Christ, and has ever since been continued among the Jews, wherever dispersed as the lineal descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From the weaning of Isaac began the persecution of the children of promise.29 Sarah saw Ishmael mocking, and, to the great grief of Abraham, required the expulsion of the bond-woman and her son. This event probably took place at the end of the thirtieth year after the entrance into Canaan, and, consequently, was the beginning of that period of affliction for four hundred years which had been revealed in the vision at the time of the covenant-sacrifice. Ishmael became the father of the fierce nomadic tribes of Arabia, and from him came, by lineal descent, Mohammed, the great and common scourge both of Jews and of Christians. 30 A. J. P. 2529. One more trial of Abraham's faith awaited him, and that the most terrible which could possibly assail a father's heart. The time of this trial is not recorded by Moses, but Josephus says, and it may well have been so, that it was when Isaac was twenty-five years old. The child of promise was to be sacrificed! The son, around whose well-being all the hopes of fifty years were clustered, must be killed and offered by his own hand! Great as the shock was, Abraham staggered not through unbelief; "accounting," says the apostle, "that God was able to raise him up even from the dead." 31 It did not belong to him to determine how the Almighty God of truth would accomplish what he had promised; but it did belong to him to obey the clearlyrevealed will of him who gave, and who was now pleased to take away. We can see that this command had a further meaning, and was intended to adumbrate the greatness of his love, who "spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.' At every trial the promises were renewed with increasing solemnity; and as this was the last and the most 132 29 Gal. iv. 28, 29. 30 Ant. lib. i. c. 13, s. 2. 31 Heb. xi. 19. severe, they were now made, for the fifth time, with corresponding sublimity and fulness.3 33 Sarah was not permitted to see the fulfilment of the promises in Isaac; for she died at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven, when he was thirty-seven years old, and three years before his marriage.34 Abraham, being now far advanced in years, exacted an oath from his steward, that, in the event of his death, there should be no alliance with the daughters of Canaan; and then sent him to seek a wife for his son among his own kindred in Mesopotamia. Though married at forty, Isaac remained childless till he was sixty, and then had but two sons; so little were the promises of God in accordance with human probabilities." 39 A. J. P. 2879. Abraham died fifteen years after the birth of his A grandchildren;37 and, at the age of forty, Esau, to the great grief of his father and mother, connected himself in marriage with the accursed race of Canaan.38 How different were the characters of the two sons of Isaac from that of their father, this child of promise! His birth was supernatural; and, though little is said of his character, yet that little shows that it resembled closely the character of our blessed Lord. Docility, mildness, and submission in youth; a meek, quiet, meditative disposition in manhood; guileless simplicity and sincerity at every period of life, are the marks which distinguished it. Esau, on the contrary, was a bold, active, daring man, possessed of many noble and generous qualities, for which he was his father's favourite ; but inconsiderate withal, governed by impulse, irascible, sensual, and profane, -the very type of what the world most admires.40 The character of Jacob was as opposite to his, as their external appearance was contrary. He was subtle, 33 Gen. xxii. 1-19. 34 Ib. xxiii. 35 Ib. xxiv. 36 Ib. xxv. 19-26. 87 Ib. xxv. 7-10. 38 Gen. xxvi. 34, 35. 39 Gen. xxv. 22-34, comp. with xxvi. 12-33. 40 Gen. xxv. 28; xxvii. 30-41, comp. with xxxiii. 