bring forth. This solitary Shepherd of Palestine, like the laurel-crowned victors of a later ager, must listen in the hour of blessing and prosperity to the needful monitory word reminding of vicissitude and mortality. In his present moments of elation, little did he forecast coming events. Little dreamt he, that only a few days later, after striking his tents, the impending cloud of bereavement which darkened his whole future was to burst upon him; that he would reach his father's encampment, now pitched at Mamre, a broken-hearted widower! His beloved Rachel he laid in her early grave at Bethlehem. sEven the aged nurse, who formed the tenderest link which bound him to his mother's name and memory, was left with tears at Bethel under the "oak of weeping"--a name which surely carries with it a touching testimony alike to the fidelity of the servant and the irrepressible grief of the master.\par \par Meanwhile, however, in calm confidence, though all ignorant of that unknown morrow, he erects his altar and vows his vow. What was said of a great descendant may with equal truth have been said oft him--\par "Bold to bear God's heaviest load,\par Dimly guessing at the road--\par Rocky road and hard ascended\par Though his foot was angel-tended.\par \par "Soon came heartache, care, distress,\par Blighted hope and loneliness--\par Sad success, parental tears,\par And a dreary gift of years."\par \par Here by rights this volume should end. And yet, may we not well include in our pages still another and more solemn 'Evenutide at Bethel'? Are we not warranted to believe that there was yet one other occasion when the Dreamland came conspicuously before the eye of the Patriarch? He was indeed, at the time we speak of, at a long distance from Canaan. Very different scenes had for seventeen years risen before his eyes. He was no longer among the sunny hills and pastoral valleys and lowly altars of Palestine, but far away amid the stretches of glowing sand and the colossal Temples and Pyramids of Egypt. We are summoned in thougvht to his death-chamber in that strange kingdom. The season has now arrived, the solemn hour in his, and in every history, when life is lived over again, and its most momentous incidents are recalled to impressive remembrance. As the princely Joseph and his sons stand by his bedside to take their last farewell, lo! it is the memories of the stony pillow which are first upon the lips of the dying Patriarch.--When Jacob heard that Joseph had arrived, he gathered his strength and sat up in bed to greet him. wJacob said to Joseph, "God Almighty appeared to me at Luz (Bethel) in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to me, 'I will make you a multitude of nations, and I will give this land of Canaan to you and your descendants as an everlasting possession.'" Genesis 48:2-4\par \par Then, after recounting some touching reminiscences of his pilgrimage, he farther proceeds to pronounce a special blessing on his favorite son, and his two grandchildren. But even in doing so, the vision of Bethel seems xanew to rise up vividly before him. He sets his dying seal to the veracity and fidelity of the divine promise which, it will be remembered, gave birth to his own responsive vow--"The God which fed me all my life-long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil" (Gen. 48:15-16).\par \par May we not, moreover, well suppose, that the ladder-dream had its own due share in impelling the urgent and reiterated request regarding his own burial plans? He wishes no stately Pyramid or Sarcophaygus reared over his ashes in the land of the Pharaohs. "Bury me not, I beg you, in Egypt, but I will lie with my fathers--in the land of Canaan." We are thankful for the record of this quiet eventide, after a stormy and troubled day--the peaceful migration of this great Shepherd-Patriarch to 'the Better country.' We hear of triumphant deathbeds. This surely is one of them. Like a glorious sun bursting from a bank of clouds in an evening sky, he seems to illuminate all around. Not Joseph and his sons only,z but all his family are gathered round his couch to receive his benediction.\par \par And such a benediction! It has been well called a "grand lyric." The religious fervor which dictated the morning vow and prayer and which reared the altar on the upland at Bethel, seems to return in these waning hours. Not in the prosaic imagery we generally associate with age and weakness, but in strains of loftiest poetry the spirit of the old man passes away. "Who," says Toplady, "that reads this chapter, wo{uld imagine, that elevated strains like these--strains that would have done honor to the genius of Homer, warbled from the lips of a dying man--of a man, also, laboring under the utmost decays of age, and over whose head no fewer than one hundred and forty-seven years had passed!