"And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee:

"I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast showed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands.

"Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children.

"And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.

"And he lodged there that same night; and took of that which came to his hand a present for Esau his brother;

"Two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams,

" Thirty milch camels with their colts, forty kine, and ten bulls, twenty she asses, and ten foals.

"And he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove by themselves; and said unto his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space betwixt drove and drove.

"And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother meeteth thee, and asketh thee, saying, Whose art thou? and whither goest thou? and whose are these before thee?

"Then thou shalt say, They be thy servant Jacob's; it is a present sent unto my lord Esau: and, behold, also he is behind us.

"And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that followed the droves, saying, On this manner shall ye speak unto Esau, when ye find him.

"And say ye moreover, Behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face; peradventure he will accept of me.

"So went the present over before him: and himself lodged that night in the company.

"And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two women-servants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.

"And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had.

"And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.

"And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.

"And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

"And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.

"And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

"And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.

"And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." — Gen". 32:9-30.

"And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and Leah and her children after, and Kachel and Joseph hindermost.

"And he passed over before them, and bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.

"And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept.

"And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God hath graciously given thy servant.

"Then the handmaidens came near, they and their children, and they bowed themselves.

"And Leah also with her children came near, and bowed themselves: and after came Joseph near and Rachel, and they bowed themselves.

"And he said, What meanest thou by all this drove which I met? And he said, These are to find grace in the. sight of my lord.

"And Esau said, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself.

"And Jacob said, Nay, I pray thee, if now I have found grace in thy sight, then receive my present at my hand: for therefore I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me.

"Take, I pray thee, my blessing that is brought to thee; because God hath dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough. And he urged him, and he took it." — Gen. 33:2-11.

"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.

"And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.

"And they journeyed: and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob." — Gen. 35: 1-5.

The pivot of these various passages, the center, is contained in Gen. 32:28-30. "And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."

We have heard a great deal about Jacob and Israel, and the experiences of the patriarch Jacob. We will have to omit a great deal to-day. I simply ask your attention to the lesson drawn from Israel, the lesson drawn from Jacob after his Peniel experience.

I do not suppose I need take time to prove to you that Jacob was a real child of God twenty years before he obtained this blessing at Peniel. Anyone who will read the. account of the vision and the ladder and the Bethel experience of Jacob twenty years previous, and will take the trouble to pencil off various items in that account that go to demonstrate that he was God's child at that time, will find not less than twelve or fourteen specific statements, any one of which is sufficient to prove that Jacob was a child of God; and of course when the twelve or fourteen are coupled together it makes an overwhelming statement. God was with him all these years. A great many persons criticise Jacob's career. He has been abused a great deal. A great many small sized men abuse great sized. prophets. It takes a small man to abuse a big man, all the time. You always find the small dog barking at the big one; the big one goes along and doesn't pay any attention to it. That is so all through life. And so you will hear Job and Jacob and Peter and a great many Bible characters criticised. Small sized people, small sized preachers, who never had one tithe of the piety of these men, or their heroism or courage or faith, will analyze and caricature and hold them up to ridicule.

Now I undertake to say that Jacob was as good a man before he got the Peniel experience as the great mass of Christian ministers and church members in all ages. I say the great mass: the average minister and the average Christian of any age, in the Church.

It was before he got the second blessing that he promised to give God the tenth of all his income. It didn't take sanctification to make him give the tenth A great many persons now that profess sanctification do not give a tenth to God. They haven't got religion after they are sanctified, not as much as Jacob had before he was sanctified. He gave the tenth of all he had before he got the second blessing, and God was so pleased with that thing that He incorporated it into the Jewish law for all ages for the Jewish Church. Now that shows how much religion he had, that he made a law that pleased God so well that God Himself adopted that law and put it into the Jewish economy.

That is only one among the many evidences. It is true he did love money and he had a grasping disposition, and had he lived in New York would have been equal to Jay Gould, doubtless, in wealth, for he had a natural genius for making money.

But now we come to the Peniel experience. We find here in this lesson that we have read his entire consecration; we find his sanctification and the baptism of power and what that baptism did for him. First, his entire consecration.

