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THE K I N G ’ S B U S I NE S S
whom the line of the promised Messiah should be continued. This was a dash ing of their brightest hopes. 3. The Parents’ Petition. What a beautiful picture the Script ure gives us of this devoted and lonely husband and wife together taking their deep disappointment to God in prayer. May we not be sure that in their pray ing they pleaded the covenant which, God had made with Abraham that through Isaac the blessing should come? What else there may have been in the prayer we do not know, but surely there would be promises concerning the bringing up of the child that they were asking for, as we know there were in other cases in the Bible, and outside the Bible too. Who can measure the influences set in motion by the prayers of godly fathers and mothers for their children before ever the children are given them. Samuel J. Mills, in a very real sense the pioneer of the modern, missionary movement in America, was devoted to foreign missionary work by his mother before ever he was born. As a boy he overheard his mother tell ing this fact to a friend, and it at least confirmed him in his desire to be a for eign missionary. J. Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, when he told his parents of his decision to go to China as a missionary, learned for the first time that before he was born his parents had dedicated him to foreign missionary service. When he inquired why they had not told him sooner he learned that they had such confidence in God that they would not bring any human influence to bear upon him, so that his decision might be alto gether of God. A little group of Occi dental College students were relating in the Highland Park Presbyterian Church how they had come to decide to be foreign missionaries. One of the young women told how she had been given to the Lord for this work by her mother before ever the dear mother’s arms had been put around her. Are the
Christian fathers and mothers of Amer ica fulfilling their duty to God and their children as these fathers and mothers we have spoken of did? 4. The Boys’ Birth. Like the birth of Isaac himself, the birth of his boys was supernatural. God worked outside ordinary natural causes. Just as really must every child of God be begotten supernaturally by thq Holy Spirit. 5. The Boys’ Development. Esau and Jacob were very different in their character and conduct from the beginning. Esau was the sportsman, rough, boisterous, adventurous, impuls ive, and yet withal, good hearted. The heart of every true man and woman warms up to him. Jacob, on the other hand, was a home body, quiet, indus trious, shrewd. There was something else in Jacob, that Esau seems to have lacked completely; Jacob had a sense of God and spiritual things. Prom the purely human point of view Esau would seem to be the more admirable of the two. Perhaps it was because of this, and in order that He might be glorified in taking the unlikely one of the two boys and making him what he after wards became, that God chose Jacob. 6. The Parental Partiality. Read the story carefully. How unfor tunate it was that the father and mother, unconsciously perhaps, showed a marked preference for one or other of the boys, and how ill-advised it was of them to manifest it in their treat ment of the boys. In a family of chil dren each child has its own individual ity and personality, and some may seem to need more o f the manifestation of the parents’ love than others. In itself this may have no ill effect, but where it is allowed to become favoritism to a marked degree then there is always . trouble. Fathers and mothers need to be'on their guard at this point. In the home that we are studying now this favoritism of the one son on the part of the father, and of the other on thè part
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