History of Jacob and Joseph,

LECTURE XVI.

And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befal you in the last days. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people....GEN. xlix. 1, 33.

T is the wise ordinance of nature, that men should wish and endeavor to live as long as they can. A life even of pain and misery extinguishes not the love of life. Nay, the mind, by a sort of pleasing delusion, creates to itself an imaginary immortality, and strives to extend its mortal interest and existence beyond the grave. Hence the anxiety of men, to provide for their families and friends that subsistence and comfort, which they are never to see them enjoy. Hence the trembling forebodings of paternal solicitude about his surviving offspring. Hence the hope that glistens in the dying eye, the blessing and the prayer that quaver on the faltering tongue, and the last gush of joy that visits the scarcely palpitating heart.

At every period of existence, we are thinking of some future period of existence; and we fondly carry the feelings of the present hour into the distant scenes of life; as if we could be susceptible of pleasure and pain after we have ceased from feeling. The child connects, in idea, the amusements of his inexperienced age with the attainments of maturer years; the dying ather continues to live in his offspring; and, till we are

indeed gone, we dream and dream of being longer here.

We have attended the progress of the patriarch Jacob through the various stages of a life unusually long, if we reckon woes for years, and compare it with the present standard of longevity; but short, if we con sider the antediluvian scale; short, if we consider to what a span the history of it shrinks; short, if we compare it with eternity. The sun has shone upon his head at length, but not till it is covered with grey hairs. He has found his Joseph again, and even embraced his sons; but not till the hands are reduced to do the office of the eyes. He walks down the steep of life in tranquillity, but his limbs tremble under him. His favorite son is wise and good, exalted to deserved honors; but his advancement has its foundation in the unexampled villany of nine of his brothers. He is now arrived at that point to which the sorrows and joys of life equally tend, in which all events of whatever complexion must finally issue. Feeling in himself the approach of dissolution, and warned by that Spirit who had been his comforter in all his tribulations, he summons his children to his presence, and, with a mixture of paternal severity and tenderness, anxiety and confidence, administers his last dying counsels to them.

It belongs to another province than that of history, to illustrate and expound this address of the expiring patriarch to his sons. Indeed, it is a passage of perhaps as much difficulty as any in scripture. The imperfect knowledge we have of the sacred language, the abundant use made of metaphorical and figurative expression, allusion to historical facts, which are either not recorded at all, or rather hinted than related, together with the natural ambiguity and obscurity of prophecy, all concur here to render Jacob's meaning in many places hard to be understood, if not totally inexplicable. Instead therefore of spending your time, and abusing your patience, by dry unprofitable criti

cism on points which we frankly acknowledge we do not comprehend, we shall endeavor to look through the passage just as it stands in the common translation; into the dying patriarch's heart, and observe how the af-. fections of the man blend themselves with the sagacity and penetration of the prophet.

Following the order of nature, he addresses himself first to Reuben, and fondly recollects the first emotions which filled bis heart on becoming a father. He speaks to him as raised up and destined of Providence to birthright honors and privileges, but as having degraded and dishonored himself by a base unnatural crime, and therefore rejected of God. And thereby men are instructed, that no superiority of birth, of fortune, of abilities, can counterbalance the weight of atrocious wickedness. In this censure, the shame, sorrow, resentment and regret of a dying father seem to mingle their force.

The two next sons of Jacob had associated together for the perpetration of an unheard-of piece of cruelty, impiety and deceit. Jacob had sharply reproved them at the time it was committed, and now gives his dying testimony against their barbarous and perfidious conduct, in terms of just indignation and abhorrence, and prophetically threatens them with division and dispersion. But this, which was, and intended to be a severe punishment to themselves, turned out in the accomplishment of the prediction, as the punishments of Heaven often are, an unspeakable honor and benefit to their posterity. Levi in particular, " divided in Jacob, and scattered in Israel," was thereby rendered only more illustrious and important, being dignified as the priests and ministers of the most high God, in the presence of all their brethren. The crime of Reuben affected his descendants to the latest posterity. For they never regained their original advantage of birth; never furnished judge or general, priest, prophet er prince to Israel; but the offence of Levi was expiat

ed in his own person, and reached not in its effects to his offspring. The moral consequences of guilt ought in justice to extend to the guilty themselves alone; but the civil effects may and often do involve the innocent; and that without any imputation of justice. The sou ought not to suffer death for the murder which his father has committed; but he may forfeit forever his hereditary honors by his father's treason.

By what apparent title was Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, raised to supremacy over his brethren? Neither his moral character, nor intellectual abilities, neither natural pre-eminence nor parental partiality seem to confer upon him this high distinction. It must therefore simply be resolved into the will of Him who "doth according to his will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" Dan. iv. 35. It was of Providence who raiseth up one, and bringeth another down. But how came Jacob acquainted with this? The son on whom he conferred the double portion of primogeniture; the son whom he early dressed out in a coat of many colors; the son of his Rachel; the son of his old age; the son already so near a throne, and still nearer to his heart, would undoubtedly, could a father's fondness have disposed, succeeded to the royal dignity, or the sanctity of the priesthood, or the still higher dignity of giving birth to the promised Messiah, or to all the three. But the purposes of Heaven do not always keep pace with the destinations of men. They conform not themselves to the conclusions of human reason, or the propensities of the human heart. Not gentle and forgiving Jcseph, but stern, unrelenting, merciless Levi gives birth to a race of priests. And lewd, incontinent, incestuous Judah, not chaste, modest, self-denied Joseph, becomes the father of kings, and the progenitor of Shiloh. For what with men is all essential, all important, is with God only some little petty circumstance. And

what human understanding treats as merely a casual, accidental circumstance, Providence exalts into the mighty hinge on which the fate of empires and of worlds depends. Men bend before a throne, and despise virtue; God pours respect upon goodness, and tramples upon a throne.

I must now express a wish, which I ought to have done earlier in my discourse, namely, that those who attend the Lecture of this evening, had with attention previously perused the whole of this forty-ninth chapter of Genesis. As without at least a general knowledge of it, much of what has been said, and still may be said, will possibly be unintelligible: and one great, perhaps the principal end of the Lecture, will be obtained, if any are thereby induced to search the scriptures more carefully, and to compare spiritual things with spiritual more diligently.

Jacob then, guided by the spirit of prophecy, as lately in preferring Ephraim to Manesseh, and not following his own spirit, which would gladly have given the preference to Joseph, as his father's partiality would have sent Esau before himself, assigns the kingdom to his fourth son, with a profusion of images and emblems significant of power, authority and plenty. Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies: thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; froin the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion: who shall rouse him up," Gen. xlix. 8, 9. lion's whelp, a lion, an old lion; garments washed in wine, and clothes in blood of grapes; eyes red with wine, teeth white with milk," is the strong figurative language employed by a prophetic father, to represent the invincible force, the secure diguity and majesty ; the rich abundance, allotted of God the disposer of all things, to this prerogative tribe.

"A.

But the prediction of importance above all the rest,