Gen xxviii. 16, 17.

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, how dreadful is this place! this is none other than the House of God, and this the gate of Heaven.

This was the natural and touching exclamation of the patriarch Jacob, when, in his lonely and perilous journey from Canaan to the land of the Chaldees, the God of his fathers appeared to him in a dream to confirm him in his faith and service, and to encourage him in his wanderings with the assurance of an unseen and Almighty Protector.

At that time an outcast, in some degree, from the tents of his father Isaac, and a fugitive from the anger of a justly offended brother; a forlorn and needy wanderer, he had laid him to sleep on the sands of the wilderness, his head supported on a pillow of stone, and his staff and scrip his only riches. But in his dream he saw Heaven opened, and “behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to Heaven, and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.