But I spoke of an equality of spiritual advantages also, and this is perhaps the hardest trial of all.  Oh, how great is this inequality in truth, when it seems to be so little!  All of you, the children of Christian parents; all members of the Christian Church; all partaking here of the same worship, the same prayers, the same word of God, the same sacrament; are you not all the Israel of God, and not, like Esau, or the Syrophoenician woman, strangers to the covenant of blessing?  Yet your real condition is, notwithstanding, very unequal.  How unlike are your friends at home; how, unlike, also, are your friends here!  Are there not some to whom their homes, both by direct precept and by example, are a far greater help than to others?  Are there not some, whose immediate companions here may encourage them in all good far more than may be the case with, others?  So, then, there may be some to whom this great blessing has been denied, whilst others enjoy it.  What then?  Shall we say, that, because we have it not, we will refuse to go in to our Father’s house; that we will not walk as our brother walks, unless we have his advantages?  Then must we remain cast out; vessels fashioned to dishonour; rejected of God, and cursed.  Nay rather let us put a Christian sense on Esau’s prayer, and cry, “’Hast thou but one blessing, my Father? bless me, even me also, O my Father.’  If thou hast given to others earthly helps, which thou hast denied to me, give me thyself and thy own Spirit the more!  If father and mother forsake my most precious interest, do thou take me up.  If my nearest friends will not walk with me in the house of God, be thou my friend, and abide with, me always, making my house as thine.  Outward and earthly means thou givest or takest away at thy pleasure; but give me help according to my need, that I yet may not lose thee.”

How naturally are we interested at the thought of any one so circumstanced, and uttering such a prayer!  How earnestly do we wish to help him, to show our respect and true love for a faith so tried and so enduring!  And think we that God cares for it less than we do? or have we not already the record of his love towards it, when Christ answered the Syrophoenician woman, “O woman, great is thy faith:  be it unto thee even as thou wilt?” He may not, indeed, see fit to give the very same blessing which was in the first instance denied:  we may still have fewer spiritual advantages than others, as far as human helps are concerned; fewer good and earnest friends; fewer examples of holiness around us; fewer to join with us in our prayers and in our struggles against evil.  But though this particular blessing may be denied,—­as Esau could not gain that blessing which had been given to Jacob,—­yet there is a blessing for us also, which may prove, in the end, even better than our brother’s.  He who serves God steadily, amidst many disadvantages, enjoys the blessing of a more confirmed and hardier faith; he has gone through trials, and been found conqueror; and for him that overcometh is reserved a more abundant measure of glory.