and through him his successors. Jacob, therefore, could not go to Seir to reside there: nor would Esau have readily parted with him, when he once had him there. And yet Jacob could not venture to teli his brother the real cause: for this would be to renew the memory of the grievance, which had been a moment ago so happily adjusted. He may, perhaps, have been quite sincere in his answer to Esau. But cool reflection may have afterwards suggested what he had forgotten in the hurry and tumultuous delight of the meeting with his brother. Thus for the second time they parted. A third time they met, and it appears to have been the last. Isaac died in extreme old age, having reached his 181st year, at Mamre, where his father and mother had also died, and were buried. Jacob and Esau met, as Isaac and Ishmael had before, to bury their father. The inheritor and the disinherited met to pay the last sad rites. Such are bitter meetings. The wounds of brotherly affection bleed afresh. Here, however, the dispossession of Esau was not so visible, as in the common cases of worldly ejectment. The possession of the land was distant, not to come for several generations, and of the spiritual bequest Esau had too little apprehension to be much concerned about its loss. They parted as brothers and friends; and their children met as enemies. This was the second and last time that the family of Abraham branched off into two separate portions of mankind, one of which carried the great spiritual blessing, the other only a carnal blessing. Both were to be mighty nations. But one was to be a holy nation of spiritual priests and kings: the other

a nation of wild men who lived by their sword. But the posterity of Esau was more fortunate than that of Ishmael. They were afterwards reunited to the children of Jacob: they were incorporated into God's Church, and shared in the joy of the Redeemer's coming. They even gave a king to Judah in the person of Herod. They bore with their faithful brethren, in due time, the cross of redemption; while the seed of Ishmael is at this day bearing the crescent of apostasy. The two brothers now once again parted on their different destinies, to the right hand and to the left, the one in all the glory of spiritual exaltation, the other in the shame of degradation. And so have many brothers parted since on their different directions of life: this to wealth, and that to poverty; this to honour, and that to dishonour; this to godliness, and that to ungodliness. The same home sent forth, alas! on what opposite courses: the believing and the unbelieving Herberts; the sweetest songster of God's temple, and the foulest blasphemer of his honour; the firstborn threw away in contempt his spiritual birthright, and his younger brother succeeded in his place.

In Esau we see too common a character. He was one of those thoughtless men who are said to have no harm in them, and yet do themselves and their friends more harm than enemies ever could do. They are frank and open from utter carelessness. They are unsuspicious from want of observation and reflection. They are generous not upon principle. but from want of principle: they are in consequence capricious and fickle, continually led away from the straight line of duty to this side and to

that, by whatever inducement comes in their way: they have neither past nor future: they are therefore ready to forget and forgive, but not to repent and amend; they are forward to trust, but not to provide. The present hour is all with them, and all beyond it, both on this and on that side of the grave, both temporal and spiritual, is completely out of sight. They are the continual victims to temptation, the constant dupes to the designing, and, if they bring not ruin on themselves and their friends, yet keep them in perpetual and wearisome anxiety, looking at their course with the same painful feeling as they would see them running blindfold over ground beset with frightful chasms and precipices. They are a thorn in the side of all who are interested in them. Very many such lose their earthly birthright. Alas! how many their heavenly! Such are the Esaus of the moral world. But the spiritual world has also its Esaus. None of us can adequately prize the privileges to which we have been born in Christ, or hold them sufficiently near in view, so as not sometimes to prefer some nearer and less spiritual prize. To keep them ever in mind, and at their due value, requires long experience and reflection, much painful reading of the word, habits of earnest and frequent prayer. Beelzebub will not drive out Beelzebub, nor will all our worldly prudence, judgment and discrimination, assist us in putting on the proper value. We must shut out the spirit of the world, and obtain the in-dwelling of the spirit of the light and life of the world to come. What then must be the case with those who have never taken thought upon the value of their spiritual privileges, who are

almost as little conscious of them, as they are of the sensation which they felt, when the baptismal water was poured upon them. What must their life be but a continual barter of God's sure and certain promises for the fleeting things of this life. When too late, when the spiritual world is forced upon the view, then is suddenly seen the preciousness of its privileges, and the dreadful penalty of having forfeited them, and there is found no place for repentance. Nor prayers nor tears can restore the loss. With serious resolutions of redeeming the time while yet it be allowed us, let us accept from the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, his fearful application of Esau's rejection; and whenever the pleasure or interest of the world points one way, and our love and duty to our crucified Master another, let us remember Esau.

ELI.

B. C. 1214-1116.

THE temporal portion of the promise made to Abraham, and renewed to Isaac and Jacob, had now been long fulfilled. Their posterity was settled in the promised land. They were no longer sojourners and dwellers in tents, but had long had cities and

towns divided amongst them. The 430 years of captivity and oppression, had been succeeded by nearly as many of independence, if we except some partial interruptions caused by the sins of the people, who no less politically than religiously had neglected the express commands of God. At this period we find Eli, at the head of both Church and state, as being both High Priest, and supreme judge of Israel. Brief as are the notices of him in Scripture, quite enough is told to form a lesson both fearful and instructive to parents and to children. The High Priesthood which had gone in the eldest branch of the house of Aaron, and had been solemnly confirmed to Phinehas, for his zeal for God's honour', had by some misconduct of his descendants, been taken away and conferred upon Eli2, who was of the younger branch, that of Ithamer. Eli was therefore bound in a still more especial manner than any of

1 Num. xxv. 13.

21 Sam. ii. 80.