He sent out messengers, and they came back and said, "Esau is coming with a great company of men [evidently soldiers] and he is coming to attack you." That led Jacob into an earnest, agonized prayer, which I read in the first verses, "O God, deliver me from my brother Esau!" And then it occurred to him to make a present to his brother. So he parceled out a bountiful donation. The proverb says, "A gift appeaseth wrath," and so Jacob was acting upon the proverb. He sent this gift to appease his brother. Then after he sent the gift he arranged his household. He put the lesser animals first and the more valuable animals next and the servants next, and then Leah and her children next, and then Rachel and Joseph last.

How that illustrates the steps by which we give our all to God! What a lifelike picture it presents of our own selves, when we draw nigh to God in hours of great distress, in times of spiritual crises, when God is about to lead us to our Peniel, to our Pentecost! God always gets people in a fix so as to bring on a crisis. He has a way of crowding everybody into a corner. God has a way of sending some trial, some calamity, some sorrow, some besetment, some thorn in the flesh, some besetting sin, something or other — God has a way of arranging things so as to get us down to a Jabbok brook, so as to get us down to this matter of a hand to hand conflict with Himself. And when God arranges these matters and draws us into a crisis like this, we begin to make an entire consecration, and we begin just like Jacob. We give the lesser things. The goats go first; they are the cheapest. Then the sheep; they are the next cheapest. And then the- cattle and then the camels and then the servants; and so, item by item, item by item, we surrender and yield all over into the hand of God; and every time the great knife of consecration cuts off something it cuts closer and closer to our hearts, nearer and nearer the spot where we live, till by and by it touches our Rachel and Joseph.

And after he had given all, then he was left alone. And there wrestled a man with him all night long. Do you know that after you have given to God everything you have in the universe you are only half consecrated? It is only half done. When all the cattle and all the sheep and all the oxen and the camels and servants and the wife and the children, — when all was given there remained the perpendicular pronoun, Jacob. He was there; he was left alone.

Now, the most difficult, the profoundest, the deepest, the more radical consecration comes afterward. The deepest consecration, the real consecration, is a giving up of ourselves. It is an inner work. It is a consecration you cannot put on paper. We sometimes read the account of eminent men — very good and very proper, perhaps — who write out their consecrations. You have read the biographies of certain prominent scholarly men, holy men, like Jonathan Edwards and many others, who wrote out a consecration of what they would give to God, — their time, their powers; and many go on and mention item by item, item by item; and a good many people have followed their example. But I want to say that the deepest consecration, the highest of all, the last consecration, cannot be put in words. It cannot be itemized. The intellect is too gross to apprehend all the details that make up the inner self. A man cannot analyze his own self. No man can apprehend his own self. There are yearnings and longings and feelings and aspirations and hungerings, there are doubts and fears, there is an inner consciousness, there is an inner life, there is an inner personality, that you cannot put on paper and you cannot itemize it, and that goes to make up self.

Now, when this consecration of self is made it is a hand to hand work with God; and so you will find that this Angel was no less a person than Jesus Christ. There wrestled a man with him; and then it says, " The Angel of the Lord "; and before the lesson is finished it turns out to be the Elohim, the great God.

When we begin some great spiritual conflict we think the same thing. We think that we are tugging away with a man. But by and by it turns out that the man is more than a man, He is an Angel; and before we get through we find out we are dealing hand to hand with God.

To illustrate. A Methodist preacher said to me once, "I can give all to God but my appointments; I can trust God, but I cannot trust the bishop and the presiding elders." "Now," I said, " that is a delusion of the carnal mind. You think you are dealing with the bishops and presiding elders; you think your trouble lies with some man, some preacher or some ecclesiastical officer. But when you get down to bed rock in your soul you will find out that you have nothing to do with second causes. You will find out, when you get closer and deeper into this great secret, it is not the bishop and not the presiding elder; it is the great God that you are fighting against."

Jacob thought it was a mere man, and the Methodist minister thought it was a mere bishop or presiding elder He was deceived. We sometimes think it is our poverty, trouble, besetment or constitution, and we sometimes think it is a mere man, a mere temporary matter; it is the weather, the east wind. But when we get down to bed rock we find we are not wrestling with the east wind nor our circumstances nor with man nor with society nor with second causes; we find our souls are in a hand to hand conflict with the great God who lies behind all men and behind all second causes. Consecration will bring us to a point where we are brought face to face with God; and I tell you when a man is absolutely given up to God he has no second causes to him any more. He deals first-hand with headquarters.

