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WHILE some incidents in the Scripture narrative appear secondary and subsidiary, others stand in the main path of its advance, and offer themselves to our eyes as waymarks and signals -proofs that we are in the great highway of revelation, points from which we start afresh, tokens of the greater things to which the road will soon conduct us. Of this kind is the dream of Jacob. None can pass that incident by unnoticed. It seizes on the imagination by its picturesque and graceful form, enriches the mind by plain instruction and suggestions of expanding thought, and quickens faith and hope by intimations of things future and unseen. These characteristics belong to this particular story in common with many others comprised in that wonderful course of progressive instruction and prophecy, the Old Testament history. Especially does it present to us an illustration of the principle of development by which the whole of that history is pervaded and distinguished. The events which are shaped by the direction and recorded under the inspiration of God, are found to be impregnated with the forecasting purposes of the Eternal Mind. Not in the way of accidental resemblance or arbitrary application, but in the way of divine intention, they are related to the whole scheme of things of which they form a part, and in which earlier facts are symbols and commencements of things that follow. As the events are not isolated, so neither is their signification limited. It opens and enlarges with the growing light, till it has obtained a perfect and eternal interpretation in the person and work and kingdom of Jesus our Lord.

He who reads the Scriptures in the light of this principle, will recognize in Jacob's dream something more than an episode of individual life. He will see the pledge of a personal history, but also of a national destiny, and, further, of a spiritual reality. He will see, under those open heavens, first the man Jacob, then the collective Israel, finally the Son of man.

Vol. 59.-No. 276.

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1. As a story of individual life, how precious is this page of Scripture! How fruitful of comfort and strength has it been to a thousand hearts! Jacob leaves his home, and our sympathy goes with the lonely traveller, who carries with him a load of care and doubt and sorrow. We know the plain man dwelling in tents, his domestic habits, his warm affections, his tender remembrances of the past, his fearful forecastings of evil to come. It is no bold adventurer who goes forth into the wide world, but one whose nature it is to cling to what he leaves, and shrink from what he meets, and who now asks nothing of the unknown future but that he may have bread to eat and raiment to put on, and come again to his father's house in peace. Yet that heart had been early occupied by great desires. The commerce with heaven, and the purposes of God connected with his family, had awakened in him no common interest. He had seen them despised by One whose heritage they seemed to be, and had longed that that heritage might be transferred to himself. He had heard it renounced by his heedless brother, and declared his own in his father's blessing. But in those transactions he had sinned. They were remembrances of shame and bitterness, and had brought the punishment of his present exile. He knew not what to look for at the hand of the God whom he had revered and yet offended. In this mingled state of high desires and conscious guilt, of great hopes and well-grounded fears, lonely, friendless, and downcast, he ended the first sad day of his journey, and lay down among the stones.

“And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." (Gen. xxviii. 12—15.)

Was ever teaching more fitted to the circumstances of the moment, and the state of mind to which it was addressed? The light of that vision changed at once the aspect of the world, and shone to distant years through the long chastisements of a muchtried life. Jacob's intercourse with God was begun, and for him earth was no longer separate from heaven. There was the stair of communication between them; its base among the cold stones, its top in the open sky: Jacob below it, the Lord above it, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it. That spot was a house of God, and a gate of heaven; and if that spot, then any spot whereon Jacob lay. Not for the stones of Luz, but for him who rested among them, that visionary ladder rose, connecting his poor

earthly state with the glory of God; and for him the path was peopled with the ever-passing forms of ministering spirits, living signs and active instruments of that providence of which the Lord's own voice assured him.*

The imagery of this dream needs no interpreter; but there is, perhaps, occasion for a few words on this last part of it. Here was a discovery to Jacob, not only of the care of God, but of the instruments of that care; not only of providence, but of the agents of providence. It is a discovery not confined to this vision, but carried on universally and consistently throughout the Scriptures. Jacob's ladder is not more alive with angels than are those pages

of truth.

There is reason to think that this part of the divine discoveries is imperfectly appreciated now. The visions of piety, though clearer in some things, are perhaps grown dimmer in others. The heavens are open, and the shining path is there for personal intercourse with God; but the world of intermediate life has faded: the ladders which are set up upon the earth have no angels on them

now.

For this tendency to slight these disclosures of God, there are obvious causes, both religious and scientific. There have been greater revelations of the unseen world than that of angels, and a dispensation has been unfolded, conducted by a ministration far higher than theirs; and a feeling has arisen that they had better be dismissed from our thoughts, lest the idea of their presence and agency should interfere with our immediate transactions with God, and divert our minds from the work of the Son and of the Spirit. Superstition, too, has found its materials in the revelation of angels, and fanciful imaginations have turned it to their use; and the dread of the superstitious and fantastic is a true instinct of piety. At the same time, the diffusion and advance of physical science have wrought to the same end. The forces and laws of the material world are so largely known as to fill our view, and are so adequate to their ends as to satisfy our inquiries. A world of spirits, whose presence is diffused through them, and whose agency is blended with them, appears to us an intrusive and disturbing element. Thus, excluded alike from the spiritual and

"The angels are seen ascending and descending." Olshausen, on John i. 52, observes: "It is remarkable that avaBaive is placed first, whereas it would appear necessary that кaтaßaiveir should precede this. The reason is doubtless that in the Logos, which in Jesus had become man, the collective world of spirit was in effect transferred to the earth, and therefore the flow of life issues from and returns to him." This seems spoken in forgetfulness that the same order is observed in the original passage. Stier re

marks in passing, "The angels of God, long round about man upon the earth (wherefore it was there said, they ascended and descended), are now all gathered," &c. &c. This implies the true explanation, namely, that the angels are revealed to Jacob not as now first coming, but as already having their scene of activity on earth. He finds himself intro duced into a system already in full operation, in which the angels of God are already engaged below in things which give occasion for their upward errands,

the natural life, the idea of the world of angels is consigned to the province of poetry.

