that a good natured man fhall not be able to look upon it but with tears on his cheeks.

I pity this patriarch ftill the more, because from his first fetting out in life, he had been led into an expectation of fuch different scenes: he was told by Ifaac his father, that God should bless him with the dew of heaven, and the fatnefs of the earth, and with plenty of corn and wine;—that people were to ferve him, and nations bow down to him; that he bould be lord over his brethren; that blessed was every one that blefed him, and curfed was every one who curfed

bim.

The fimplicity of youth takes promises of happipefs in the fulleft latitude; and as thefe were moreover confirmed to him by the GoD of his fa thers, on his way to Padan-aram,it would leave no distrust of their accomplishment upon his mind;

every fair and flattering object before him, which wore the face of joy, he would regard as a portion of his bleffing; he would purfue it, he would grafp a fhadow.

This, by the way, makes it necessary to suppose, that the bleffings which were conveyed, had a view to bleffings not altogether fuch as a carnal mind would expect; but that they were in a great measure spiritual, and fuch as the prophetic foul of Ifaac had principally before him, in the comprehenfive idea of their future and happy establishment, when they were no longer to be strangers and pilgrims upon earth: for, in fact, in the ftrict and literal sense of his father's grant,-Jacob enjoyed it not; and was fo far from being a happy man, that, in the most interest

ing paffages of his life, he met with nothing but difappointments and grievous afflictions.

Let us accompany him from the first treacherous hour of a mother's ambition; in confequence of which he is driven forth from his country, and the protection of his houfe, to feek protection and an eftablishment in the houfe of Laban his kinsman.

In what manner this anfwered his expectations, we find from his own pathetic remonftrance to Laban, when he had pursued him seven days journey, and overtook him on mount Gilead.-I fee him in the door of the tent, with the calm courage which innocence gives the oppreffed, thus remonftrating to his father-in-law upon the cruelty of his treatment. Thefe twenty years that I have been with thee,

thy ewes have not caft their young, and the rams of thy flock have I not eaten.-That which was torn of beafts I brought not unto thee—I bare the loss of it: what was Atolen by day, or stolen by night, of my hands didft thou require it. Thus I was: in the day the drought confumed me, and the froft by night, and my fleep departed from my eyes. Thus have I been twenty years in thy boufe-Iferved thee fourteen years for thy two daughters, and fix years for thy cattle; and thou haft changed wages ten times.

Scarce had he recovered from thefe evils, when the ill conduct and vices of his children wound his foul to death.-Reuben proves inceftuous.-Judah adulterous, his daughter Dinah is dishonoured,—— Simeon and Levi dishonour themselves by treachery, -two of his grandchildren are ftricken with fudden death, Rachel his beloved wife perishes, and in

circumftances which embittered his lofs, his fon Jofeph, a moft promifing youth, is torn from him, by the envy of his brethren; and, to close all, himfelf driven by famine in his old age to die amongst the Egyptians, a people who held it an abomination to eat bread with him. Unhappy patriarch !—well might he say, That few and evil had been his days the answer, indeed, was extended beyond the mo narch's inqy, which was fimply his age;but how could he look back upon the days of his pilgrim age, without thinking of the forrows which thof days had brought along with them? all that wa more in the answer than in the demand, was the overflowings of a heart ready to bleed afresh at th recollection of what had befallen.

Unwillingly does the mind digeft the evils pre pared for it by others; for those we prepare our felves, we eat but the fruit which we have plante and watered:a fhattered fortune-a fhattere frame, so we have but the satisfaction of shattering them ourselves, pafs naturally enough into the habi and by the ease with which they are both done, they fave the fpectator a world of pity: but for those like Jacob's, brought upon him by the hands from which he looked for all his comforts, the avarice of a parent the unkindness of a relation the ingratitude of a child,they are evils which leave a fcar;befides, as they hang over the heads of all, and therefore may fall upon any; every lookeron has an intereft in the tragedy;--but then we are apt to intereft ourselves no otherwife, than merely as the incidents themselves strike our paffions, with

suit carrying the leffon further-in a word-we realize nothing ;-we figh-we wipe away the tear, moral with it.

and there ends the story of mifery and the

Let us try to do better with this. To begin with the bad bias which gave the whole turn to the pa triarch's life,-parental partiality-or parental injuftice,it matters not by what title it ftands diflinguished 'tis that by which Rebekah planted a dagger in Efau's breast, and an eternal terror with it, in her own, left the should live to be deprived of them both in one day;and trust me, dear Chriftians, wherever that equal balance of kindness and love, which children look up to you for as their natural right, is no longer maintained--there will daggers ever be planted: The fon fball literally be fit at variance againft his father, and the daughter againft her mother, and the daughter in law against hermother. in-law,—and a man's foes shall be they of his own boufcbold.

It was an excellent ordinance, as well of domeftic policy, as of equity, which Mofes gave upon this head, in the 21t of Deuteronomy.

If a man have two wives, one beloved, and one bated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated, and if the first born fon be hers that was hated, then it shall be, when he maketh his fons to inherit that which he bath, that he may not make the fon of the beloved first-born before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firft-born, but he shall acknowledge the fon of the hated for first-born, by giving him a double portion of all that be bath. The evil was well fenced again?

-for 'tis one of those which steals in upon the heart with the affections, and courts the parent under fo fweet a form, that thousands have been betrayed by the very virtues which should have preferved them. Nature tells the parent, there can be no error on the fide of affection? but we forget, when nature pleads for one, fhe pleads for every child alike, and why is not her voice to be heard? Solomon fays, Oppreffion will make a wife man mad.-What will it do then to a tender and ingenuous heart, which feels itself neglected,-too full of reverence for the author of its wrongs, to complain?-See, it fits down infilence; robbed, by difcouragements, of all its natural powers to pleafe,-born to fee others loaded with careffes-in fome uncheery corner it nourishes its difcontent,and with a weight upon its spirits which its little stock of fortitude is not able to with ftand,it droops, and pines away-fad Victim of Caprice!

We are unavoidably led here into a reflection upon Jacob's conduct in regard to his fon Jofeph, which no way correfponded with the leffon of wif dom which the miferies of his own family might have taught him: furely his eyes, had feen forrow fufficient on that fcore, to have taken warning: and yet we find that he fell into the fame fnare of partiality to that child in his old age, which his mother Rebekah had shown to him in hers,for Ifrael loved Jofeph more than all his children, because he was the fon of his old age; and he made him a coat of many colours Ifrael! where was that prophetic fpirit which darted itself into future times, and told each