Jacob was a son as well as Isaac. But he was a son at school, or under correction; not a son, like Isaac, in the care and nurture of the home of his father; not as one given to know the rights and dignities of son and heir, but as one made to know the love, the practical love, that chastens and corrects. This was the child Jacob. But we are never to forget that we are never more distinctly children than when under such discipline. Discipline assumes adoption. The exhortation or correction speaks to us as _to children_. The discipline may occupy the foreground, but the fatherly love is the secret. But this notice of Jacob as a son under discipline I give here only as a general characteristic. As to the materials of his history, various and striking as they are, we may distinguish them into four eras: 1. His birth and early life in his father’s house in the land of Canaan. 2. His journey to Padan-aram, and his residence there, in the house of Laban the Syrian, for twenty years. 3. His journey back from Padan-aram, and his second residence in Canaan. 4. His journey from Canaan to Egypt, and his residence and death there. This may be read as a simple, natural table of contents, so to call it, and I would follow it out in its order. _Part I._--This earliest portion of Jacob’s history, his birth, and his life in the house of his father in the land of Canaan till he was about seventy years of age,¹⁹ I have generally anticipated in the preceding paper, entitled "Isaac." And I may be allowed to say, necessarily so; because it is involved in those chapters of the Book of Genesis, where Isaac is principal. I must therefore refer to it. ¹⁹ It is said in the Jewish writings that he was seventy-seven. _Part II._--Jacob begins to be seen under discipline in chap. xxviii., and there it is where this second part of his history opens, and where also, in the Book of Genesis, he becomes the chief or leading character. In his journey out towards Padan, but ere he left the borders of Canaan, at the place called Luz, the Lord meets him. This was not his father’s bed-side, where he was sinning, but a lonely, dreary, distant spot where his sin had cast him, and where the discipline of his heavenly Father was dealing with him. In such a place God can meet us. He cannot appear to us in the scene of our iniquities, but He can in the place of His correction. And such was Luz to Jacob. It was a comfortless spot. The stones of the place were his pillow, and the sky over his head his covering; and he had no friend but his staff to accompany and cheer him. But the God of his fathers comes there to him. He does not alter his present circumstances or reverse the chastening. He lets him still pursue his way unfriended, to find, at the end of it, twenty years’ hard service at the hand of a stranger, with many a wrong and injury. But he gives him heavenly pledges, that hosts on high should watch and wait around him.