The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-03-08 00:00:00

See the two brothers for years separated, and each
meanwhile travailing in his peculiar way, at length draw-
ing near to meet one the other. Esau advances at the
head of a troop of horsemen, amounting to three or four
hundred ; Jacob in the midst of his family, his flocks,
and herds, his man servants, and his handmaidens. Both
men were now in their prime. Esau's breast swells with
a certain amount of indignation as it respected the me-
mory of the past, and with a certain measure of contempt
for his plodding and careful brother. He reflects that
it was in the power of his hand to fly upon and spoil him.
His over-night meditations are of pride and earthly glory.
Jacob suspects no less. He apprehends his danger, but
he has no hesitation as to his resource. He sets his
house in order, as for the worst ; he takes all the means
of precaution which prudence suggested ; but having
done this, he says all will be in vain unless the Disposer
of hearts give success to my arrangements and my plans.
He retires into a secret place—he pours out his soul be-
fore God—" 0 God of my father Abraham, and God of
my father Isaac, the Lord who said unto me, Return
into thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well
with thee • 1 am not worthy of the least of all the mercies
and of all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy
servant ; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and
am now become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee,
from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he come and
smite me, and the mother with the children. And thou
saidst, I will surely do thee good and make thy seed as
the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for mul-
titude." Such was the prayer offered up. It indicates a
mind engrossed with a sense of the infinite nature and
almighty power of God, relying solely and exclusively on
Him ; and yet, so as that he that offered it up should still
use all the means in his power to effect his own purpose.
in short, looking at God as contemplating this world' nd
its intelligent inhabitants with the interest of a father, it
is just the sort of prayer that reason itself would convince
us he would rejoice in. It pleads his goodness
alone; it confesses total unworthiness in the petitioner.
It pleads past mercy as ground for' hoping for future
favours. Thus doctrinally perfect—we see the spirit of
the suppliant in the sequel. "Jacob was left alone,
and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of
the day. And the man said, ' Let me go, for the day
breaketh ;' and he said, I will not let thee go, except
thou bless me.' " All that is meant by this wrestling
match, this striving with God, the Christian knows, feels,
experiences. Jacob persevered, and he had his reward ;
for God called his name Israel. "He is a prince with
God." " For as a prince bast thou power with God and
man, and hast prevailed."
Now here is the heroic in sacred character. Man reach-
ing from earth to heaven. First discovering the un-
failing mode of access to God, and then coming effectually
to him—his soul grasping immensity in its outstretchings,
his hand laying hold on omnipotence, and making it sub-
servient to his will,—here is, I repeat, the heroism of the
sacred character. Esau points out that of the profane.
There is ability, there is energy, there is honour, there is
spirit, but there is nothing more than the mere man
throughout. The high-minded, the honourable, the
brilliant, the successful inan,—but no partnership with
heaven—no thoughts soaring through immensity—no ab-
sorbing interest in the eternal world. Nothing but the
mere man.

Jacob, after his wrestling-match, would have met the
world in arms. Fear was with him, subsequently, a non.
existent thing. Nay, he had more than this deliverance
from fear, he was clothed in majesty, he was invested
with grandeur. He subdued everything to himself, just
because he was a man united to God. "And when Esau
saw him he ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell
upon his neck, and they wept."
Here were then two heroes.
The sequel is instructive. With every increasing year,
Israel, the man of God, grew in strength—grew, we may
say, in beauty and in majesty.
Nothing can be finer than the introduction of the vene-
rable patriarch to Pharaoh, King of Egypt. His son
Joseph was now prime minister of this proud and puissant
monarch. And the eagerness which he showed to present
his father and his brethren to the king is an indication
that their bearing was suitable. flow grand must have
been the original type of the noble Jewish ideal ! Conceive
the Egyptian king, seated on his throne, his nobles on the
right hand and on the left; the deliverer of his country
from the dread visitation of a seven years' famine, one of
the finest specimens of humanity ever seen, draws nigh—
he leads in a stately and venerable character, he is clad in
white robes, his head is hoar with age, and a white beard
sweeps his girdle. linawed by the throng of courtiers,
he draws nigh. His thoughts are evidently engaged with
a scene even higher than that before him, for his habitual
" conversation isin heaven." He seems to be an archangel
conducted to an earthly court as a specimen of heavenly
glory—all are struck with a feeling of veneration as Joseph
sets him before Pharaoh. The monarch, with mingled
awe and admiration, stands mute. Israel breaks the
silence, while he lifts up his hand, and blesses the king—
" The God of my father Abraham, the God of Isaac, and
my God, bless the King."
Pharaoh at length speaks—" How old art thou ?"
" And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, the days of the years of
my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years : few and
evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have
not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers
in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed
Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh." The gravity
—the serenity—the dignity manifested by the old hero on
this occasion are admirable.

An additional occasion I cannot avoid mentioning. it
was the last visit of Joseph to the aged patriarch, and the
circumstances connected with his death. "It came to
pass after these things that one told Joseph—Behold thy
father is sick : and he took with him his two sons Ephraim
and Manasseh."

