makes God and holiness his supreme portion, and so gives a right character to his life. This is a regeneration of volitions rather than of souls, and of actions rather than of agents; and is wrought by man and not God. Men are moved up to this high resolve, under the impression, distinct or vague, according to the temper of the workman, that the resolution is the constituting act, by which they enter in among the children of God. This must seem an easy and light thing to those who have been accustomed to regard the great change from sin to holiness as a new creation, divinely and supernaturally accomplished.

The philosophy and theology that we have been considering obscure, of necessity, and quite do away with the distinction betweeen regeneration and conversion. Failing to make this distinction, the supernatural agency of God in constituting one a Christian is overlooked, and the man is supposed and left to work the change, except so far as the ordinary aid of God may coöperate.

The Scriptures so far ascribe the work to God, as to call the Christian "his workmanship"; and they so far mark it supernatural as to call it a new creation. This we understand to be the restoration of that holy disposition toward God that Adam lost. Receiving it is, we suppose, "putting on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness," after the manner in which Adam was created in the image of God. Thus the kingdom of God, as leaven, or a grain of mustard seed, is divinely started in the natural heart. And it is an instructing fact, that all, or nearly all, the passages in the Bible, in which this superhuman change is spoken of, are in the passive voice, showing that the subject of the change is so far not an agent in working it, but the subject of it.

Conversion, no less a Scripture doctrine, on the other hand, is man's work, and he is obligated to do it, and no agency but his own can do it. The heart being thus prepared to bear the fruits of the Spirit, the man must convert or turn himself from the old way and produce these fruits. He alone can do his repenting, believing, loving and hating, as a Christian. These are acts personal to himself, and can not lie in the range of God's agency. The man must exercise his own submission, trust, hope, etc. These new and holy feelings and exercises

and purposes, for the furnishing of which regenerating grace has prepared the soul, are often called the "new heart," and the man is commanded to make it to himself. In the limitations here given to conversion, as moral and holy exercises coming out of the "new creature," the man does make his new heart; no other being can make it for him, since every one must perform his own moral actions, which, as holy acts, are in the Scriptures called the new heart. But these exercises are prepared for, and consequent on, the new creation, that, as an act of God, has preceded.

To make the Scriptures self-consistent, secure for God his agency and work in this change from death to life, and impose on man his part and duty, this distinction between regeneration and conversion must be preserved. Not having preserved it, we have reason to fear that a great many self-made Christians have been drawn into the church. They are Christians by volition, by resolution, by solemn, and it may be, agonizing purpose. Their religious life is consequently one of impulses.

Honest, sincere, earnest, flattered with the notion that they can constitute themselves Christians, they make occasional struggles to rise to the level of their spiritual ideal. Excitement only can carry them up to the point to which it first carried them in a supposed regeneration. Having no root in themselves, they endure but for a while. They are misled by their teaching, and are as good Christians as their theory legitimately makes. All such need a soul as well as a series of exercises, and regeneration as well as conversion. Falling from grace and second conversion are terms fit and indispensable to describe the experiences of this kind of religious life, terms that can have no logical or theological place in our old and common creed.

This distinction between regeneration and conversion we think it very important to make and use, that we may preserve the unity of our faith. They are two points and not one, and neither covers the other, or states the whole truth without the other. The two points indicate the two agents in bringing a sinner from death to life; they show what each does, and which work precedes in the order of nature, and which follows. Much discussion is unfortunate and obscure and wasted by fail

ing to discriminate on this doctrine. Authors and preachers are misunderstood. One calls all the work of the two agents regeneration, and seems to leave nothing for the man to do. Another calls it all conversion, and seems to exclude divine and supernatural agency, while yet another reverses the natural order of action by the two agents, and gets holy acts before he gets the holy heart, a process of producing grapes from thorns, and clean things from unclean.

But, on the theory we have been considering, that the soul is merely a series of exercises, this distinction would be a fiction; this confusion must run on; and so man must be left to do the act that constitutes one a Christian, so imparting to that transaction all the imperfection and uncertainty that pertains to the ordinary works of man, under only the ordinary aid and superintendence of God.

ARTICLE IX.

SHORT SERMONS.

"And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison; but Rebekah loved Jacob."-Genesis xxv. 28.

It seems to be a small matter, at first, that each parent had a favorite child in this family, but the consequences are great and sorrowful, showing

THE SIN OF HAVING, AND THE EVIL OF BEING, A FAVORITE CHILD.

