we find Rachel, the loved and indulged wife, more murmuring, more
repining, more fault-finding than Leah. By sorrow and trial, Leah may
have learned submission; and the dearest earthly hopes disappointed--all
her affections as a wife crushed and despised--in her hour of grief, and
in the desolation of a widowhood of hate, she may have sought and found
that love which never faileth, which giveth liberally and upbraideth
not.

And He whose ear is ever open to the cry of his creatures, who forgives
even while he punishes their iniquities, pitied Leah, and, without
upbraiding her for that deceit by which she became a wife, gave her the
joys of a mother; and in all the names bestowed upon her children, Leah
at once recognises the mercy of God, while she still remembers that she
is hated of her husband--attesting at once her conscious sorrow and her
trusting faith.

Rachel was childless--and when she saw Leah rejoicing as a mother, it
awoke all the bitterness of envy. With the unreasonable pettishness of a
wife ever indulged, she reproached her husband. For once, the anger of
Jacob was kindled against the idolized Rachel. "Am I in God's stead?"
said he. The consciousness of being the loved and the cherished one--the
overflowing tenderness and the ready indulgence which Rachel received,
made her only more exacting and imperious; and while Leah seemed
softened by trials and sorrows, her sister grew more unreasonable by
indulgence, and was at once haughty and insolent. So corrupt is human
nature, that the gratification of our desires too often merely excites
the pride and haughtiness of the human heart, and the prosperous claim
the blessings of Heaven as a matter of right; while it is mercifully
ordained that the very sorrow which ever follows transgression, the
evils which await all departures from duty and right, should, by their