As he neared the village of Seir, where Esau dwelt, he sent messengers ahead to tell Esau that he was returning, and to beg him to forgive the past that they might meet each other in brotherly love. The servants came back and told him that Esau was coming to meet him with four hundred men. Then Jacob was in great fear, for he thought Esau meant to kill him. He prayed to God to keep him safe. At night an angel came and wrestled with him till break of day, but could not overcome him. And when morn came, the angel said, "Let me go, for it is break of day." Jacob said, "I will not let thee go till thou bless me." Then the angel blessed him, and he saw him no more. This was a sign from God to Jacob that, as he was a match for an angel, he need not fear men. He took some of his cattle and sent them as a gift to Esau. He set them in droves, so that when Esau met them, and asked whose they were, the men should say, "They are Jacob's. It is a gift he has sent to my lord Esau." Each man who drove the cattle was to answer in this way, so that Esau might feel that Jacob had come as a friend. All at once Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming. Then he called his eleven sons and Rachel and Leah to go with him and meet Esau. When he met Esau he bowed down to the ground seven times. Then Esau ran to him and put his arms round his neck and kissed him, and they both wept. Esau led Jacob to his home and there feasted him for seven days. And when he was rested Jacob set forth again, driving his herds before him, to make a home for his people in the land of Canaan; for he was an old man now, and wished only to rest in the land of his fathers, and to see his twelve sons comfortably placed in homes of their own, with their wives, their children, and their flocks about them. JOSEPH. "Now let us thank the Eternal Power; convinced That Heaven but tries our virtue by affliction, That oft the cloud which wraps the present hour Serves but to brighten all our future days." Jacob had twelve sons; but the one dearest to the old father's heart was Joseph, a lad of only seventeen years when Jacob came back into the land of Canaan. The older of these sons were selfish, cruel men; and more than that, they had forsaken the God of Abraham, and were worshipping graven images. Poor old Jacob's heart was heavy! "Go now to Bethel," said a voice to him one night in a dream. "Make an altar there to thy God." Jacob obeyed; and when the altar was built, he called his sons together and told them the visions he had had. He told them the stronghold God had always been to him in his life, and begged them to forsake their idols and turn again to the true God. Then Jacob went on to Hebron, where Abraham had lived, and where Isaac still lived, an old, old man, nearly two hundred years old.