The subject, thus given us by the text, is not so foreign or obsolete, as it is ancient, to us. This sin and evil are both modern and common. Sometimes a parent declares this favoritism for one child; sometimes it is marked by the food, or dress, or pleasures and indulgences of one of the children; sometimes by the opposing choices of the father and mother; sometimes by the favoring plan that forecasts the life of one child, to the detriment or neglect of the others; and sometimes by the last will and legacies. Thus often brothers and sisters are alienated from each other; houses are divided against themselves, and family feuds are made hereditary. In all which the principle is wrong, and the policy unwise. God has, therefore, caused

to be written out "aforetime and for our learning," a single case of parental partiality, in both its first facts, and in its consequences. Under these two divisions we will study the case.

1. The Facts.

Nothing is said of partiality in this family prior to the text, though Esau and Jacob are now about thirty years old. Probably it had been practiced from early childhood, but now was so marked as to become a leading historical feature in the family. Ten years later Esau, alienated from the confidence and sympathies of his mother, marries Canaanitish wives, and she says: "I am weary of my life, because of the daughters of Heth," Esau's wives. If she had loved Esau as much as Jacob, she might have had daughters-in-law more to her liking.

The favoritism runs on, till Isaac seems about to die, and so the will is drawn. He is then one hundred and thirty and seven years old, and his two sons are seventy and seven. The trick, the plot, the treachery of Rebekah, and the crowning of her long struggle, in the matter of the savory meat and the dying blessing, are familiar facts. But what a family scene! An old man, blind, helpless and apparently dying; the wife practicing the basest arts of deception; and one son, a man of four score and venerable, by her aid, putting on deceit as a garment, to gain treacherously his brother's inheritance. Esau discovers the plot, is enraged. His wives and children see and know it! All this is done to secure wealth and power and favor, for one child, to the injury and neglect of another. Death the while seems standing at the door. Do you remember any such family scene, a dying old man, and a scheming wife and mother, intriguing with her favorite child about the will, and the quarrelling sons?

2. We pass on to notice the consequences.

"And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him. And Esau said, in his heart: The days of mourning for my father are at hand, then will I slay my brother Jacob." A result so natural, inevitable and sinful; and the more natural, as Esau had previously lost his birthright by most unjust means, in which, no doubt, the hand of Rebekah, his mother, was very powerful.

To save his life Jacob flees to a foreign land, and so, as a first fruit of her favoritism and plotting, Rebekah has a murderous son and his strange wives, with her, and her favorite in exile.

The funeral does not come so soon. Isaac revived and lived yet forty-four years, and Esau's anger had time to cool, and his hatred to deepen. Twenty-one years Jacob does not dare go home, and so the brothers do not meet, or their parents see them together. Jacob

lives with his uncle Laban, when, deceived in turn, as to a wife, and deceiving his uncle in business, like his own mother, and watching for the main chance, he gets rich, and then steals away.

In his flight he has occasion to pass through the country of Esau. There is a timid, cold meeting between the brothers, and a partial and formal reconciliation. It is more diplomatic than fraternal, and as between twin brothers it lacks heart. The bitter memories, heart burnings and self-reproach of that interview, after twenty one years' separation, we will not dwell on. There is yet more fruit of the paternal partiality.

So far as we can know the brothers did not meet again till their father's funeral, twenty three years after. What were Rebekah's views then of her favoritism and treachery, what her fears of Esau's anger, and how much comfort and honor and hope she had from this leading policy of her life, we are not told. How the brothers felt or conducted we know not. There is no record of explanations, concessions, or restitution. Hatred remained and stinging recollections, and hot passion had settled into a principle and habit of hostility, as we learn from events following.

Rebekah has her reward in the wealth and preeminence of the favorite son, but how much of self-respect, of joy in her children, or of happy anticipations for them, or for her own lonely, widow's life, we need not inquire.

Isaac is dead. Rebekah dies, and also Esau and Jacob. Has the unhallowed favoritism spent itself, and are the grudges and feuds growing out of it, dead too and buried?

We pass along about two centuries and a half, and is all smooth and pleasant between the descendants of the unwise parents and quarrelling brothers?

"And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh unto the King of Edom, [the tribe of Esau]. Thus saith thy brother Israel

Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country. And Edom said: Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword. And the children of Israel said unto him: We will go by the highways, and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it. I will only, without anything else, go through on my feet. And he said: Thou shalt not go through. And Edom came out against him with much people, and with a strong hand. Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border. Wherefore Israel turned away from him." This is three hundred and seven years after the trick and treachery of Rebekah with the savory meat, and the implanted feud between her two sons. "Israel turned away" to those terrible wan