ever it should be said, that the grasp of the heel was designed to show the unceasing struggle of the infants, and that it was mentioned as an answer to, and a visible proof of the veracity of the previous prediction, we then reply, that as that prophecy bore with it an allegorical character, the apparent contention at the birth must also partake of the same nature; and that we are then authorized by the admission to explain it under a figurative form.

These things however are but the opening of the parallel ;-elements of its bearing, which we have desired the more earnestly to impress as truth, that the mind, in the subsequent career of the brothers, may not be drawn back to them as to statements so abstruse, and so hard to be understood, that it should view the progress of the theory through the medium of an inveterate prejudice.

The brothers in their advance to manhood suffer no change of their original position. Esau, the elder in birth, retains in the house of Isaac his father all the rights and honors of primogeniture. His father delighted in him; he loved his free, bold spirit; his generous nature; the manliness of his pursuits; and he left it to God, if such should be His will, to divest him of his privileges, without a single thought of dépriving him by his own act. But the tenderness which Isaac felt towards him, Esau felt not for himself. He set light store by his birthright. He might have known the prophecy which had been delivered before his birth, and thence looked upon that privilege with indifference, of which he was morally certain that he should be deprived. He might have thought that the loss of the abstract title would be amply

Y

compensated by the blessing which, as the eldest son, he knew that he should receive from his father; -the transfer of which to his brother seems to have more poignantly afflicted him than any other event in his whole life. It was the real destruction of his hopes; a decree from which he well knew there was no possibility of appeal. But whatever the motive, the fact is certain. Esau despised his birthright;-yielded of his own free unbiassed will every privilege which accompanied it; and sold it to his brother Jacob for the unworthy gratification of a mere animal indulgence.

for

In the same manner the Jewish nation,-of which in this instance he was an eminent type-despised their birthright in the Gospel; and gave it up false views and ungrounded expectations of worldly splendor and happiness. They despised the lowliness and apparent slightness of that privilege which was offered to them by Christ. They looked for greater things than those which that covenant held out to them; and although the confessed and undoubted heirs of its prerogatives and rights, they put aside the inheritance with contempt and scorn. They despised it under the influence of earthly passions and a lust for temporal grandeur and dominion, in the true spirit of Esau, who had bartered his succession for an animal indulgence. It is true, that the decree had gone forth from God, that " the elder should serve the younger," and that, throughout the history of the Jewish nation, the great promises of the divine favor centred uniformly in Christianity. God, doubtless, knew from the first, that the Jew, like Esau, would cast it from him. But

his

still he possessed it. He held in his own power birthright in the Gospel. It was his by the gift of God. It was in his choice; in the action of his own will; and it was only when rejected by the nation," seeing," in the thought of the Apostle, they judged themselves unworthy of everlasting "* that it was transferred to the younger.

life,'

The only point which fails in the parallel; and which seems incompatible with the Gospel as the antitype of Jacob, is the surreptitious acquisition of the blessing from Isaac. The highest and holiest gifts of the Divine favor were undoubtedly bestowed upon Christianity in preference to the Law, as the blessing was promised to Jacob to the disadvantage of Esau. And without question, God would have made such arrangements, that in neither case would his promise have fallen to the ground. But it is quite impossible to discover the least resemblance in the mode in which the blessing was obtained by Jacob, and that in which, by the rejection of their birthright by the Jews, it escheated to Christianity. Nor perhaps is it necessary, -it certainly is not expedient, to run a parallel of Scripture so closely and evenly, that it shall not diverge a single point from its equal distance. There is always great danger, lest, in the endeavour to make it perfect in all its parts, a general tone of improbability should be imparted to it, which may cause the truth and the error to be indiscriminately rejected. The individual character of Jacob, in all the earlier transactions of his history is essentially an artful one; nay, it is more than artful;-it is selfish; and he scruples not

*Acts xiii. 46.

to employ means for the purpose of compassing his designs, from which a noble and generous nature would have shrunk in abhorrence. The promises, which in that age were esteemed of the greatest import, and calculated to confer the greatest happiness had been freely bestowed upon him. God had assigned him the privileges of the first born, and the blessing of the first born; and revealing the acts of far distant generations, had proclaimed by an immutable statute, that the generations of his posterity should possess the pre-eminence over those of his elder brother. He knew and felt-for such was the real prerogative of the blessing, and the cause of its being so anxiously longed for by every son in the lineage of the faithful-that the Messiah would arise. from the blood of his descendants; and that the people saved would acknowledge Jacob as their forefather. But knowing these things; and relying on their certainty through the word of God himself, the mind of Jacob, like the generality of the Jewish nation, sought their accomplishment through the agency of human means, rather than in a patient expectation of the time, when God would give effect to the decrees which he had announced. This ruling spirit of his mind, is discernible in every transaction. The birthright was assured to him;-but he gained it by heartlessly working, in a time of famine, on the necessities of his brother. The blessing was allotted to him; but he thought it not secure until he had acquired it by artifice. In his dealings with Laban the same principle was predominant; and in his meeting with Esau, when the temporal promises of his Protector were in abundant fulfilment, and he

knew by visions, and signs and revelations from God that he was still under his special guardianship and favor, he trusted to craft and policy for his reconciliation with him, in preference to a simple faith and calm confidence in the Almighty God of his fathers. And deeply indeed, in the incessant trials and disquietudes of his life, did he atone for this error of his judgment. It is impossible to read the affecting avowal to Pharaoh; "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage,' *without feeling that the man who uttered it, in the sorrows of his soul, had received heavy retribution for the guilt of his offences.

While therefore we yield at once all notion of a parallel, in the means through which the correspondent blessings were obtained, we insist strenuously on the main subject, the parallelism of the blessings themselves. God, through all his weaknesses and errors, perceived qualities in the nature of Jacob, which enabled Him to continue in his person the graces and prosperity which he had assured to the sons of Abraham. He saw that his frailties, like those of David in a subsequent age, were more than counterbalanced by excellencies, which were possessed in an equal degree, by not one of his contemporaries; and though he chastened him for his offences, he despoiled him not of His regard. It was therefore the will of God that the birth-right should be transferred to him; however irregularly obtained. It was his will, that the blessing should

*Genesis xlvii. 9.