The future life of Jacob was not free from the infirmity of human purpose--the imperfection of human nature. Yet from this time he walked with God, and all his deportment was marked by deep and humble piety. We doubt not that at this period he passed through that transforming change by which, in every age, and under every dispensation, the human soul has been enabled to enter into the mysteries of the spiritual life and enjoy communion with the Author of its existence, through that Spirit which breathed the first breath of life by which man became a living soul. [Illustration] THE RIVAL SISTERS--LEAH AND RACHEL. [Illustration] There are two characters, which by some associations of memory, or caprice of fancy, are ever blended in our recollections--the one of ancient, the other of modern days--the one of sacred, the other of profane history. Catharine of Arragon, the unloved consort of the King of England, and Leah, the daughter of the Syrian shepherd, the hated wife of the Hebrew patriarch. There may seem to be as little assimilation of character and destiny, as there is of condition, between the daughter and the wife of a Syrian shepherd, and the daughter of one of the proudest monarchs of Spain and the wife of the haughtiest king of England; but they were both women, and both wives of those who loved them not; and this fact, whatever the condition of woman, stamps her lot as one of wretchedness. The wife neglected and despised is a woman sorrowful, whether she be the inmate of a tent or the dweller in a palace--whether she tend the flock or grace the throne. Catharine of Arragon, the daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand, seems a truth-loving, devout woman, well prepared to welcome the great principles advanced by the Reformers, had she not been placed in circumstances most adverse to their influence. Had Henry embraced the doctrines and the principles of the Reformation from a conviction of their truth and importance--had he sought to regulate his own life by the pure precepts of the Bible, and thus striven to disseminate a pure faith among his people--had the conscientious Catharine been the patroness and the friend of the Reformers, instead of the trifling, if not guilty, Anne Boleyn--the English church and the state of religion in the English nation would doubtless have presented a different history for the past, and a different aspect for the future.