(Continued from page 199.)

But there is another lesson in this history to which I would call your attention.

Rebecca comes forth at the call of Abram's servant, but a character had previously been formed-as it is with us all, more or less, before we are converted. The separating call and power of the Lord is answered, but it finds us of a certain character-in a certain complexion of mind. It finds us, it may be as Cretians (Titus 1), or as brothers and sisters of Laban, or the like. Character and mind derived from nature, from education, or from family habits, we shall take with us, after we have been born of the Spirit, and carry in us from Mesopotamia to the house of Abram.

It is serious, as I observed before, that a respectable professing family is visited by a separating, and not merely by an edifying, energy of the Spirit; and serious it is that with the quickening or converting power of the Spirit, the force of early habits and education, or family character, will cling still. The story of Rebecca reads to us these serious lessons.

I need only briefly speak of what her way was in the further stages of it. It is a well-known story, sadly betraying what we may call the family character. Laban, her brother with whom she had grown up and who was evidently the active self-important one in his father's house, was a subtle, knowing, worldly man. And the only great action in which Rebecca was called to take part gives occasion to her exercising the same principles. In the procuring of the blessing for her son Jacob we see this Laban-leaven working mightily. The family character sadly breaks out then. The readiness of nature to act and take its way shows itself very busily. A mind she had too little accustomed to repose in the sufficiency of God, and too much addicted to calculate and to lean its hopes on its own inventions.

What have we to do then but to watch against the peculiar tendency and habit of our own mind-to rebuke nature sharply, that we may be sound or morally healthful in the faith (Titus 1:3); not to excuse this tendency of our nature, but rather the more to suspect it and mortify it for His sake who has given us another nature.

These lessons we get from the story of this distinguished woman. Beyond this, her way is not much tracked by the Spirit. Was it that He was grieved with her, and leaves her unnoticed? At any rate she reaps nothing but disappointment from the seed she had sown. No good comes of her schemes and contrivances, but the reverse. She loses her favorite, Jacob, and never sees him after her own schemes and contrivances ended in his long exile.

But there is this further:Jacob got his mind formed by the same earliest influence. He was all his days a slow-hearted, calculating man. His plan in getting the birthright first, and then the blessing; his confidence in his own arrangements, rather than in the Lord's promise, when he met his brother Esau; and his lingering at Shechem, and settling there instead of pursuing a pilgrim's life in the land like his fathers; all this betrays the nature and the working of the old family character.

What need have we to watch the early seed sown in the heart! Yea, to watch the early or late seed which we are helping to sow in others' hearts! For the details of this history warn us of such things still.

The birth of Esau and Jacob is given us at the close of chapter 25, and as they grow up to be boys, occasion arises to let us look in at the family scene-which is truly humbling.

This was one of the families of God then on the earth; nay, the most distinguished, in which lay the hopes of all blessing to the whole earth, and where the Lord has recorded His name.

But what do we see? Isaac the father had dropped into the stream of human desires; he loved his son Esau because he ate of his venison! Esau, as a child of the family, was entitled to the care and provision of the house, and Isaac and Rebecca surely gave him all that, together with their parental love; but for Isaac to make him his favorite because he ate of his venison, this was sad and evil indeed. Do we not in this see some further illustration of our subject? Isaac had been reared tenderly.
He had never been away from the side of his mother, the child of whose old age he was. His education perhaps had relaxed him too much, and he appears before us as a soft, self-indulgent man.

But, oh, what sad mischief opens to our view in all this family scene! Are we saying too much, that one parent was catering to nature in one of the children, and the other to the other? Isaac's love of venison may have encouraged Esau in the chase, as Rebecca's cleverness, brought from her brother's house in Paran, seems to have formed the mind and character of her favorite Jacob.

Oh, what sorrow and cause of humiliation is here! Is this a household of faith? Is this a God-fearing family? Yes, children of promise and heirs of His kingdom are these:Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob. At another time and in other actions they delight and edify us. See Isaac in the greater part of chapter 26; his conduct is altogether worthy of a heavenly stranger on the earth:suffering, he threatens not, but commits himself to Him who judges righteously. He suffers, and takes it patiently; and his altar and his tent witness his holy, unearthly character. So with Rebecca in chapter 24. In faith she consents to cross the desert alone with a stranger, because her heart was set upon the heir of the promises, leaving home and kindred, "forgetting her father and her father's house." But here in chap. 27, what shame fills the scene, and we blush and are confounded that heirs of promise and children of God could so carry themselves!

