It would appear from the text that one morsel of meat settled the question of the birthright; that one hard, hot morning’s chase settled the destinies of peoples for all time. That is one side of it, the outside. But the real settlement of the question was made already; any trifle will serve to disclose what has already established itself as the permanent character within. Esau had nursed his contempt for the birthright by a thousand daily lustings and cravings; many a bitter scoff too he had flung at Jacob’s pious and meditative mood. Things like this never stand alone. The life of the chosen family is described in words of wonderful beauty and power in Heb. xi. 8–14. “_By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country._” This life Jacob believed in profoundly; this life Esau as profoundly despised. He despised it all, and made his contempt abundantly apparent. “_And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah_” (Gen. xxvi. 34, 35). This shows how thoroughly out of sympathy with the spirit of the chosen race he was from the first, and remained through life. All his sympathies and associations were with the pagans around him. Jacob was the true heir of the promise, for he believed in it; Esau its outcast, for he despised it, and had despised it from the first. His every act had expressed his contempt of it, and the sale of the birthright for a mess of pottage but completed the witness that he was a profane person, a pagan at heart. These moments mark the crises for which a long train of thought and habit has prepared. Many a secret sin, born of luxury and nursed by royal power and splendour, broke out into the daylight when David looked upon Bathsheba, and filled his life with unutterable sorrow and shame. God takes no man in a hasty moment and brands him reprobate. A thousand daily touches through long years have