But we deal unfairly with an important revelation of God, which ought to hold in our minds that place which it holds in His book. If we would take our thoughts more faithfully from the written word, we should enlarge the possessions of piety without increasing its dangers. The angels of God have there no function in the great concerns of spiritual life. They are not mediators, teachers, or consolers. They are not capable of entering into inward communion with us, and have no claim to worship or trust. In the world of circumstance, in our contact with outward things, their contact with us is placed. When, on extraordinary occasions, their presence has been disclosed, they have come no nearer to men than their fellow men could do. "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth for ministry (i.e., ministry to God) for the sake of those who shall be heirs of salvation?"*

Neither, on the other side, is there the least inconsistency between this discovery of Scripture and those of physical science. The deepest insight into the powers of nature cannot reach the point where spiritual powers may mingle with them, or give the right to assert that there is nothing present in the material world but material forces. Do we not rather seem on the very verge of passing beyond them, as we see the chain of material causes growing finer and more subtle? Surely, whilst we behold the vastness of the material, and are informed of the vastness of the spiritual creation, we cannot think it improbable that the one should find in the other a scene of duty and province of activity. There is nothing in the way of reason which calls on us to evade the plain declarations of Scripture that so it is. The powers of nature are there represented as instinct with the powers of spirit, and visible means and invisible agents appear in the closest connection. Yet to many readers and commentators this principle of Scripture is simply an embarrassment by all means to be got rid of. These angels of the Lord are poetic symbols, oriental images; and the creation of God, in all true conceptions of it, must be cleared of their presence. An angel smites the Assyrian host, but it is a deadly wind from the wilderness. An angel stands over Jerusalem with his sword drawn in his hand, but it is a poisoned state of the atmosphere. No doubt; but why, if it be the one, should it not also be the other? Does the mention of an agent signify that he used no means, or the intimation of the means exclude the idea of a living agent? "He maketh his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire." (Ps. civ. 4.) "That means," they say, "He maketh winds His messengers, and flames of fire His ministers ;" i.e., employs them as one does his servants. A true assertion, but a false interpretation, which neither the Hebrew encourages, nor the Greek (Sept.)

* Dean Alford's Note on Heb. i. 14 is a good exposition of the more exact signi fication which the Authorized Version rather fails to give.

permits, and which the quotation in Heb. i. 7. flatly forbids. No! it means what it says, and what all Scripture testifies, that He makes His angelic ministers the directing powers of winds and flames, when winds and flames are to perform His will. To what extent, in what ways, or under what conditions the spiritual ministers of God act in His material creation and are related to human life, are questions to which we can scarcely reply: but it would be unreasonable to limit this agency to the particular occasions on which it has been disclosed to sense, even if these were not actually presented to us as intimations of an unseen system. It is, however, manifest that this system is employed for the great ends of the present dispensation, and is connected with the line of God's dealings in bringing in the kingdom of His Son, and with the earthly histories of those "who shall be heirs of salvation."

We wrong ourselves, then, when we allow ourselves to be taught by the world instead of by the Bible, and to acquiesce in this assumed separation of earthly and heavenly things. More true, and certainly more noble, were the views of those ancient saints, who ever saw their God as "the Lord of hosts," and His creation as filled with His ministers. They "went on their way, and the angels of God met them." They reviewed the past as a time in which "God had fed them all their life long, and his angel had redeemed them from all evil." They entreated others to "taste and see that the Lord is good, and that His angel encampeth about them that fear Him and delivereth them."

It is of this connection of Jacob's vision with individual life that we are speaking now; and it makes the assurance of God's care more effectual for strength and comfort by the discovery of the ministers of His care. Let us not impair the fulness of the vision which is present to the believer in every stage of his journey, and awaits him in every place where he lies down. Still let there be at our side the ladder set up on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the Lord above it, uttering His words of love and faithfulness; and let there be also the angels of God ascending and descending on it. What a total change such a vision of truth can make in earthly scenes and human life, experience alone can teach. He who lives in the sense of direct communication with the Father of spirits, and of personal connection with the world of spirits, has a secret which will cheer a lonely journey, and glorify a lodging among the stones. For him, every place which holds him has become a house of God and a gate of heaven.

2. But we have something more in this vision than a light on individual life. He to whom it is given is a representative man, whose name is to be borne through descending ages by a nation separated to the purposes of God. His life lies in the direct line of that train of events which introduces the kingdom of heaven. In him, therefore, fresh steps are made in advance, and fresh intimations given of things to come. When he went forth from his

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