And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau, thy brother. Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments. And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.—Gen. 35, 1-3.

The passage before us refers to a very interesting part in the history of Jacob. To escape the fury of his brother, Esau, whom he had deprived of the patriarchal blessing, Jacob, at the proposal of his mother, Rebecca, flees to the house of his uncle, Laban. On the first night of his journey he dreamed he saw a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, angels ascending and descending upon it, God standing at the top; and God also speaks to the poor pilgrim resting on a stone beneath. He assures Jacob that He was the Lord God "of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac." He promises to give the land of Canaan to his seed, to render his offspring illustrious and innumerable as the stars of heaven, and finally, in one of his descendants, to bless all the families of the earth; and to accommodate Himself still more to the condition in which Jacob then was, He added: "And behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of."

Deeply impressed with this vision of God's presence, Jacob arose. But before he proceeded upon his journey, he vowed a vow, saying: "If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God, and this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's house, and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee."

Twenty years had passed since that occasion, years of hard service and vexation, when Jacob resolves to return home. He crosses the Ford of Jabbok, where he wrestled with the Angel, and comes to Shalem. Here he buys a piece of ground, builds an altar, and lingers for seven or eight years; he was now enjoying the delights, the comforts of home and of plenty. God had fulfilled His engagement with him to the letter,—He had been with him and defended him, led him back to his country in peace and prospered him, who had had nothing but a staff in his hand when he fled before the face of his brother, until he was now two bands. But where is now his vow, where his altar, where the tenth of all his possessions, as he had promised? Nor does he show the least disposition to redeem, to perform it; and so it becomes necessary for God Himself to stir him up; and thus reads the first verse of the text: "And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau, thy brother."

From this little piece of history let us seek to derive some instructive observations, and pertinent with this Sunday, the character of which is well known to you.

First, we may note how soon the influence of impressive scenes wears away, how quickly we lose the sense of God's mercies, and the religious feelings they produce. If a person had seen Jacob on the morning after his vision, when he was leaving the spot made sacred by his experience there, and had said to him: "God will accomplish all thy desires; He will guide and keep thee, and bring thee back enriched and multiplied, but thou wilt live year after year unmindful of thy vow," he would have exclaimed, "What! is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?" How were the Israelites affected when God appeared at the Red Sea? They sang His praise, they resolved to distrust Him no more. They said, "All that the Lord commandeth us will we do." But they soon forgot His words and the wonders He had shown them. They murmured, and they rebelled time and again; all their vows and promises were written in the sand, and the first returning wave of trouble washed them out. If some kind of spiritual device, after the manner of our present day, could be invented to secure our feelings in certain periods and conditions of life, so that we might afterwards review them and compare ourselves, what revelations it would disclose! Like a sieve, full while lowered, but, when raised up, empty and dripping, or like water, which has a natural tendency to be cold, if it has not a perpetual fire below to keep it warm, so do we constantly need means and helps; so necessary is it to have our minds stirred up by way of remembrance; and as we learn from our text, God also does that. He reminds His people of forgotten duties. Various are His ways of doing so. One of His principal designs are afflictions. When difficulties are upon us, it is then that we remember former deliverances and vows, and our ingratitude in not keeping them.

Another such witness and monitor is man's conscience, which accuses the transgressor, and often presses a thorn into man's side. Ministers of the Gospel are also God's remembrancers. Their business is, not to bring strange things to your ears, to entertain you with novelties or speculation, but their calling is to remind you of things you already know. As St. Peter writes: "I will therefore put you in remembrance of these things, though ye once knew them," and St. Paul says: "If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ." And our text furthermore shows us that good and pious characters give heed to these reminders. There is where we perceive a difference between Christians and others. Christians, it is true, are encompassed with faults and infirmities, they may err; they may fall, but there is in them a principle which secures their rising again. A man who is only asleep is easily distinguished from one who is dead; the difference will appear as soon as you try to wake them; the one remains motionless, the other stirs and springs up. The branch of a tree may bend down to the earth under a pressure, but remove the load, and it is upright again. When our Lord looked only upon Peter, "he went out and wept bitterly." Jacob here does not argue the matter with the Lord. He does not seek to excuse himself.

Thus reads the second verse: "Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments." Here we may stop a moment to emphasize the truth that there may be wickedness in a religious family. We find "strange gods" even in Jacob's, the patriarch's, household, and we may view such a condition in two ways,—first, as a good man's affliction, and also as a good man's own fault. An affliction it certainly is to behold wickedness in one's family. It is bad enough to have bodily sickness and ailment in the house, but it is immensely worse to have sin, the plague and pestilence of the soul.

But, could we see things as God sees them, could we trace back effects to their cause, we would ofttimes not be surprised at the disorder and wickedness which prevails. How many masters of families resemble Eli, whose "sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not,"—or David, "who had never displeased Adonijah at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so?"

Others, again, have provoked them to anger, till they are discouraged; while they preach humility and meekness in words, they practice pride and passion by example; while they send them to receive the nurture and admonition of the Lord at the hands of others, they rarely or ever recommend religion by their own personal behavior,—and they then wonder at irregularities in their households. Rather ought they wonder at their own folly in seeking "to gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles." Observe Jacob here, he would not go alone, but calls upon his family, and all that are with him; everybody must attend. And thus our religious interest should not be confined to ourselves alone, we must bring our families along with us to the exercise of devotion.

In our own families we possess authority and influence, and this authority and influence we are to employ for religious as well as civil purposes. God holds us answerable for it. There is nothing more lovely than the members of a family going to the house of God in company. Such families are nurseries of their churches, and it is with delight that a minister addresses a hopeful audience made up of a number of amiable, orderly, serious-minded families. But oh! how it pains one to see you separated, and coming in alone,—the wife without the husband, the father without the son, the mother without the daughter.

Reflect on these things, my beloved. It is sometimes said that so few of those who make their confirmation vow remain loyal. To me it is inspiring that so many do remain loyal when you consider the influence and the atmosphere in the homes they come from. Never a Christian word escapes the lips of the mother; all kinds of political, secular newspapers and books are daily read, never a line of God's Word or a church-paper. All sorts of time set aside for visits and trivialities on God's day, never for divine service.

There remains yet the third and last verse: "And let us arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went." Jacob arrives at Bethel, he looks around, he discovers the stone, now covered with moss, which, twenty-eight years ago, had served as his pillow. What feelings must have throbbed through his soul! what shame! what joy! And he fulfills his vow, erects an altar, does God honor and service, and gives the tenth to Him of all he possesses.

The application of all this? To you who have this day laid down upon God's altar your vow of allegiance, let Jacob be to you an example of warning. God greatly disapproved of Jacob's delay, his forgetting and breaking of promise, and, as we heard, he himself suffered by it,—wickedness, strange gods, had gotten into his household. Vastly more noble than his conduct was that of the woman who one day appeared in the temple leading by the hand a lad, and, presenting him to the high priest, said: "For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him. Therefore, also, I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth, he shall be lent to the Lord." You know who he was—Samuel, afterwards Israel's high priest and judge. May you prove to be Samuels brought hither to the temple, become useful members. It is only thus you may glorify God. Or, those who, perchance like Jacob, have neglected their vows, who blush to recall them, let them take this episode to heart, strive with the aid of that God who called Jacob's vow to remembrance to fulfill their engagements; following the patriarch, may they say: "Let us go up to Bethel," that means, to the house of God. The Lord grant you Christian courage and determination! Amen.