Now, that is just the way Jacob found it, and that is the way you and I find it. We sometimes hear it said that Jacob wrestled with the Angel. But the Bible doesn't say so. The Bible says that this Angel wrestled with Jacob. It was God that did the wrestling. It was God taking hold on Jacob more than it was Jacob taking hold on God. Jacob was asking for deliverance and God was answering his prayer by breaking his bones.

We begin to pray for wonderful blessings, for wonderful enlargement, for wonderful victory. God begins to answer our prayer by shaving us down and by minifying us and reducing us. God answers prayer at the other end of the line. We pray for power, and instead of feeling that we are like Goliath, the more we pray the weaker we get. We pray for wisdom, and we want wonderful wisdom now, wisdom enough to run a whole General Conference; and God answers the prayer by making us feel we are the biggest fools in the universe, We begin praying for riches, spiritual wealth; and God begins by referring us to our spiritual poverty. What poor prayers and what poor services! and what miserable poor things we are! And while we seek for power we get weak; while we seek for wisdom we get foolish; and while we seek for riches we get poor. That is just the way Jacob was led; he was stripped of all things.

Now, my friends, God wrestles with us in this way. What for? In order that He may bring us to the point where He can conquer us. What did Jacob pray for? "O Lord, deliver me from my brother; I want power over my brother; I want victory over my brother." In order that he may be victorious over his brother God must be victorious over him. God must conquer us before we can conquer anybody else. No man can be emperor in a true sense unless he knows how to be an obedient subject. No man is fit to rule unless he knows how to be governed. And no man can be a prince of the kingdom of God until he first knows what absolute subjection is: and the man that God conquers can conquer all other men. That is philosophy. The man that God conquers can conquer earth and hell; but the man that God does not conquer, an old cigar will conquer him. Anybody and anything can conquer a man that God cannot conquer. But when God conquers you then you can conquer the devil and all men.

And so God begins to answer this prayer; but He begins away back yonder, far beyond the understanding of Jacob. He is now wrestling with him, subduing him, breaking down all the inner fiber and fabric of his soul, grinding him into spiritual powder, in order that He may make him into dynamite. And so consecration involves this complete yielding of our whole selves to God. We begin on the outskirts, with goats and sheep; away off there, at our finger tips, our toe nails, buttons and hats and clothes. But it gets closer and closer, until the very inner being has been brought and laid in absolute subjection to the will of God.

Now, when this consecration is made, then there comes the enduement of power, or there comes what prepares us for the enduement, and that is the change of nature. Just about the time He got him conquered, He said, "What is your name?" "My name is Jacob"; my name is, A Supplanter. That is the way he talked. The word Jacob is a Hebrew word, and the English word is, Supplanter. My name is, A Supplanter. "Well, how long have you been a supplanter? Well, I had it when I was born; I inherited it, I suppose; I always had a big bias, bent, make-up, that way; somehow the thing was always in me by nature, and I guess in all these years I have somewhat fostered and somewhat cultivated it: but by nature I am a supplanter, and although I may have restraining grace, yet every chance I get I am liable to break out on that line, I am liable to break through the fence on that point; and if I get a chance to take advantage of somebody in business, I am liable to do it, because that is my makeup, and it is in me by day and night; and that is my name, and so I just confess my name.

Now that confessing of his name was tantamount to turning his heart inside out and showing God all the colors of his soul; and so a complete confession is involved in this thing. Now the very moment that Jacob made this absolute, unconditional and unlimited confession, instantly the Lord cleansed him and changed his nature and name. Do you know that the only condition of salvation in the Bible is confession? People sometimes think that is a very easy way of being saved. It seems so, I know; but it is the hardest thing in the world to do. If we confess our sins, (it doesn't say a word about praying; it doesn't say a word about how long you wait), if we confess our sins, instantly He will forgive us and cleanse us. Isaiah did not ask for a clean heart. He did not pray very much. He simply turned his soul inside out, and said, "O Lord, I am a man of unclean lips," — although he was the best man then living on the earth, — and instantly God cleansed him. And you will find all through the Word of God that in order to seek pardon or cleansing, either one, all God wants is confession.

What is confession? Turning the heart inside out, like Jacob. My name is Jacob; and when he simply said that, that was the nut that contained the whole kernel; it involved the open confession. When a person simply opens the whole heart to God, without any apology, without any whitewashing; when you turn your whole soul out to God, instantly the blood will cleanse you; prayer or no prayer, — it is the climax of prayer, — cry or no cry, "He that confesseth and forsaketh shall find mercy." And so you find here the Holy Ghost has so put these things that the very moment he said, "My name is Supplanter, that is my make-up.; although I am God's child I have got this besetment in me," right away God said, " Thy name shall no more be Supplanter, but thy name will be Prince of God."

