* 6. Matbeson, Sacred Songs, 53.
222 JACOB'S VISION
waa holy groujud. The disciples were standing half-naked io their fishing-boat, worn oiit with the long night's fruitless toil,, when they discerned some one standing on the beaQh ; and the disciple whom^Jesjis Igyed said unto Peterj."It is the Lord." Saul of Tarsus waa.riding on horseback through the Jerce sunshine of the Syrian. noo,nday,. when that brighter light from heaven shone round about. him.^
When He appoints to meet thee, go thou forth —
It matters not If South or North,
Bleak waste or sunny plot. Nor think, if haply He thou seek'st be late,
He does thee wrong. To stile or gate
Lean thou thy head, and long! It may be that to spy thee He is mounting
Upon a tower, Or in thy counting
Thou hast mista'en the hour. But, if He come not, neither do thou go
Till Vesper chime, Belike thou then shalt know
He hath been with thee all the time.*
XL
A Sense of Sin.
And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this placet
1. Fear was inherent in Jacob's character. — It spoilt him in his early days, but he had manly stuff in him and he subdued it, and afterwards it was lifted into veneration of God. His present fear was caused partly by the Benae_of sin,- partly by realizing the presence of the Invisible. No jsiQ who does not know God cau-ieel himself tpuched by-God without fear. If he feels Him only as a dreadful power the result will be superstition, but if he knows and loves Him the result is veneration. From that hour the love that casts out fear began to stir in Jacob's heart. He began to realize, not an angry Being, but One who loved him and would care for him.
» J. 0. Lambert »T. K. Browa.
GENESIS XXVIII. i6, 17 223
2. Jacob had sinned grievously. — B[e^wa^ iresh^from an act of jhamaful. deceit, seconded by several deliberate lies, and aggravated by the fact that his victims were his only brother and his aged father, now smitten with blindness and infirmity. Was a man, upon whose soul such sins lay hot and unrepented of, a possible subject for such a revelation of God as we read of in this chapter ? Not unless all the laws of man's relation to God were completely disregarded in the case of Jacob. From the very fact that God appeared to the patriarch with this gracious manifestation of Himself and promise of His favour, we conclude that Jacob must have had some contrition for his sin, that he must at that very time have been passing through the painful struggles of an awakened conscience. Jacob had sinned deeply ; but he would have been a callous sinner indeed if he had had no pangs of compunction when he heard his father's reproachful voice and his brother's exceeding bitter cry. And now all the afflictions that had befallen him — his enforced flight, his banish- ment from home, his lonely journey, the dangers by which he was beset — these afflictions had engraven deep upon his mind the solemn lesson that the devil's wages are always very hard, and had worked in him that godly sorrow which leads to true repentance. Jacob, we might say, had been wrestling with God] in the secret places of his soul, even as Nathanael had been! kneeling before God under the fig tree when Jesus promised that he too, like Jacob, should see the heaven opened, and the angels; of God ascending and descending. "^
IF Ther^ is nothing that makes us seem farther away from God than a heartfelt sense of sin and self-dbasmient. Eutuit is when a man is ..in the very depths of self-condemBation that the lightjjf God's countenance breaks upon himJike the day-dawn -following J/he night. Look at the Penitential Psalms. What a consciousness of sin is there ; what a depth of genuine humiliation ! And yet it is just when these psalmists are crying out of the depths that the assurance of Jehovah's pardoning mercy and love springs up within them. For it is when hearts are broken and contrite that the High and Lofty One stoops down to visit them. Con- trition and humility are the true foundation-stones of godliness, and the lower these foundations are sunk, the higher will the towers and pinnacles of the Divine Temple rise within the 80uL '.^nnyson . has. -taught -US -to. say that " mftn may riRp on
224 JACOB'S VISION
ate.pping-stonea. of -their dead selves to higher^ things." And in the gracious counsels of our God there is a blessed provision whereby the very sins of the past, if truly repented of, may become stepping- atones to heaven — another Jacob's Ladder, by which His children are raised above their sin and selfishness up the steep heights of hoIjnesB and into the very presence of the Father.^
3. If ever a man needed a little merciful handling, this solitary and troubled soul needed it then. God is ever near to the souls that need Him most; and a man never needs Him so much as when he has sinned, for he is never so surely imperilled as then. So, through this man who has sinned, to all men who have sinned this incident speaks, and tells us that God appears in grace to a man who has done wrong, to prevent his doing further wrong, to show that he is not cast ofP, that from the sin into which he has fallen there is a way to God, and that heavenly influences descend even on the head of the transgressor. Not that his sin is condoned, not that he deserves the bright vision. Who of iis would have any but a dark and terrifying vision if we had what we deserve ? It is a vision of God's grace . that, coines. to this wanderer-T— a vision to assureJiini that- God's mercy persists in spite of man's sin, and wills to saxe hmpLitoJn a further falL