REFLECTIONS
In the perusal of this Chapter, methinks I would not have the Reader overlook the gracious interposition of God, in behalf of his servant Jacob, when Laban the Syrian pursued him in such determined anger. Rather than the poor servant should be injured by his unkind, and unnatural master, the Lord overawes his mind by the effects of a dream. Just so, depend upon it, my brother, is the watchful care of God over his people now. Oh! could you and I but be brought acquainted with the thousand and ten thousand instances of the kind, which are daily going on in life, we should see how sweetly the Church's history is again, and again repeated: he made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives. Psalms 106:46. Reader! watch but the tokens of divine faithfulness towards you, in disposing the hearts of your enemies to be at peace with you, and, depend upon it, the evidences will fully appear. In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.
But do not close the chapter until that you have remarked with me, how continually the Patriarch's history is leading us to the contemplation of the life of the blessed Jesus, of whom in numberless instances, Jacob was a type. Certainly the Holy Ghost, in his divine ministry of glorifying Jesus, intended the records of this man's memoirs to direct us more immediately to Christ. How was Jesus obliged to flee into Egypt to avoid the fury of those that sought his life! How was he afterwards led into the wilderness! What services did he sustain for the Church, both Jew and Gentile, which he betrothed to himself! And what persecutions did he go through, in those labours of love, for the souls of his people! Dearest Lord! may a sense of thine unequalled regard to our poor fallen nature, how base soever requited by the world, endear thee to my heart: and may it be my portion, with thy people, to have that testimony in my experience: We love him because he first loved us!