And so there God cleansed him from that phase of depravity, God cleansed him from the principle of being a supplanter, God cleansed him from all the radical inbeing of sin, and filled him with the image and likeness of God and gave him the Pentecostal enduement, the baptismal power, that made him a prince with God.

Now, He says, "As a prince thou hast prevailed and hast power with God and with men."

Notice, now, the baptism of power. A great many are seeking power but are not willing to pass through the experience which is preparatory or conditional for power. There is no such thing as having the enduement of power over a carnal mind. There is. not a single passage in the entire Bible that teaches that anybody may ask or expect to receive the enduement of power, strictly so called, while they still remain uncleansed from the carnal mind. I know there are many eminent men, I know there are many eminent evangelists, who go around and get great crowds of people seeking the baptism of power; and there is nothing more sickening to the spiritual sense than to see a great crowd of people seeking power, power, power, power, power, when not one in twenty are willing to be crucified with Christ or willing to be washed from the carnal mind; and you may pray a whole millennium, but the Almighty will not change His Word to please anybody. God will not baptize any man on this earth with the Holy Ghost unless He can first cleanse him. And Jacob never got the enduement of power until the principle of being a supplanter was eliminated from his heart; and after cleansing then came the enduement. My dear friends, young workers, evangelists and missionary workers, you need never expect in your own experience or in your work to have any success teaching the enduement of power unless it comes as a consequence upon a clean heart.

He had power, first, with God. He had power with God because he saw God's face. He says, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Now, that is what I understand by power with God. A great many people have fictitious views as to what spiritual power is. They see men go out in the world and perform great works for God, and they talk about eminent workers as if there was a magic or a mesmerism or a necromancy about them. They talk about George Muller, about Bishop Taylor, and about Thomas Harrison, and about Dr. Cullis and about people who have become conspicuous in the world. There are lots of them; I wish there were more; people who are conspicuous as being men that God has honored in His work. And people think there is a kind of mesmerism or necromancy or something about these people. When they come to talk with them they find they are simple, plain, unsophisticated men, and they wonder how it is. This person has power with God, and people have all sorts of fictitious views as to what power with God is.

Now, what is power with God? It is answered in this lesson. When you are so thoroughly subdued to the Lord, when God has so completely conquered you and cleansed you, and brought you into such relations with Himself that He can uncover His glorious face and shine into your heart and reveal His Son within your soul, and give such a personal manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ in your own heart as will completely fill and satisfy the needs of your soul, you have power with God. It is not power to make God work only by miracles; it is not power to make God blot the stars out, it is not power to- make storms rise, to work Chinese fireworks; it is not such power as the men of the world are hunting for.. It is that inner, deep, settled, spiritual power, that brings God down from His throne and brings Him into your cabin and into your chamber and into your heart, and reveals Himself to your soul as the One altogether lovely and the satisfying portion of your nature.

Power to prevail with God is power to bring manifestation of God into yourself. Peniel, the face of God. At Bethel he entered the house of God. At Peniel he saw the face of God. Conversion always brings us into God's house. That does not mean a visible dwelling, for Jacob was out-doors when he was at Bethel. There was no tent nor canvas nor log cabin around him; the heavens were his canopy. But the house of God is the family of God. The house of David means the family of David. And so conversion brings us into the house of God and the gate of heaven; the entrance, the beginning, of heaven. When your sins are pardoned, when your soul has been regenerated, you are then in the door of the great kingdom of God. Conversion is a Bethel to every soul. It is the house of God because then you are in the family and the home circle of God.

But when you get to Peniel, where the film is removed off the eye and the depravity is cleansed from the heart and the Holy Ghost fills you with deity, then you get a revelation of Jesus to your soul. There God becomes closer. You get something more now than the family of God, something more than the home circle relationship, something more than being in the doorway of heaven. You get into the presence of the great King and you get a revelation of Him to your own heart. Conversion brings us into the kingdom of heaven, and sanctification brings the kingdom of heaven into us. And more than that. It brings not only the kingdom of heaven but the King of heaven, both the kingdom and the King, in our souls, and we see the face of God.

