st useless in the
Bible: names, nothing but long-forgotten names. Names of everybody's
father, grandfather, great-grandfather, back to a remote antiquity. I
question whether there are many Bible readers who have ever laboured
through the list. Yet these family trees, as we may call them, were
very precious to the Jews. They thought as much of long descent as my
lord Noodle does now. It swelled them immeasurably in self-importance
if they could trace their lineage back in unbroken line to one of the
twelve patriarchs, or to one of those who came out of Egypt. And the
historian ministers to this prejudice or vanity by diligently recording
the whole dry catalogue, and then, as if weary of the business, or,
perhaps, with just a touch of scorn, he introduces this one name as
something worth talking about.

Here was a god-made nobleman, whose heraldry need not be written on
earth, because it is more surely written in heaven. All the rest were
their fathers' sons, and that was about all. This man did not need a
pedigree: he won a name and reputation for himself without the help of
a distinguished ancestry. By prayerfulness, and energy, and courage,
he fought his way from obscurity to honour. And when that happens,
when a man has fought the fight with adverse circumstances and overcome
them, when he has made his mark in the world by sheer force of work and
character, no one cares to grope through musty fusty parchments in
search of his progenitors. What does it matter! God has given him a
certificate of noble birth; that was surely what the historian meant:
"_Jabez was more honourable than his brethren_."

Now there are two or three touches in this little story worth noticing.
God sends us some of our best joys in the guise of sorrows.

I.

He came into the world without a welcome.

I venture to say, and I thank God for it, that there is hardly one of
my readers of whom that can be said. No matter into what home you were
born, there was a welcome awaiting you on the part of one at least. It
may be that no one else was particularly glad, that every one else
looked upon you as one too many; but your mother at least met you with
a sweet kiss which plainly said, thank God for this gift. Here,
however, there was not even that; this child was received with
misgivings and fears, and awoke no joy in the mother's breast. She
called his name Jabez, which means sorrowful, because she had borne him
in sorrow.

O