soul amongst us.

It bids us recognise and keep always before us that in every common life,
of child 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