"The evil of my former state Was mine and only mine-- The good in which I now rejoice Is Thine and only Thine. "The darkness of my former state, The bondage, all was mine-- The light of life in which I walk, The liberty is Thine." This is standing, not attainment; this is what faith entitles us to celebrate. Faith takes up this language, and the soul surely hears it and understands it. But _faith_ is the spring, in the inworking power of the Holy Ghost. As in Heb. xi., from beginning to end, it is _faith_ that is celebrated. Enoch, and Moses, and David, and the prophets, and the martyrs of other days, may be presented there in their fruits and victories, but it is _faith_, and not the people of God, that the Spirit by the apostle is celebrating in that fine chapter. But I must return to Isaac. At the close of chapter xxvi. we read: "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 to Isaac and to Rebekah." This has much for us in the way of admonition; but to use it aright, I must look to things connected with it, or like it, in the earlier history of Abraham, and then in the future histories of Jacob and his son Judah. The command to the nation of Israel at the very beginning was to keep the way of the Lord very particularly as to _marriage_. They were by no means either to give their daughters to the sons of the Canaanites, or take the Canaanites’ daughters for their sons. Deut. vii. 3. If they did so, it would be on the pain of being no longer owned of the Lord. Josh. xxiii. According to this, the apostate days of Solomon are marked by disobedience to this very thing (1 Kings xi.); and afterwards, no real recovery to God could be admitted, without a return to the observance of this principle in their marriages. Ezra x.; Neh. x. Obedience, therefore, in this thing was a peculiar test of the state of the nation. And it is thus that I look at it in this earliest book of Genesis. For though divine law was not then published, divine principles were then understood. It may be regarded as the witness of the state of _family_ religion then, as it was of the state of _national_ religion afterwards.