Shall coo the livelong day; Then He shall say, "Arise, My love.
My fair one, come away."'
' Letters of Dr. John Broton, 176. * J. E. M'Fadyen.
• Christina G, Rossetti.
GENESIS XXXII. 24 241
IIL
The Result of the Wrestling.
1, One result is a changed name. — What an epoch in his spiritual life this was, we understand best when we consider the name of Israel, which in this conflict he won, and which hereafter as a memorial of his victory he bore. For, indeed, we must contemplate this struggle as having left Jacob from that day forth a different man from what it found him. The new creature had by and in these painful throes extricated itself for ever from the old, won permanent form and subsistence, and thus demanded a new name to express it.
^ How does Jacob learn his own real character ? " What is thy name ? " — that is the searching question which God is forcing down into the very depths of his soul And what is he compelled to answer ? " I am Jacob " — a liar, a supplanter, a deceiver ! How blackly does this name show, in the pure, burning light of that other name, the name of the Holy God ! Thus does Jacob learn to know himself and sink appalled. But the very con- fession of the old name — which indicates the old character — is the necessary preliminary to reoeiving the new name — the new character.
2. But a changed name means a chatiged man. — The "Sup- planter " becomes the " Prince." He has a new name because he has a new nature. He becomes as noble as he had been false, worthy of the love and reverence of his children, worthy of standing in honour before kings; and a long train of genuine sorrow follows the embalmed remains of him who had once been a mean despicable boy. And yet he remains Jacob stUL For the character is like the face which indicates it ; the features do not change, though the expression does.
^ Think how this is with yourselves. If any one of you is changing for the worse, I tell you, you cannot help showing it. The shifty look of deceit, or the sneer of irreverence, or the absurd airs of vanity, or the dark lowering cloud of some secretly cherished sin — these, creeping over the features, do not change them, but they change the expression of the face. And so, on the other hand, if man or boy is passing from evil to good, it is as if the mists are rolled o£f some landscape by the
GEN.-NUM. — 16
242 SPIRITUAL WRESTLING
sun as he climbs the heavens, and the gloomy scenery is lit up as with the joy of a new birth.^
3. There is no more conscience in the flesh. — "As the sun rose upon him, he halted on his thigh." Like St. Paul, his "strength is made perfect in weakness." The result of Peniel is not elation ; it is contrition. There is joy in God, but there is no confidence in the flesh.
I Contented now upon my thigh \ I halt, till life's short journey end;
' All helplessness, all weakness, I
On Thee alone for strength depend; Nor have I power from Thee to move: Thy nature and Thy name is Love.
^ It is this recognition of conscious weakness that leads a man to grip the power of his higher self. When conscience wrestles with me, it is always in the form of a man. It is my higher self that strives with me — the Christ within. We have all a higher self — a photograph which God took in some pure moment. We have left it behind, but it follows us. It meets us in our silent hours. It confronts us with the spectacle of what we might have been. It refuses to let us go until it has blessed us. It is the same thing as Paul felt when he spoke of the spirit lusting against the flesh. The spirit was his better photograph, his Christ, his hope of glory. It is not the actual man that makes us feel immortal; it is the ideal man — the man that might have been. That is the reason why to me conscience is precious even when it wounds. It is no foreign hand that strikes me ; it is my higher self, my inner man, my likeness as God sees it. It is the image of me that is hung up in heaven — the picture on which my Father gazes to avert despair. It is not only with me that the man wrestles ; he wrestles with the Father for me. He pleads my future possibilities. He suggests my coming glory. He tells what I would be in less vile raiment. He shows what I may be with the ring and the robe. He reveals how I shall look at the breaking of the day.*
Lord, I have wrestled through the livelong night;
Do not depart, Nor leave me thus in sad and weary plight,
Broken in heart; Where shall I turn, if Thou shouldst go away. And leave me here in this cold world to stay ?
' U. H. Almond. » G. MatLeson.