I am not talking mystically, I am not talking foolishly, I am not talking at random. But did you ever see the face of God? Did ever you have a manifestation to your heart by the Holy Ghost? Did you ever get such a view of Christ? You say, "Where is the face of God? "I answer," In the face of Jesus Christ." "For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Did ever you get a view of Jesus, in some hour of prayer, in some secret place, under some mighty baptism, in some lonely hour, in some great meeting, at some camp meeting or convention, either in the crowd or by yourself? Did you ever get such a view of Jesus that you forgot where you were and forgot all the surroundings and forgot what time of day it was and forgot all about the duties of life, and your soul just feasted and feasted, and you either wept or laughed and rejoiced, and you saw there something in Jesus? It was not a vision but more than a vision; it was not a mere myth, it was a reality; it was not a mere passing whim; it was not a day dream; it was not a nervous ephemeral sensation across the retina of the eye. That deep manifestation was a view of the Lord. You did not see Him with your physical eye, but it seemed as though you did. You did not see Him with the imagination, but it seemed as though you did. It was deeper than eyes, it was deeper than imagination. It was what Paul talked about when he said, " It pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me."

It is all Bible; and there is no nonsense, and there is no fanaticism and there it no heresy in it. It is a solid fact. Oh, the unfolding of Jesus! A manifestation to your heart of the Lord Jesus, in such a way that if you had met Him on the street you would have known Him, in such a way that if you would meet Him among ten thousand people and He was dressed in rags you would pick Him out and know Him. Glory be to His precious name! I have known Him! I never will get over to all eternity the manifestation God gave me once of Jesus. It follows me and hovers around me and stays with me.

A few weeks after that manifestation, I remember, I was walking one day, in a snowstorm, along a street in Indianapolis, Incl., in a cold blizzard, the wind blowing, and freezing hard and snowing; and I was hurrying along through the sleet and cold on some message; and suddenly the Holy Spirit brought to my mind just simply these words: "Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart." And as I was passing by the Congregational Church on that street, I got such a view of the meekness and the humility of Jesus in those words that were just opened up into my soul, that the great tears ran down my face and my whole being was melted, and I just wept and wept and wept as I marched through the snowstorm; and it seemed to me in my soul there was as beautiful a spring morning as ever I saw on this planet.

Jesus! I tell you, friends, the world is starving for the want of Jesus. A great many people are holding on to a cold, historical Christ, to a mere name; and they have got a historical church, a historical piety, and a historical creed and a historical faith and a historical religion. But this living Jesus, with a pulse always tropical, with a love always sunshiny, can come and reveal Himself to men and women, can come and uncover the nature of the mind, and can reveal the disposition of the heart to His children, in such a way that they will be almost overwhelmed with the glory of their Redeemer.

That is what Jacob got. The face of God! Oh, the face of God! That face from which, when it is revealed in wrath, the heavens and the earth will fly away. That face revealed to His little ones, those who are broken and those who are subdued and conquered, and those who go limping under God's conquering hand!

Well, then, he not only had power with God, but he had power with man, with his brother. The very next day he met Esau, and under this mighty baptism of power there went out through all the air a strange, divine influence; and though Esau left his home with four hundred men, doubtless with the purpose of taking vengeance on Jacob, as soon as he got within range of that marvelous influence he began to feel the touch of a mighty hand, and he began to mellow down and soften down. Like two great worlds in that, when they are far apart, the attraction is somewhat delicate and slender; but as the two vast orbs get closer and closer, the attraction, the gravity, increases, gets stronger and stronger, until by and by the two vast worlds rush together. So these two men at first, perhaps, were afraid of each other, one man trembling and the other man full of vengeance. But as they got closer and closer, under this mighty baptism of power their hearts melted and dissolved, and by and by they went fast, and then faster, and then they ran and embraced and kissed each other, and the hardships and the angry words of twenty years were dissolved in a sea of love.

Power with his brother! Power to overcome the very man he was afraid of! Power to subdue the very man of all men he dreaded most!

I knew a poor girl once, who had to go out and do domestic work, who got the blessing of sanctification under my ministry in Newport, Ky. She had a sister who was married and lived in Cincinnati, and about the only place the poor child had to go to visit was there; and she said, " About every time I go there my brother-in-law blasphemes so it is perfect torture to go"; and she said, " If I get this blessing, how can I ever stand the abuse and cursings of my brother-in-law?" But finally she said, "Lord, I will take it; for Jesus' sake I will bear it "; and she paid the price and got the anointing. She said that the next Sunday after she went to see her sister, and her brother-in-law was as gentle as a lamb. God had put His clutch on the poor fellow. That may not always be the case, but if God does not answer your prayer in that particular way He will in some way. There will be some enemy, there will be some devil, there will be some Esau, there will be somebody or some cross or some trial; the very thing you most dreaded, the very thing you were most afraid of, God will have it dissolved in the alchemy of His own grace.

