to the exclusion of another.  That instinctive justice which compels a higher regard for the purer moral worth, will, of itself, prevent that parental partiality which leads to injustice or to an infringement of established rights and recognised principles.  An unjust parent presents one of the most revolting pictures of human nature.  The character involves a disregard of the most sacred ties and the tenderest relations.  And whoever exhibits parental injustice, or that partial fondness which leads to injustice, at once destroys the affections and violates the moral sense.  Families trained under such influences, still exhibit revolting scenes of human depravity—­of bitterness, strife, alienation and revenge.  Who can tell how much of the estrangement of Esau, and this early introduction of the worship of strange gods among his descendants, may have been induced by the conscious alienation of his mother, and the unjust preference of the interests of his brother?  Had Rebekah, with a mother’s love, striven to win her eldest son back to his father’s tent and the altar of his God—­had she still respected his rights and preserved his regard by undeviating truth and faithfulness, she would have retained a strong hold upon him, and her influence might have been long felt by her descendants, in restraining them from the sins of those around them.

We cannot yet part with the two principal actors in these sad scenes of treachery and deceit.  We think of Rebekah, the companion of her blind husband—­deprived of the son who had shared and alleviated her cares, and conscious of having awakened that bitter hate which would seek the blood of a brother—­still following in her thoughts the footsteps of the wandering Jacob, feeling that by her own intrigues she had banished him from his home and her presence.

And we may follow Jacob, as he stole from the tents of Isaac, a wanderer like the first fugitive, with his brother’s curse upon him.  Until this hour all Jacob’s views and feelings seem earthly and grovelling.  Until now, there has been no indication of that trust and piety which afterwards marked his life.  He had seemed worldly, cunning, ready to snatch any personal advantage.  From this period he seems to awaken to a higher—­a spiritual life.  He seems to have comprehended the deeper meaning of promise and prophecy.  We cannot tell what remorseful and despairing thoughts filled his soul as he left his home—­how strange and inexplicable may have seemed all the ways of God toward him.  Yet he must have felt that, in punishment of his deceit and falsehood, he was thus sent forth with but his scrip and staff, while he left Esau to inherit the possessions of his father.