or man, even in the most worldly or the hardest, the most frivolous, the most cynical, the most sensual, or the most degraded, there is latent, it may be altogether unfelt and disregarded through long years, giving no sign of its presence, it may be, it often is, overlaid, trodden down, even at the point of death, but still there, this living soul with all its possibilities. It is within every one of us, stamped with the image of God, and charged with unimagined possibilities.
And it must be obvious that the whole difference between any two lives, between your life and your neighbour’s life, may depend on this awakening of the soul in one of you and its not awakening in the other.
Of the two brothers, Esau and Jacob, I suppose we are all drawn at the outset to Esau; our heart goes out to him, as we read, the impulsive, the impetuous, the affectionate, and we feel a corresponding dislike of Jacob’s craft and cunning, and selfish calculations. There can be no doubt, we say, which was the meaner character to begin with.
But neither is there any doubt why it was that it came to be written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau have I hated.” The one was just the child of the world around him, yielding to its temptations, living by its standards. The soul in him never awoke, so as to transfigure his thoughts and purposes. The other is a man of Divine visions, inspired with the sense of a Divine presence and a Divine purpose directing him.
Nowhere do we see more clearly than in this narrative how great a change may come to any of us, if the unawakened capacities of our soul are touched by the breath of some uplifting inspiration.
As we read of this contrast between Esau and Jacob, and their destinies, we feel—and we feel it all the more because Jacob to begin with seems to be made of such common clay—we feel what a transforming power in a man’s life this awaking of the soul may be.
A life which is without the inspiration that takes possession of us in the moments of this
awakening, and is consequently without these visions that flash before the soul as it awakens, a life that is not deeply stirred by spiritual hopes or Divine thought, or the call to new duty, remains in one man a selfish and worldly life, in another a frivolous, in a third a sensual life. But the very same life—and here is the practical value to us, here is the hopefulness of such considerations—the very same life, when the breath of God’s spirit or His penetrating voice has stirred and roused the soul in it, is felt to be transformed. The man is born anew.
“There is nothing finer,” some one has said, “than to see a soul rise up in men, which amazes the very men in whom it rises.” They are surprised to find that these new capacities were in them, unnoticed through their careless days, yet in them all the time. This birth of the new life, with all its promise of new tastes, new ambitions, new thoughts, new purposes, may indeed come to you without your feeling all at once how great a thing it is. At first it may be nothing more than some
vision of the possibilities of your life, or some electric flash of new consciousness that runs through you, or the sharp pang of remorse for some sin or some neglect, or the flush of shame or repulsion as you think of something or other in your life, or the glow of some good resolution to begin some new life or new duty, or take some new turn, or pursue some new aim. You hardly think perhaps of this as the awakening of your soul. It may never have occurred to you to think of it as being just as sacred a thing as was Jacob’s vision at Bethel, as being indeed the work of the same Divine spirit.