We shall not adequately realise this scene, if we forget the
wondrous position of Joseph, occupying, as he did, the post
of the first minister of the king of Egypt. We have a full ac-
count of his apppointment and of his style. " Pharaoh said
unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all the land of
Egypt. And Pharoah took off his ring from off his hand,
and arrayed him in ventures of fine linen, and put a gold
chain about his neck; and he madehim to ride in the second
chariot that he had, and they cried before him, Bow the
knee ; and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt."
(Gen. xli. 43.) The vast superiority of Egypt in the
article of horses and chariots is matter of Scriptural
history. No doubt, Joseph waited on his father in regal
style, and that the cavalcade, gorgeous in the burnished
trappings of silver and gold, on chariot and horsemen,
and gleaming with the brilliancy of colours which this
wonderful people delighted in, was of surpassing splen-
dour. The peal of the clarion, and the thunder of the
horsemen heard from that distance—which filial affection
would think safe, while it could not incommode the ag6
Patriarch—would have notified to his household and hire-
self the advent of his honoured and best beloved sal.
" Behold, said one to him, thy son Joseph cometh u;to
thee. And Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the
bed." It adds emphasis and character to the history,
that it makes no mention of the preliminary greeting of
father and child, but makes the interview commence sith
what was uppermost in the old man's mind ; tills—
" God Almighty appeared to me in Luz, in the land of
Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Beheld, I
will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and will
make of thee a multitude of people ; and I wit give
this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting oosses-
sion. And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Malasseh,
which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt lefore I
came unto thee into Egypt, are thine, as Reu)en and
Simeon, they shall be mine." Having finished hit address
to Joseph, he has just sufficient power of vision to see
that there were two persons present, though he .!ould not
discern them, (" for the eyes of Israel were dim with age,
so that he could not see,") and he asks, " Who are
these ?' And Joseph said, • They are my sins whom
God bath given me in this place.' And he sad, ' Bring
them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless Wm.' And
he brought them near unto him, and he kissed them and
embraced them, and said, ' I had not though to see thy
face, and 10, God hath showed me also thy s2ed.' And
Joseph brought them out from between hiE knees, and
bowed himself with his face to the earth."
To see the great dignitary of Egypt, the favourite of his
prince, thus prostrate before a majesty superior to his
own, for it sprung from intercourse with heaven, is a pic-
ture and a lesson. But what follows is memorable.
Joseph took his sons, Manasseh, the elder, in his left
hand, towards Israel's right hand, and Ephraim, the
younger, in his right hand, towards Israel's left hand.
Intending that his father should stretch out his right hand,
and place it on the head of the elder boy, end place his left
on thehead of the younger, who was oppooiteit; but instead
of this the old man did just the reverse—he crossed his
hands wittingly, and put his right hand on Ephraim and
his left on Manasseh. This surprised and displeased
Joseph, and he proceeded, supposing some mistake in
the case, to remove his father's right hand from Ephraim's
head, saying—" Not so, my father--this is the first born,
put thy hand upon him ; and his father refused, and
said, I know it, my son, I know it. He also shall
become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his
younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed
shall become a multitude of nations.' "

This evidence of profound reflection and of thoughtful
procedure is very fine ; but that which chiefly makes
itself felt in the case is the old man's senso of inherent
power. Nations seem to gush from his palms, capital
cities, and vast mctropoles, to drop from his fingers. He
feels himself as a child of God, invested with a potency

that contemplates the whole earth and all its' future
history, and tha makes his slightest action of moment.
But Jacob's greatest day was his dying day : on that
day "he called his sons and said, Gather yourselves
together, that I may tell you that which shall befall in the
last days."—(Gen. xlix. 1.) When they had assembled
round the couch of the dying man, his soul was then
wafted aloft upon the wings of the spirit of prophecy
and of power. He did not merely speak a history—he
created a future ; for it pleased God to invest his words
with a force that gave them a control over events through-
out all time.

It is a quaint but not uninstructive apophthegm—" It
takes many of all kinds to make up a world." His lot
is little to be envied whose mission it is, by evil propensi-
ties and dispositions for mischief, to contribute to the
production of that careful watchfulness on the part of the

Other_members of the community, without which so:iety

would be a mass of men collected together merely to sti-
mulate the rapacity and reward the violence of the first

invader

We are not to suppose that the old patriarch

composed horoscopes for his sons—if we may so employ
this term—with any view to the composition through
his own wisdom, of a great people, because made up of
all the moral ingredients of good and bad which should

compose one. Not at all. We must suppose that in this
case this holy man spoke as he was moved by the Holy
Ghost. It was under this influence, then, that the first of
the tribe that composed the nation that he originated,
was aristocratical in its sentiments, and sensual in
its tastes ; the second and third, crafty and ferocious ; the
fourth, of dignity, power, wealth, and perseverance ; the
fifth, of naval superiority ; the sixth, of industrial energy ;
the seventh, of judicial eminence ; the eighth, military; the
ninth, convivial ; the tenth, oratorical; the eleventh, of
general good fortune ; and the twelfth, successful in war.
I do not intend to say that this catalogue, which I have
thus submitted, is strictly in conformity with critical cor-
rectness of statement, nor is it needful for my present
purpose that it should be so. What I wish to convey is,
that Jacob did contemplate a futurity for each tribe of his
posterity, and briefly placed it before them, so as to im-
press a character upon the distinct divisions of his race,
and, humanly speaking, upon the fortunes of the whole
of them, and thence upon the whole world subsequently.
It enhances the idea of the grandeur of the heroic in