The next question will be: If God favours that
family, will he do unjust things to help them?--will he let them do
unjust things to help themselves? The Bible answers positively, No.
God will not be unjust or arbitrary in choosing one man and
rejecting another. If he chooses Jacob, it is because Jacob is fit
for the work which God wants done. If he rejects Esau, it is
because Esau is not fit.
It is natural, I know, to pity poor Esau; but one has no right to do
more. One has no right to fancy for a moment that God was arbitrary
or hard upon him. Esau is not the sort of man to be the father of a
great nation, or of anything else great. Greedy, passionate,
reckless people like him, without due feeling of religion or of the
unseen world, are not the men to govern the world, or help it
forward, or be of use to mankind, or train up their families in
justice and wisdom and piety. If there had been no people in the
world but people like Esau, we should be savages at this day,
without religion or civilization of any kind. They are of the
earth, earthy; dust they are, and unto dust they will return. It is
men like Jacob whom God chooses--men who have a feeling of religion
and the unseen world; men who can look forward, and live by faith,
and form plans for the future--and carry them out too, against
disappointment and difficulty, till they succeed.
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