over and help us.' They came at once, and both of the boats were filled, and filled so full that they began to sink. And the point I wish you to note is that the first results of the kindness of the Saviour werebreaking nets and sinking ships! You see, then, that when Jesus enters a life (as He entered Andrew's and Simon's boat that morning), it is always possible that at the first there may be some distress and confusion and disorder. We find abundant records of it in the early Church, and every minister has seen it in his converts. Let no one be distressed, then, if when Christ steps on board it is not all joy and singing from the start. All that will come, in the good time of God, for the promise is there shall be no more sea. Meantime, just because Christ is good, and changes the empty night into such morning fulness, the nets (that are so precious to us) may seem on the point of breaking, and the waves come lapping to the gunwale of the ship.

ONCE

NCE more, it is the nearness of Jesus that shows us our unworthiness. One day, when Jesus was across the lake in Gadara, the Gadarenes came to Him with a strange petition: they came and begged Him to depart out of their coasts. Jesus had cured the Gadarene demoniac; He had interfered with the local trade of swine-keeping; and so incensed were the people at this interference, and so dead were they to the glory of their Visitor, that they begged Him to depart, and He departed. How different is the cry of Peter here, 'Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.' It was not because he was dead in trespasses and sins, it was because he was wakened to his own unworthiness, that Peter was overpowered by the Lord's presence. And so, while Jesus departed from the Gadarenes, the next word that He spoke to Peter was 'Fear not' (v. 10). Sometimes, when we gather a bunch of flowers, they seem to us very sweet and beautiful; and so they may

be, for they are God's creatures, and He has made everything beautiful in its time. But if we take a pure white rose and set it in the midst of them, it is strange how garish and coarse some of the others appear. They are God's creatures, but they seem less worthy now, in the near presence of that pure and perfect whiteness. Just so when Jesus Christ is far away, we may be very well contented with ourselves. But when He enters our boat, and shows us His love and power, like Peter'I am a sinful man.'

THEN, lastly, these men followed Christ when things were brightest with them. They had never had such a fishing in their lives. It was not in the weary morning after a useless night that they forsook all and followed Jesus. It was when they were the envy of the neighbourhood for the huge haul of fishes they had got. Will the children act as Simon and Andrew acted? Will they follow Jesus when life is at its brightest? It is better to come late than not at all. It is better to come in old age than to die Christless. But it is best to come when all the nets are full, when life is golden, and the heart is young; best, and not only best, but surest, for 'they that seek Me early, shall find Me.'

R

TWELFTH SUNDAY

Morning

JACOB AND ESAU

Passages to be read: Gen. xxv. 27-34; xxvii. 18-38.

EBEKAH had twin sons, Esau and Jacob, and

to-day we study two scenes in the life of these sons-scenes which reveal their characters most clearly. It is often a wonder to us how, in one family circle, there should be children of quite opposite dispositions, and I dare say the neighbours often felt a similar wonder as they watched the two lads who were growing up in Isaac's tent. The one was bold, impetuous, and daring; fond of the open, a very skilful hunter; there was nothing he loved better than to be off at daybreak with his bow on his shoulder and his arrows in his belt; but the other was quiet and canny and (as the neighbours would say) deep as a well; he had no love at all for feats of hardihood; he never wearied of his own company, or of his mother's. We are not surprised that Esau was Isaac's favourite, for there is something that appeals to helpless age in gallant and adventurous youth; nor can we wonder that Rebekah set her heart on Jacob, who was so thoughtful and so quiet at home. So these two lads grew up in the one tent, brothers, yet with a whole world of difference between them, and it is this difference which is so signally illustrated in the two incidents we have to study to-day. In the first, we have Esau parting with his birthright; in the second, we have Isaac blessing Jacob. In both we have the child of the bow and of the

F

spear outmatched and outwitted by the stay-at-home. What lessons, then, may we learn from these two stories that are so faithfully and so simply told?

WELL, first, it is not easy to be wise when we are hungry.

When Esau started out hunting in the morning, he had little thought of what evening was to bring. His heart beat merrily and his brain was clear, and he saw things in their right proportions then. But when evening came he was utterly forspent; he was physically exhausted and ravenous with hunger; and it was then that nothing he possessed seemed worthy of being compared with a dish of savoury food. So do we learn how dangerous it is to make any bargains when we are very tired. When we are physically worn with a day's toil we are not capable of judging rightly. A hungry man is an angry man, says the old proverb, and an angry man is not fit to transact business. May we not learn, too, to feel a deeper compassion for those who rarely have enough to eat? If they act foolishly and break the law, and play fast and loose with much that makes life noble, should not our hearts be very tender towards them, as they are towards Esau in his sorry bargain? I think that Jesus had all that in view when He laid the command on us to feed the hungry. For when we feed the hungry we not only satisfy the body, nor do we merely minister to a physical want. We make it easier to resist temptation; we help to restore the balance to the mind; we do something to keep men from these rash and reckless acts that, done in a moment, may ruin all the years.

PUT in another light this passage is meant to teach us how prone we are to despise what cost us nothing. Esau had not toiled and striven for his birthright. He had not won it by the work of his own hands. It was the dowry of God to him; the gift of heaven; it had

fallen on him by the will divine. May it not be then that just because of this, it had never seemed truly precious in Esau's eyes? And should we not all be alive to our constant peril, of forgetting God's gifts because they are freely given? It is the things that we toil for, which we prize; it is the things that have cost us weary hours to win. The fruit that has dropped into our lap from the laden branches is not nearly so sweet as the fruit we have climbed to get. So are we always in danger of despising many of the common (yet choicest) gifts of God, because they are given to us (as Esau's birthright was) out of a free and unearned and sovereign bounty. Was it by the toil of our own hands that our eye acquired its marvellous power of seeing? or our ear of hearing? or our brain of thinking? Was it our sacrifice that gave us our spiritual liberty? Was it our labour that reared our childhood's home? Such things as these may well be called our birthright; it is these that make life great and glorious for us; yet how often we despise them just as Esau did, because, like Esau's, they were so freely given!

AGAIN, this meets us in the second incident, how we

may be tempted most sorely by those who love us most. No one would doubt Rebekah's love for Jacob. It was very deep and it was very brave. She was willing that all the curse should fall on her, if only the son she loved should get the blessing (xxvii. 13). Yet it was not any foe who tempted Jacob to win the blessing of Isaac by a trick; it was the mother who idolised her son, and who would have given her life for him, she loved him so. So do we see how the fieriest temptations may come from the side of those who love us best. It is when the voice that whispers is as a mother's voice that the onset of temptation is most terrible. It was hard for Christ to be tempted in the wilderness; perhaps it was harder still to be tempted by Simon Peter. It was the very love of