in two, and await between the smoking entrails a new promise from the benignant Deity.  Abraham, blindly and without lingering, prepares to execute the command:  to Heaven the will is sufficient.  Abraham’s trials are now at an end, for they could not be carried farther.  But Sarai dies, and this gives Abraham an opportunity for taking typical possession of the land of Canaan.  He requires a grave, and this is the first time he looks out for a possession in this earth.  He had before this probably sought out a twofold cave by the grove of Mamre.  This he purchases, with the adjacent field; and the legal form which he observes on the occasion shows how important this possession is to him.  Indeed, it was more so, perhaps, than he himself supposed:  for there he, his sons and his grandsons, were to rest; and by this means the proximate title to the whole land, as well as the everlasting desire of his posterity to gather themselves there, was most properly grounded.

From this time forth the manifold incidents of the family life become varied.  Abraham still keeps strictly apart from the inhabitants; and though Ishmael, the son of an Egyptian woman, has married a daughter of that land, Isaac is obliged to wed a kinswoman of equal birth with himself.

Abraham despatches his servant to Mesopotamia, to the relatives whom he had left behind there.  The prudent Eleazer arrives unknown, and, in order to take home the right bride, tries the readiness to serve of the girls at the well.  He asks to be permitted to drink; and Rebecca, unasked, waters his camels also.  He gives her presents, he demands her in marriage, and his suit is not rejected.  He conducts her to the home of his lord, and she is wedded to Isaac.  In this case, too, issue has to be long expected.  Rebecca is not blessed until after some years of probation; and the same discord, which, in Abraham’s double marriage, arose through two mothers, here proceeds from one.  Two boys of opposite characters wrestle already in their mother’s womb.  They come to light, the elder lively and vigorous, the younger gentle and prudent.  The former becomes the father’s, the latter the mother’s, favorite.  The strife for precedence, which begins even at birth, is ever going on.  Esau is quiet and indifferent as to the birthright which fate has given him:  Jacob never forgets that his brother forced him back.  Watching every opportunity of gaining the desirable privilege, he buys the birthright of his brother, and defrauds him of their father’s blessing.  Esau is indignant, and vows his brother’s death:  Jacob flees to seek his fortune in the land of his forefathers.

Now, for the first time, in so noble a family appears a member who has no scruple in attaining by prudence and cunning the advantages which nature and circumstances have denied him.  It has often enough been remarked and expressed, that the Sacred Scriptures by no means intend to set up any of the patriarchs and other divinely favored men as models of virtue.  They, too, are persons of the most different characters, with many defects and failings.  But there is one leading trait, in which none of these men after God’s own heart can be wanting:  that is, unshaken faith that God has them and their families in his special keeping.