\par \par All the dross, from that complex soul of his, had now been burnt out and removed in the smelting furnace. He comes forth from his life of great mercies yet of great tribulation, refined as the gold. He seems tr|ansfigured before he is glorified. What could not have been said for many a long year of trial and discipline can be averred with confidence now, "Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile."\par \par We hear no more of murmuring at calamities--no more mourning over failures--no more rash impugnings, as once there were, of divine wisdom and faithfulness. The "all things" he once thought "against him" are now owned to have been for him. He seems wrapped up and absorbed in the contemplation of} the goodness of that Redeeming Angel-God. God's hand alone he traces in the varied events of his pilgrimage. His bounty had fed him, His Providence had shielded him, His presence had cheered him and He who had given him sustaining grace for a living-day, now gave him dying grace for a dying-day.\par \par And if we might, for yet a few moments, linger at that death-scene, it would be to note one other minute particular in the narrative (trivial in itself), but not without its interest as the las~t link with the Dream-land. We have noted in its place, in a preceding chapter, that the solitary possession of the shepherd-pilgrim specially mentioned in connection with that lone eventide at Bethel, was his pilgrim staff. Nor indeed need we speak of this reference to the staff of the patriarch as 'trivial;' when it is not deemed to be so by an inspired penman of a long future age. It is surely remarkable, that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews in his roll-call of worthies, should, in illustrating Jacob's faith, specially single out for mention the circumstance that in blessing the two sons of Joseph in the hour of his departure, "he worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff."\par \par As we associate Moses with his rod, and Elijah with his mantle, so do we associate Jacob with this pastoral crook. The same staff, perhaps, had been familiar to him in life's bright morning among the flocks at Beersheba--the same had been at the side of the Bethel-dreamer when he became spectator of angelic footsteps and auditor of the heavenly voice--it was probably the first thing his hand grasped in early dawn, when he raised himself from his stony pillow. It had been the companion of his pilgrimage ever since; the silent witness of his covenant-vows; the memento and souvenir of many loving-kindnesses and interpositions of the God he had served--with him in his joys, with him in his sorrows; on which he had leaned when bowed with grief at his subsequent trials, when "Joseph was not and Simeon was not," and they threatened to "take Benjamin also."\par \par The blind old man, as he strengthens himself on his bed, leans reverently on the same cherished support, absorbed in thought. He can no longer see it. His eyes are dimmed with the haze of years and of death--but his aged hands can grasp it. That death-grasp would seem to help him to gather up the tangled threads of memory and to retrace all the varied steps in the ladder-dream of existence. No more; the humble prop which had guided him through the fords of Jordan (Gen. 32:10) would seem to suggest a nobler Shepherd's crook, leaning on which, he would pass safely at life's eventide through the deep gorges and rushing waters of a deeper and darker valley. He could anticipate gracious words which have cheered countless millions in the same hour, "Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil--for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff they comfort me" (Ps. 23:4).\par \par We almost forget the once trembling fugitive and scared dreamer on the uplands of Benjamin. We can hardly recognize the timid traveler at Jabbok. The mists and clouds that obscured his early morning have passed away forever. The rustic wanderer has risen to the dignity of Prophet. Before these eyes, dimmed to earth, but already kindling with the light of an opening heaven, there rises, in the far-reaching vista of a grander future, the vision of a Great coming Conqueror--the Messiah of his race. He even hails Him by names, in what Luther well calls "a golden text," as the SHILOH. He sees nations and peoples gathering around His standard; kings and princes casting their crowns and scepters at His feet, and welcoming Him to the throne of universal Empire.