not because the blessing or curse shows their neighbors to be well or ill disposed towards them, and it is pleasanter to receive signs of friendship than proofs of enmity, but because they believe that these blessings and curses exercise some influence upon their lot, and that their prosperity and adversity are, to some extent, dependent upon them. In ancient times this was a general belief.

But of course people did not attach the same weight to every man's words. They declared the favorable or unfavorable predictions of certain individuals to be especially rich in happy or disastrous results. Who these specially powerful individuals were, was a question variously answered according to the various mental attitudes from which it was asked. Those who attached most importance to religion believed the most pious men to have the greatest influence; but others were especially anxious about the words of those whom they considered cleverer than others. It often happened that the boldness with which certain people declared themselves to have power over the forces of nature and the lot of their fellow men, made such an impression on the ignorant multitude that they bowed down before them in terror. Moreover any circumstance that threw any sort of mystery over a man was enough to make people think that he had power over the lot of his fellow men. This belief then in soothsayers, magicians, witches, rain-doctors, and enchanters, which was once very general and has by no means disappeared even now, rises from a want of reflection, from ignorance, and most of all from fear, which is always powerful amongst those whose intellectual life is poorly developed.

It is not surprising that people who held such beliefs thought a great deal of the blessing or the curse of a father. Who would not shudder involuntarily, however innocent he might be, if his father cursed him? In such a case, though the intellect repeated after the Israelite sage, "As a sparrow flies away, as a swallow disappears, so a curse for which there is no cause shall not come," 1 yet no one would be able to get rid of a very bitter recollection of it, and many a one would be in danger, when some misfortune happened to him, of thinking of this curse as if the two things had some connection with each other. And yet we know very well that such a connection does not really exist, and that no man's words have power to fix our weal or woe. How very differently the ancient Israelites thought upon these matters and how

1 Proverbs xxvi. 2.

far most of them were from sharing the common sense of the proverb just quoted we may see from the story of Isaac's blessing.

Isaac wishes, before he dies, to bless Esau and to make him lord over all his brothers. If he fulfils this intention Esau will really receive these blessings. So Isaac himself and Esau and Rebekah and Jacob all believe. The last of these disguises himself and receives his father's blessing in his brother's stead; he obtains the promise of a fruitful country and of the rulership. Esau is in despair when he finds out what has happened, and Isaac too is downcast, for his words have decided the future of his sons. He perfectly understands that Jacob came "with deceit" and stole the blessing, but in spite of this the blessing itself does not lose its power. "And now he will be blessed," he declares emphatically. Now it is all very well to try to soften down this most extraordinary and indeed shocking representation by saying that Isaac's mistake was brought about by Yahweh because he desired to make Jacob the superior, and that Isaac, therefore, though he did not know it himself, blessed his sons through faith;" but nothing is gained by this way of putting it, for it simply brings more clearly to light the amazing imperfections in the conception formed by this writer of his god. For if Yahweh desired to make Jacob chief of the brothers, could he not have done so in spite of Esau's being the elder and of Isaac's having blessed him? Must Jacob deceive his brother twice in order that his god might be able to bless him? Had the words of a man such a powerful influence over Yahweh?

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We observed just now that this superstitious set of ideas springs from a low stage of intellectual development; and it may perhaps be affirmed that the story tells quite as much against the writer's morality. For when he represents Jacob as being blessed by Yahweh by means of the birthright he had bought from his brother in an unguarded moment, and the blessing he had stolen from him, we might very well suppose that he saw absolutely nothing wrong in these proceedings. But this would be doing him an injustice. Appearances in this case are misleading.

Let us examine the characters of the two men here portrayed!

We are most attracted by Esau. Not that even he is a very noble figure! The levity with which, to still his hunger,

1 Hebrews xi. 20.

he sells his rights as the first-born son, with the exclamation, "Who knows how soon I may die!" is a striking type of the lightness with which many a one sacrifices peace of conscience and health of soul to some momentary pleasure or passing enjoyment,1 and is as much to be condemned as his violent burst of passion against Jacob. But this levity is accompanied by a certain freshness and naturalness. He loves his father, and, for his sake, puts off his vengeance. There is something impressive in his passionate grief when the blessing is stolen from him; for it speaks of something more than mere disappointment at the loss of wealth and honor. Esau is rough, but straightforward; a man of the field, and, though not our ideal, yet more attractive than Jacob, the smooth, cautious, crafty man, who seizes his opportunity of getting hold of the birthright, has but one objection when his mother urges him to deceive his blind old father, namely, that perhaps he may be found out and cursed, and unhesitatingly follows his mother's advice as soon as she declares her readiness to take the curse upon herself! The word used by the writer to.describe the character of Jacob2 is peculiar. I have translated it "respectable." Most of the translations, both ancient and modern, render it "simple," "upright." upright." The word that is used in the original properly means 66 perfect," "sound," and the writer's meaning in using this word of Jacob is explained by the connection. Esau is called a man of the field, rough, quick, and changeable, but Jacob is a "perfect" man, dwelling in tents. Gentle manners, courtesy in the intercourse of life and culture distinguished the dwellers in tents from the rough, wandering hunters. These are the qualities, then, celebrated in Jacob.