But, alas! the heart is not only base and corrupt, it is daring also, taking its naughtiness even into the sanctuary, as the close of this story shows.

The word to Aaron, long after this, was, "Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation" (Lev.10:9). For nature was not to be animated in order to wait on the service of God. Nature was not to be raised, or set in action, by its food, for the fulfilling of the duties of the sanctuary; strong drink might exhilarate and give ebullition to animal spirits, but this was not the qualification of a priest.

But even into such a mischief as this Isaac seems to have been betrayed. "Take, I pray thee," said he to Esau, "thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison; and make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die." He was going to do the last religious act of a patriarchal priest, and he calls (as for wine and strong drink) for the food of mere nature to animate and fill him for the service of conferring God's blessing! What abomination!

We may all be conscious how much of nature soils our holy things; how much of the excitement of the flesh may be mistaken for the work of the Spirit. We may be aware of this in the places of communion, and to our sorrow; we confess it as evil, and weakness, and watch against it; but to prepare for this is sad abomination.

We know full well the guile that Rebecca and Jacob practiced in this scene. Nothing comes of this subtlety and fleshliness. The holiness of the Lord lays it all in ashes. Isaac loses his Esau; Rebecca never sees Jacob again, for her promised "few days" were an exile of twenty years, and the calculating supplanter finds himself in the midst of toils, and an alien from his father's house for a long and dreary season. All is disappointment, and rebuked by the holiness of the Lord.

But it remains for us to see grace assuming its high, triumphant place and attitude. Its holiness is established thus by the Lord with great decision, setting aside all advantages which sin had promised itself; and then divine grace reigns.

In the great mystery of redemption, grace takes its triumphant place in the promise that the Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head; but there is also the full execution of all the decrees of holiness against the sin- for death came in as was threatened, and penalties fell on the man, and on the woman, and a curse upon the serpent. So here:Isaac loses his purpose touching Esau; Rebecca has to part with Jacob; and Jacob himself, instead of getting the birthright and the blessing in his own way, has to go forth a penniless exile from the place of his inheritance, and the scene of all his promised enjoyments. The only wages of sin is death; but grace takes its high place, and shines through Jehovah's burning holiness.

Even the misery to which his sin had reduced the object of God's grace sets off its glory. When Abram's servant had of old gone forth on a like errand (chap. 24) he had camels and attendants to make his journey across this very desert honorable and pleasant. But now the son and heir for whom the honor of the house and the joys of the marriage were preparing, has to lie down alone, unfriended, uncared-for, unsheltered, the stones of the place his only pillow. But grace, which turns the shadow of death into the morning, is preparing a glorious rest for him:he listens to the Voice of wondrous love, and he is shown worlds of light in this place of solitude and darkness. He dreams, and sees the high heavens open to him in that dark and barren spot on which he then lay, and he hears the Lord of heaven at the top of this mystic scene, speaking to him in words of promise only! He sees himself, though so erring, so poor, and so vile, thus associated with an all-pervading glory, full of present mercies, and consolations. The holiness of grace still leaves him a wanderer; but the riches of grace will tell him of present consolation and of future sure glories. But this has borne me a little beyond my immediate subject.

There is then such a thing as family character; and the recollection of this, when we are dealing with ourselves, should make us watchful and jealous over all our peculiar habits and tendencies; and when we are dealing with others should make us considerate and of an interceding spirit, remembering that there is a force of early habit and education working more or less in all of us. But let us not forget that, if a certain family character cling to us, or habits, with which birth has connected us, so are we debtors to exhibit that character with which our birth and education in the heavenly family have since connected us.

In the 8th chapter of John the Lord reasons upon this ground that our sonship or birth, or family connections, is to be determined by our character or doings. "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham." Thus we see the necessity of our bearing the character of that family into which the new birth introduces.

But we are exhorted also to the same thing-to take after our Father's character in the cultivation of all virtues; as the Lord says, "Be ye perfect;" and the apostle takes up the same thought in pressing the duty of love and forgiveness, "Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children."

Oh, then, that we may be set on the cultivation of this family character! Let the old man go down and the new man rise and assert his place in us! Let the character we have gathered from natural ties or natural habits be watched against, and the character of our heavenly birth be cherished and expressed to His praise who has begotten us again out of the death in which we lay, but now alive to and with Himself. J. G. B.

(To be continued, D. V.)