^ This is remarkable in the mind, that it is steadied by ex- treme danger, while it is thrown into confusion by a little trouble. The physician's hand, which trembles when an insignificant sore has to be lanced, is steady and firm when an operation that may be fatal has to be performed. A petty encounter worries and excites the great military genius who is serene and master of him- self in the thick of the conflict on which the fate of empires hangs. In this greatest trouble of his life, Jacob's mind comes forth with a grandeur and a decisive clearness that are scarcely credible in one habitually crooked, and timid almost to cowardice. He so arranges that, if the stroke fall, it will not fall on all at once ; if it smite some, it will spare some, perhaps, and these the dearest. And these dispositions made — made for those for whom he never thought to need to make any such dispositions at all, and while they were ignorant of the menace hanging over them, and though he knows how unavailing all may be — he leaves all in higher hands. But unwittingly this care about others, this greater earnest- ness for them than ever he had felt for himself, and this entr\i8t- ing of them more sincerely into God's hands than ever he had yet committed himself, have brought him nearer to God than ever he has yet been, or, perhaps, than he cared to be.'
For now I live a twofold life: my own And yet another's ; and another heart Which beats to mine, makes glad the lonely world Where once 1 lived apart.
' A. B. Davidson.
GENESIS XXXII. 24 235
And Kttle lives are mine to keep unstained, Strange mystic growths, which day by day expand, Like the flowers they are, and set me in a fair Perpetual wonderland.^
(3) By solitude. — " And Jacob was left alone." We can under- stand that he felt he must be alone before he met with one who recalled to him the bitterest reminiscence of his life. He had, so to speak, to formulate his position towards Esau ; to consider his line of defence if he met him as an enemy ; to consider how he could meet him at all. It was one of those moments that im- peratively demand solitude. The past has to be revisited, the ghosts of old sius have to be faced. In exile they were thrust out of sight; change of scene, new interests, had almost oblit- erated the sense of his own wrong-doing, but Esau's face will bring it all back again, and Jacob must be alone before he sees him — alone in the still darkness, alone by the silently flowing waters, to shape and to reshape his life, to focus his old self by the new lights which twenty years of living had brought to him. None could share his load — none, not even Kachel, could be with him ; he must bear his own burden.
XL
The Nature of the Wrestlinq.
i. A Spiritual Crisis.
1. It should be observed at the outset that this crisis in the spiritual experience of Jacob took place when he was well advanced in years. Jacob was no longer a young man when ho wrestled with the angel in the dark night by the ford of Jabbok. He was the father of many sons, a man of property, a man of experience ; above all, he was a man who had long perceived the ralue of spiritual things, had long attached the highest importance to that Divine promise which had been transmitted to him by his father Isaac, and who had made a solemn vow at Bethel, twenty years before, that the Lord God of Abraham should be hia God, and that he would serve Him all the days of his life.
2. There are those who would like to think that the crisis of the religious life is reached at a very early stage of spiritual
* Sir Lewi« Morris, Poenu, <8.
236 SPIRITUAL WRESTLING
Experience, and that once passed there are no more grounds for apprehension or fear or care or caution. The story of the wrestling of Jacob teaches a very different lesson. First comes the vision of the ladder — the^ dream of glory, the sense of Divine protection and security. And then, long afterwards — after many years of service and prayer and worship and endeavour, when Jacob is getting on in years, at the end of much experience and patient trust — there comes the struggle — all alone in the darkness — the struggle that wastes and draws the strength of Jacob, the struggle in which the nature and character of the man are finally declared, and proved and sealed for ever.
^ Some may think the revelation given to Jacob at Bethel, on his way to Padan-aram, the most interesting event in his history. And to those beginning life it may be. There is an ideal brilliancy in it, attractive and fascinating. But that sombre, stern conflict, beyond the Jordan, in the grey, unromantic days of mid-life, is a profounder study, and there will always be found gathering round it those who know the imperfections of life, and the bright hues of whose early expectations have been toned down by the pale cast of experience.^