One day of thoughtful travel had passed slowly over Jacob, his mind traversing by many rapid transitions from the home he had left behind to the new scenes that met his eye; from the brother before whose fury he was fleeing, to the unknown experiences of life among friends he had never seen. At last the sun had gone down; the eye had nothing more to see; weariness called for rest and sleep. With a stone for his pillow, with his tunic wrapt about him, and the broad heavens above for his canopy, he slept and dreamed――dreamed of a ladder with its foot on the earth beside him and its top in the heavens; and wonderful to see! the angels of God descending and ascending upon it! A new sense of communication between earth and heaven came upon him, assuming a strange reality when he saw the Lord standing above it and heard him say, “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac.” Before this Jacob had heard of that wonderful covenant of God so often ratified with his venerable grandfather and his father. The transfer of blessing from Isaac to himself as the lineal heir of both birthright and blessing was a thing of quite recent experience. How fully he had comprehended its glorious significance before does not appear; but now that he is cast out alone upon the wide, unknown world――now that he so much needs the Great God for his friend――it comes over him with solemn, precious interest. The words spoken were full of comfort. They reminded him of the great family promise to Abraham, renewed to his father Isaac: “A God to thee and _to thy seed after thee_,” and he felt that the promise put its finger upon his own aching, solitary heart. He had a fresh assurance that his life would not come to nought and be a failure, for the Lord said: “The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the West and to the East; to the North and to the South; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” And lest these blessings might seem too remote to meet his sense of present peril and need, the Lord kindly added――“And behold I am with thee and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again to this land; for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” How deeply these scenes and words impressed the soul of the youthful Jacob is apparent in the few words which fell from his lips when he came to the full consciousness of wakeful life. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not”! I had not thought to meet God _here_ and to meet him _so_! I thought I was utterly alone but lo! _God is here!_――――We must suppose that Jacob had never been so near to God before. Such a meeting with the Majesty of heaven was new to his experience, and a sense of solemn awe――of reverence amounting to fear, came upon him:――as