Modern days and Christian institutions allow no examples of the exact type of the strife and rivalry exhibited in the household of the patriarch of Israel.  Yet, while human nature remains as it is, there will ever be the jealousies, the strifes, the bitterness arising from misplaced affection, or alienated hearts, or jarring interests.  There is still to be found the coquetry which would win love from a sister or a friend, and the treachery that would supplant the rival—­as there are still fathers who, for motives of interest, would sacrifice their daughters, regardless of their hearts or their happiness.  Youthful beauty still attracts the eye and wins the heart, and the best and wisest of men are too often enthralled by mere personal attraction.

Human nature is ever the same, and the motives and feelings which swayed the generations who have mouldered back to dust are still felt and acknowledged.

While we thus attempt to trace the outlines of the domestic history of these individuals, we cannot but feel that there is a surpassing beauty and excellence in the character of Abraham.  He bore the fresh impress of a renovated world, and was truly worthy of the pre-eminence which is always allotted to him.  Isaac seems to have dwelt in quiet, peaceful prosperity.  Inheriting great wealth, dwelling until mature age with his parents, there seem to have been few occasions in which the prominent traits of the character are displayed.  His life offers less of interest, less to excite, less to praise and less to blame than either Abraham’s or Jacob’s.  The father’s energy, patience, faith and obedience had prepared the way for the prosperity of the son; and Isaac, nursed in affluence and cherished by maternal affection, seems to have exhibited less energy, enterprise and decision than either his father or his descendants.  His premature blindness doubtless conduced to this inactive life.  Yet he trusted and obeyed the God of his father, though he enjoyed neither the exalted faith of Abraham, nor was he favoured with the enlarged prophetic views of Jacob.

In all the trials and infirmities of Jacob—­from the day in which he left his father’s house until the hour in which “he gathered his feet in his bed and died” in Egypt—­we see the evidence and the growth of true piety, of enlarged faith.  He was encompassed with infirmities, and these infirmities betrayed him into sins, which brought in their train the sorrows which, through Divine grace, purified and sanctified him.  Thus his character excites our increasing love and sympathy, and his advancing piety our veneration.

From the glimpses we obtain of the families of Nahor, Bethuel, and Laban, we trace a gradual departure from Jehovah among the descendants of Shem.  Nahor and Abraham were possessors of like faith.  They both worshipped the God of their fathers—­of Shem, of Noah, of Methuselah, of Enoch, of Seth, of Adam.  Bethuel’s household still remained a household of faith, but in Laban we see the beginning