Living for the Best

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told that there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at its proper moment leads us on to fortune. It is also asserted that o

nd according as those hours are used to advantage or to disadvantage, is the success or failure of his fellows. We know this fact applies also to ourselves. All our hours are not the same hours, either in

that such hours are equally bright and glorious to every one. They may not be bright at all. They may be dull and heavy. But they bring us a conviction of what is right, a sense of obligation to do the right, and an assurance that God's way is the way our feet should tread.

es "Our Two Natures," two men, one the good and one the evil, coming out of the same block of stone, and struggling, each to see which shall gain the ascendancy over the other. Such two natures are in every one; but they appear with special prominence in Jacob. The question of his life was, Which is to conquer, the good or the evil? The struggle

that the mother recognized a certain undeveloped but capable fitness in Jacob for this blessing, a fitness that Esau lacked. Esau was a lusty, out-of-doors, happy-going man who would not control his appetites, and who, however pleasant he might be to have around when merry-making and sport were in the air, was not prudent enough and judicious enough to be the head of a great people. Rebekah, and Jacob, too, may have felt that it would be the height of famil

Bethel, and lying down to sleep-a wrong-doer, a fugitive, homeless, friendless, and in peril-had his dream. He saw heaven opened over him, with angels ascending as it were by a ladder to God and then descending by that ladder from God to his resting-place. The dream bore in upon his mind certain thoughts. One was, that God had not forsaken him, but was with him. Another was, that God was ready to forgive him for his sin and ble

re came a new sense of the wonderful love of God. What had he done to deserve it? Nothing. Why should not the heavens be closed, and be dark and forbidding to a defrauder like himself? That certainly was what one like himself might expect. Did not the cherubim drive sinful Adam and Eve out of the garden, and stand with flaming

opened a letter from his mother, and with the sight of her penmanship there came to him the memory of all her interest in his purity, integrity, and godliness. He crushed the letter in his hand and threw it into the fire burning on the hearth. But another man, many another man, though moved by good impulses, and even touched to the quick by them after a while has

cts of ambition-there was a feeling that, after all, God and God's blessings are the supreme things of life. So he did not let the awe of the hour pass unimproved. He acted on that awe. He then and there as best he could confessed God and his faith in Him, raising a pillar of stone in God's name and anointing it with oil in significance that the spot upon which it stood was consecrated to God. Thus he erected the first of all those tabernacles, temples, synagogues, churches, cathedrals, chapels, that

ms to have had more traits that men would name attractive than had Jacob. An open-hearted, open-handed, out-spoken man, rough but kind and generous and ready, he at life's beginning appeared to have more in his favor than this grasping, secretive brother. When Esau's best hours came-hours when the sense of his own misdeeds rankled in his heart and when he was aware that repentance and reformation and a new application to duty should be his-he fe

him deceivingly and unkindly. Jacob showed much self-control and much generosity. Laban's flocks increased beneath Jacob's care until Laban became a very rich man. If a lamb or a sheep was injured in any way Jacob bore all the expense connected with its hurt or its death. Had Laban recognized the value of his services, then perhaps Jacob would not again have come under the power of his own crafty, calculating, money-making propensities. But Laban treated Jacob like a slave

o Jacob and who had given him his farewell blessing. To the west, where Bethel lay and whither his heart called him, is Esau. How shall he meet Esau? He does now what seems, from the night at Bethel, to have become more or less of a custom with him; he consults God. He lays the situation as it lies in his mind before God. He thus tries to see the situation as it actually is when seen in the pre

ear vision of the right. Light is indeed essential that men already in the path of duty may walk safely therein, b

d, the God that had promised to bring him back to Canaan and give him a place there, surely preserve him? Then it was, while these questions were throbbing within him, that in the darkness one like a man grappled with him in wrestling. Should he be faint-hearted and cowardly, distrusting God's promise of protection, and let this stranger throw him, kill him, and so forever end the possibility of God's fulfilling His promise? Or should he lay hold of God's promise to sustain him, and do his best to throw this stranger, and thus preserve his life and accompl

s an Almighty One wrestling with him! Jacob realized that God had come to him! With that revelation, even in his weakened condition, he clings the closer to the stranger; he will hold on to God. "Let me go, for the day breaketh," cries the stranger. "I will not let thee go, except thou ble

Simon, son of Jonah"-that is, the "listening" son of a weak "dove," unreliable, changeable, frail-"thou shalt be Peter"-that is, a "rock," firm, stable. Christ thus indicated that he would make of weak Simon a resolute, trustworthy Peter, a

as Jacob had been, than "Israel"! I would rather-under God and for God-have that name given me by God than any other na

d and the prospect was dark, he trusted God; because when he was weakened and brought low, he would not let God go unless He bless him. "Though He slay me, yet

; his memory was full of the loving kindnesses of God, and his hope laid hold on a blessed future. Down in Egypt as he draws nigh to death he triumphantly speaks of "God, before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, and the Angel which redeemed me from all evil." He died a man of God, honored in his day, and honored since-a man who had such faith in the promise

rer God should be followed, any motion of our heart toward duty should be obeyed. God is sure to send us, one and all, special hours in which His wishes are clear to our understandings and His promises are reassuri

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