We must not suppose, however, that because the writer placed the respectable Jacob above the ruder Esau he therefore approved of the conduct of the former to his brother and his father. It is only among some few tribes of savages that such ignorance of what is right can be found as to make them think there is nothing wrong in cheating their nearest relatives, and the writer sees well enough that Jacob's conduct can be described by no gentler term than that of cheating; he himself calls it so without reserve." His mistake is in calling ill-gotten goods a blessing of God, and so making his Yahweh a party to Jacob's knaveries; not in having approved of the deception, which he never did.

In the main, then, we agree with the writer in our judg1 Hebrews xii. 16, 17. 2 Genesis xxv. 27. 3 Genesis xxvii. 35, 36.

be pre

ment of this dexterous double dealing on the part of Israel's ancestor. But we go further than he does, and should call a man like Jacob anything but " perfect." Cultivation may be worth something, and pleasant manners in society may ferable to a rough way of speaking and acting, for roughness often causes mischief and is a source of strife. But if an ugly mind lurks behind the urbane exterior, if the pleasing manners throw a veil over scheming treachery, then all the outward cultivation is as nothing. Nay, sometimes it is even

worse than nothing, for we are attracted by it in spite of ourselves, and so the deceiver has free play. A rough, straightforward man is at any rate better than a "smooth" individual

FEW

CHAPTER XXIII.

JACOB'S DREAM.

GEN. XXVIII. 10-22.

EW forms of worship were so universal fn ancient times as the homage paid to sacred stones. Amongst uncivilized tribes, or so-called savages, it is to be found almost every where to the present day; and among the most various nations, which have long ago struggled out of the state of barbarism, sundry reminiscences of the worship of stones are still preserved. The savage looks upon certain unhewn stones as deities, and worships them accordingly. It is very difficult to make out what his ideas in doing this are, and so too with respect to many other elements of his worship it is very hard to understand what goes on in his mind, just because there is not much that does go on there. He reflects but little or not at all. Involuntarily we look for too much depth in him.

The lowest stage of religion that we can discover is generally called fetishism, sometimes animism. Its characteristic is the worship of all manner of miscellaneous objects that happen to make an impression on its votaries. Among the collections of these sacred things are found the strangest objects, products both of nature and of art, side by side. The name fetishism is not really at all appropriate to this form of worship, since it owes its origin to a mistake. For when the Portuguese voyagers came to certain regions to which but

little civilization or knowledge had penetrated, and to which no Europeans had ever found their way before (such as the countries of the Negroes in Africa for instance), they saw the natives worshipping certain objects, and supposed that they were instruments of Magic. So they called this form of religion after their word fetisso which means a charm. The name animism, derived from the Latin word anima, “ soul," implies that the savages think of their sacred objects as living and having souls. We shall use the word fetishism as the one most generally employed.

Now among sacred objects of this kind, unhewn stones occupy a prominent place; and in the history of the religion of even the most highly civilized peoples, such as the Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, Arabs, and Germans, we find traces of the attachment felt by the masses to their stone-gods, an attachment often so deep that in many cases the reformers who desired to supersede these rude forms of worship by better ones, saw no chance of getting rid of the sacred stones. They tried therefore to find some explanation of the homage paid to them. Among the Romans they made them into boundary stones, raised in honor of Terminus, the god of boundaries. In other places they explained the homage paid them by declaring that they were meteor-stones that had fallen from the sky. In other districts they were made into monuments or altars of the forefathers. When the simple faith in the consecrated stones began to languish, the learned men of the Greeks and Romans, among others, gave all manner of profound interpretations of their sanctity, and taught that these stones were the dwellings of the gods, or petrified sunbeams. But this throws no light upon the real significance they had to the minds of their ancient worshippers. Perhaps the gigantic dimensions and grotesque forms of certain masses of rock gave them the impression of strength and of something mysterious. Then some concourse of events might lead them to believe that a certain stone had exercised a beneficial or injurious influence upon their fate; and imagination, unrestrained by habits of reflection, had thus free play. The belief that all objects were alive, contributed its share towards increasing the reverential awe for anything that had once attracted the attention, and finally the fame of the sanctity of certain stones was preserved and magnified by tradition. However this may be, the worship of stones reappears in all manner of countries. They were honored by sacrifices and were anointed with blood, wine, or oil in sign of reverence.