\par \par Then, as if rejoicing in his own assured personal interest in these transcendent predictions, he puts his dying seal to the faithfulness, in a dying hour, of "the Angel who redeemed him." As if at last fully realizing the glories of the Bethel vision--"I have waited," said he, in a rapture of gospel triumph--"I have waited for Your salvation, O God!" With that Dreamland before his closing eyes, and the angels of the heavenly stair tracking his footsteps, he boldly crosses the border-river, and the noblest part of the Bethel promise is fulfilled, "he is brought to his Father's house in peace." "When Jacob had finished giving instructions to his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last and was gathered to his people" (Gen. 49:33).\par \par  May such a tranquil Eventide be ours--the vision, the promise, the staff, the Angel-convoy, the memories of divine goodness, the song of salvation, the abundant entrance! May we be among the privileged number, who, having gazed with the eye of faith on the Dreamland ladder, are able at a dying hour to grasp its sublime spiritual and everlasting verities, and who shall at last "sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and JACOB in the Kingdom of our Father!"\par \par "Complain not that the way is long--\par What road is weary that leads there?\par But let the Angel take your hand,\par And lead you up the misty stair--\par And then with beating heart await\par The opening of the Golden Gate."\par \par "Beyond the stars that shine in golden glory,\par Beyond the calm sweet moon,\par Up the bright ladder saints have trod before you;\par Soul! you shall venture soon.\par \par "All finished! all the conflict and the sorrow,\par Sin felt and feared no more;\par There dawns the radiance of a dreamless morrow\par On the Eternal Shore!"\par \par \par \par "Nearer, my God, to Thee,\par Nearer to Thee;\par Even though it be a cross\par That raises me;\par Still all my song shall be,\par Nearer, my God, to Thee,\par Nearer to Thee.\par \par "Though like the wanderer,\par The sun gone down,\par  Darkness be over me,\par My rest a stone;\par Yet in my dreams I'd be\par Nearer, my God, to Thee,\par Nearer to Thee.\par \par "There let the way appear\par Steps unto Heaven;\par All that Thou sendest me\par In mercy given;\par Angels to beckon me\par Nearer, my God, to Thee,\par Nearer to Thee.\par \par "Then with my waking thoughts\par Bright with Thy praise,\par Out of my stony griefs\par Bethel I'll raise;\par So by my woes to be\par Nearer, my God, to Thee,\par Nearer to Thee.\par \par "And when on joyful wing,\par Cleaving the sky,\par Sun, moon, and stars forgot,\par Upward I fly;\par Still all my song shall be,\par Nearer, my God, to Thee,\par Nearer to Thee."\par \cf1\lang3082\fs23 \par Formatted by\par David Cox \par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par \par \par \par } EUMacDuff- An To Chapter in Providence and Grace{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f1\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Georgia;}{\f2\froman\fprq2\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viYa18-Bethel Revisited{\rtf1\ansi\deff0{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Georgia;}} {\colortbl ;\red0\green0\blue0;} {\*\generator Riched20 5.40.11.2210;}\viewkin`ewkind4\uc1\pard\cf1\lang2058\f0\fs23 vv\cf0\lang1033\f1\fs22 EVENTIDE AT BETHEL; or,\par The Night-dream of the Desert\par \fs16 (An Old Testament Chapter in Providence and Grace)\fs22\par By John MacDuff, 1878\par \par Dedicated to all on the journey of life--especially to those just starting on their pilgrimage.\par \par 1. Preface\par 2. Outset from home\par 3. Home memories and their lessons\par 4. Home memories and their lessons (continued)\par 5. The certain place\par 6. Night shadows\par 7. The pillow of stones\par 8. The night-dream\par 9. The ministering angels\par 10. The God above the ladder\par 11. Jehovah's name\par 12. The promise\par 13. The given presence\par 14. The waking, and waking exclamation\par 15. The morning consecration\par 16. The vow\par 17. The renewed journey\par \lang2058 18. Bethel revisited\par \pard\li709\sb120\sa120\qj\fs20\par \pard\lang3082\f2\fs24\par \par \cf1\lang2058\f0\fs23 Formatted by\par David Cox\par dcox@davidcox.com.mx\par }