1—16. selfish, and supplanting, and probably resembled his mother, whose favourite he was.41 This latter circumstance led to a most shameful act of deception, planned by Rebecca, and connived at by her son. The hot and hasty and thoughtless Esau had sold to Jacob, for a mess of lentile pottage, all the rights of primogeniture, including, of course, the regal and sacerdotal offices, together with the privilege of being the progenitor of the promised seed. The plot was no other than to obtain from his aged and blind father a ratification of this sale in the solemn blessing of the first-born. Nothing can be more affecting than the whole story of this blessing, and the bitter anguish of Esau, when awakened to a sense of the consequences of his own folly. Isaac, while he shuddered at the event, clearly saw that this iniquity would be controlled to the furtherance of God's counsels, and therefore acquiesced in awful and dutiful submission; but all the parties to this nefarious transaction were signally punished. Rebecca was deprived of the son of her affections, and never saw him Jacob became an exile for twenty years in the land of Mesopotamia; had his dearest affections violated by the treacherous substitution of Leah for Rachel; led a life of slavish toil and sleepless anxiety, consumed in the daytime by drought, and in the night by frost; and yet was deceived and defrauded, ten times, of his wages, by Laban, and hated by him and his sons for his prosperity. The beloved wife was long barren. The hated one, the mother of Reuben and of Dinah, by whom he was dishonoured, of Simeon and Levi, whose cruelty filled his soul with fear. Leah, the hated, and not Rachel, the loved one, was the mother of Judah, and was thus honoured by God with the Messiah's lineage. Rachel, weak in faith, was the first to imitate the example of Sarah in seeking to procure, by unrighteous means, what God had denied her. The unholy strife between her and her sister occasioned the birth of more. those sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, whose conduct in after life brought an evil report; who persecuted his most beloved son; and, finally, for more than twenty years, made him mourn over the supposed death of this child of his old age. The apprehension of his brother's wrath tormented him all the time he sojourned in Canaan. Rachel was torn from him in giving birth to Benjamin; and that last child of her whom he loved he was forced to send into Egypt, by the pressure of a grievous famine.42 So sorrowful was his life, that even after he had recovered his long lost son, and his spirit had revived, and he stood before the King of Egypt, in the hundred and thirtieth year of his age, he pronounced the days of the years of his pilgrimage to have been few and evil. Still, with Jacob, affliction performed its legitimate office, and led him by its thorny path to holy issues. He became a good man, enjoyed the most intimate communion with God, received the solemn renewal of the Abrahamic covenant, now to be confined to his descendants, and died full of faith, and in comparative blessedness. 42 From Gen. xxviii. to xliii. passiin. 43 43 Gen. xlvii. 9. CHAPTER II. THE HISTORY OF THE CHILDREN OF JACOB, OR ISRAEL. I. Esau and Jacob regarded as the heads of their respective nations. — Esau excluded from the Gospel covenant, and the promises confined to Jacob. II. Joseph born. --Sold into Egypt. — A prisoner when Isaac died. — One year after the governor of Lower Egypt. History of Egypt at that time. - The Hykshos, or shepherd kings. III. Joseph's administration. — His brethren sent to buy corn. — Jacob invited to remove with his posterity to Egypt. The land of Goshen. IV. After the death of Joseph, prosperity of the shepherd kingdom during the reigns of the Theban monarchs till the accession of Menephtah I., by whom the shepherds were expelled. - Slavery of the Israelites begins. V. Sesostris, or Rhameses III.— During his absence an Egyptian princess rules Egypt. - Moses born. - Adopted into the royal family, and educated as a prince. Goes into exile at the age of forty. Rhameses III. succeeded by Menephtah II., and he by Menephtah III., the Pharaoh of the Exodus. His character. VI. Moses returns to Egypt. The judgments inflicted upon Egypt. The ten plagues specially levelled against the religious, political, and civil condition of Egypt. VII. Instructions to the Israelites to prepare for the Passover. - Expelled in haste, and keep their first paschal Sabbath, the first day of rest from Egyptian bondage. - Pursuit of the Egyptians. - Death of Pharaoh and his host. The tomb of Menephtah III. still existing. VIII. Flight of his successor, and exile for thirteen years. Return of the shepherds. Commencement of a new dynasty under Rhameses IV. — His victories in Canaan prepared the way for the Israelites. - The symbolical great hornet. IX. Descent of manna. - Arrival of the Israelites at Mount Sinai. I. HE DESIGNS OF GOD, REVEALED TO ABRAHAM IN THE VISION OF THE DESIGNS OF GOD, WERE NOW ROANING FAMI But, to com prehend them the more fully, we must go back to the remarkable prediction which preceded the birth of Esau and Jacob. Even then, the struggle had begun between them; and their mother, alarmed by an event so unusual, "went to inquire of |