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wisdom and fcience; it was therefore the pride of their fuperiority in the more fpendid arts, that taught them to defpife the pure fimplicity of the paftoral life.

REPRESENT to your imagination Jacob before Pharaoh. The venerable defcendant of Abraham, the head of the chofen family of God, is received by the Egyptian king, with the refpe&t due to fo illuftrious a character. Royalty ftands abashed before age; and he who wears an earthly crown, bows to the fuperior luftre of the hoary head, which is a crown of glory when it is found in the way of righteoufnefs. The Patriarch accofts him with a blessing in the name of his God whom he ferved -Jacob bleffed Pharoah_He who rules over the extenfive provinces of Egypt, receives a bleffing from the

hands of a poor fhepherd: For this poor fhepherd is a fervant of the most high God, the head of a chofen race higher than the kings of the earth: And Pharaoh no doubt received the bleffing of this aged pricft, as he would have received it from God himself.

WE are not told in what words the bleffing was conveyed probably in fome fuch form as that afterwards appointed in the Jewish Church by God himself, which ran thus The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make his face to fhine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

WITH these, or fome fuch words did Jacob blefs Pharaoh.

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AND Pharaoh faid unto Jacob, How -old art thou? The anfwer of the Patriarch to this question is well worthy our attention. Ani Jacob faid unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pil grimage are an hundred and thirty years

few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of my fathers, in the days of their pilgrimage. How fhort does the longeft life appear when it is drawing to an end; Jacob had lived an hundred and thirty years, and he calls. thefe but few! To us who look forward upon fuch a fpace of time, it may appear long; but to him who looked back upon it, it was fhort. To us who fee the ftrength of man decline at fifty or three fcore years, it must seem frange, that Jacob at more than double that period, fhould complain that his days had been few but many as

they appear to us, they fell fhort of the days of the years of his fathers, of whom Ifaac lived an hundred and four fcore, and Abraham an hundred and feventy-five years; and thefe too were few compared to the years of those who lived before the flood, ere yet the days of man were shortened, and contracted to the narrow limits of three fcore and ten, or four fcore years. But, fuppofe man's life at its longest period, yet if it must come to an end, it will even then appear but as a fpan long, as nothing in refpect of God, as altogether vanity. It matters not whether our life be long, or fhort, if it be but well spent Lord let me know my end, fays the Pfalmift; fo it becomes us to confider what the end is we have in view, to act for eternity, and to endeavour, as we advance in life, to approach nearer unto God. Jacob calls

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his life a pilgrimage; for as the pilgrim travels in pursuit of reft, fo this aged Patriarch looked forward to that facred fabbath of promifed reft, which remaineth for God's people, after the toils and fufferings of the prefent life. The days of his pilgrimage had been evil, as well as few, but now they approached towards their term. He who had fled from the violence of his brother Efau, been wounded in a myfterious ftruggle with an angel, and experienced the twenty years hard fervice of his kinfman Laban, when in the days the drought confumed him, and the froft by night, and fleep departed from his eyes; he, who in after times was afflicted by the unnatural offence of Reuben, difgraced by the cruelty of Simeon and Levi; wounded to the heart by the untimely death of his favourite Rachel in the midst of a journey,

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