The preacher who is afraid to preach sanctification, who is afraid to run his colors to the masthead for fear he will not get a call, for fear he will not get a salary, for fear he will starve, can never amount to much; whereas the preacher who says, "Amen, Lord, I will do it; I will take the poorest church in the conference; I will do it," is the man that gets more calls than he can fill, and has a world-wide field open to him. Your enemy, your foe, some cross, some burden, some lion that lies in the way, God will give you power over.

Then he got power over himself. His great besetment had been to supplant men, to take advantage of men; he always got the big end of a bargain. That was his besetment. And now look at him. He pours out a vast donation with the liberality of a prince, prince as he is. And Esau says, "I am rich; I have got plenty; I do not want your cattle nor your wonderful gifts." Jacob says, "I beg you to accept them, for God hath blessed me and I have all things." The English version here says, "I have enough "; but the Hebrew says, "I have all things." Doesn't that sound like Paul! "All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."

How the baptism of the Holy Ghost puts a sense of wealth into a poor heart! " Take the present, for I have all things." There you see the complete victory of that man over his own self.

And then the last phase of victory was victory over his enemy, over the ungodly and unregenerate world. The Lord God said, " Go up to Bethel "; and he had been camping around there for a long while, and the women had used their household gods. Now you may think it strange that Jacob's family had household gods. It does not mean that they worshiped any false gods, but the true God. But they had little cherubim and seraphim; the Hebrews always had, from the days of Adam; they had a picture of the cherubim. When God put Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, He put cherubim at the gate, and they made a picture of them; and wherever they wandered they had a picture of those cherubim. The same cherubim were afterwards put in the ark of the covenant. When they prayed they would pray in the presence of those teraphim. Rachel had one she took away from home, and her father tried to make her give it back, you recollect. These little things were looked upon as very innocent among the people of those times. But under the light of the Holy Ghost people will see fine points; and under the light of the Holy Ghost Jacob saw that although the great mass of good people, the goody, goodish folks, had these little teraphim and cherubim, that was the entering wedge of idolatry. So he said, "Give up your earrings and give up these teraphim." The earrings then worn were very extravagant. They had rings on the toes and hands and nose and ears, and he saw that these people in his own family were like the heathen, and he said, "Lay aside all this nonsense." "Why," they said, "there is no harm in these"; like folks now tell about dime novels and tell about theaters and tell about dancing and tell about cards. Those people are so blind they cannot see it. That is why. They are color-blind, like some engineers. There is a red light yonder. The engineer swears the color is blue, and goes on at the rate of fifty miles an hour and wrecks his train. The great mass of church members are color-blind; and when God Almighty hangs a red light out they say it is blue, and go dashing on.

When you get the baptism of the Holy Ghost, I tell you, it takes the color-blindness out of your eyes. He saw that these petty gods and all these nonsensical things were a drag on their piety and a damage to their faith. He took the whole bundle and hid it in an old charter oak somewhere around there, and they are there yet, I guess, if some American traveler has not gone to work and hunted them out.

Now note. After he had said, "Put away these gods and put away this jewelry and put on clean garments," and when he got all the family dressed up in clean robes, " Now," he said, " we will go to Bethel." And as he marched along here were the vicious heathen. They were so vile it would not be appropriate to describe them. They were in the habit of just pouncing down on anybody, and cutting and slashing and taking anything they found. And yet here he was, with his little family, marching right through a gang of robbers, right through, the fiercest people on this earth; and as he went God put His hand on this heathen people, and it says that they did not touch Jacob nor his family.

Why? Because he had sanctified the whole family, and they were clean, and God was their guardian. I tell you that is power. Men may swear at you, they may hate you; but the very moment they find you stand true to God they back down. The very fellow that blasphemes and is talking obscene talk, the very moment he sees that you are a Jesus man, and have got Jesus in your heart, he will slink away like a whipped dog. God puts a hook in the jaw of the ungodly, and there is a terror that will come on the world when the Church stands in her pristine purity and power.

May the Lord God reveal to us all what this wonderful secret is, this enduement of power; " for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed."