which she had aimed, and yet in
the result she had been forced to send forth her darling child--a
homeless wanderer.

There is no reason to believe that the mother and the son ever met
again. From this time she disappears. Surrounded by the alienated Esau's
hated wives and ill-loved children, separated from the child of her
affection, she may have sunk into a premature grave, or she may have
lived many sorrowful years to feel the miseries she had drawn upon
herself by her violations of the rules of rectitude, and an eager desire
to promote the happiness of one child at the sacrifice of that of
another.

There are still too many families involved in all the bitterness of
domestic strife from the unjust partiality of one or both of the parents
for favoured children. If, as children advance in life and their
characters are formed, a calmer feeling succeeds the trembling
tenderness which guarded their infant days, and our love to them (as to
all other mortal beings) results from an appreciation of their
characters, so that one may awaken a purer regard than another, this
feeling is very different from that partial fondness which adopts one
and gives him a place in our affection to the exclusion of another. That
instinctive justice which compels a higher regard for the purer moral
worth, will, of itself, prevent that parental partiality which leads to
injustice or to an infringement of established rights and recognised
principles. An unjust parent presents one of the most revolting pictures
of human nature. The character involves a disregard of the most sacred
ties and the tenderest relations. And whoever exhibits parental
injustice, or that partial fondness which leads to injustice, at once
destroys the affections and violates the moral sense. Families trained
under such influences, still exhibit revolting scenes of human
depravity--of bitterness, strife, alienation and revenge. Who can tell
how much of the estrangement of Esau, and this early introduction of the
worship of strange gods among his descendants, may have been induced by
the conscious alienation of his mother, and the unjust preference of the
interests of his brother? Had Rebekah, with a mother's love, striven to
win her eldest son back to his father's tent and the altar of his
God--had she still respected his rights and preserved his regard by
undeviating truth and faithfulness, she would have retained a strong
hold upon him, and her influence might have be