The tenderness of these two brothers towards one another and towards

their father was probably quickened by remorse when they met at his

deathbed. They could not, perhaps, think that they had hastened his end

by causing him anxieties which age has not strength to throw off; but

they could not miss the reflection that the life now closed and finally

sealed up might have been a much brighter life had they acted the part

of dutiful, loving sons. Scarcely can one of our number pass from among

us without leaving in our minds some self-reproach that we were not more

kindly towards him, and that now he is beyond our kindness; that our

opportunity for being brotherly towards _him_ is for ever gone. And when

we have very manifestly erred in this respect, perhaps there are among

all the stings of a guilty conscience few more bitterly piercing than

this. Many a son who has stood unmoved by the tears of a living

mother--his mother by whom he lives, who has cherished him as her own

soul, who has forgiven and forgiven and forgiven him, who has toiled and

prayed, and watched for him--though he has hardened himself against her

looks of imploring love and turned carelessly from her entreaties and

burst through all the fond cords and snares by which she has sought to

keep him, has yet broken down before the calm, unsolicitous, resting

face of the dead. Hitherto he has not listened to her pleadings, and now

she pleads no more. Hitherto she has heard no word of pure love from

him, and now she hears no more. Hitherto he has done nothing for her of

all that a son may do, and now there is nothing he can do. All the

goodness of her life gathers up and stands out at once, and the time for

gratitude is past. He sees suddenly, as by the withdrawal of a veil, all

that that worn body has passed through for him, and all the goodness

these features have expressed, and now they can never light up with

joyful acceptance of his love and duty. Such grief as this finds its one

alleviation in the knowledge that we may follow those who have gone

before us; that we may yet make reparation. And when we think how many

we have let pass without those frank, human, kindly offices we might

have rendered, the knowledge that we also shall be gathered to our

people comes in as very cheering. It is a grateful thought that there is

a place where we shall be able to live rightly, where selfishness will

not intrude and spoil all, but will leave us free to be to our neighbour

all that we ought to be and all that we would be.

XXV.

_JOSEPH'S DREAMS._

GENESIS xxxvii.

"Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee."--PSALM lxxvi. 10.

The migration of Israel from Canaan to Egypt was a step of prime

importance in the history. Great difficulties surrounded it, and very

extraordinary means were used to bring it about. The preparatory steps

occupied about twenty years, and nearly a fourth of the Book of Genesis

is devoted to this period. This migration was a new idea. So little was

it the result of an accidental dearth, or of any of those unforeseen

calamities which cause families to emigrate from our own country, that

God had forewarned Abraham himself that it must be. But only when it was

becoming matter of actual experience and of history did God make known

the precise object to be accomplished by it. This He makes known to

Jacob as he passes from Canaan; and as, in abandoning the land he had so

painfully won, his heart sinks, he is sustained by the assurance, "Fear

not to go down into Egypt; I will there make thee a great nation."

The meaning of the step and the suitableness of the time and of the

place to which Israel migrated, are apparent. For more than two hundred

years now had Abraham and his descendants been wandering as pilgrims,

and as yet there were no signs of God's promise being kept to them. That

promise had been of a land and of a seed. Great fecundity had been

promised to the race; but instead of that there had been a remarkable

and perplexing barrenness, so that after two centuries one tent could

contain the whole male population. In Jacob's time the population began

to increase, but just in proportion as this part of the promise showed

signs of fulfilment did the other part seem precarious. For, in

proportion to their increase, the family became hostile to the

Canaanites, and how should they ever get past that critical point in

their history at which they would be strong enough to excite the

suspicion, jealousy, and hatred of the indigenous tribes, and yet not

strong enough to defend themselves against this enmity? Their presence

was tolerated, just as our countrymen tolerated the presence of French

refugees, on the score of their impotence to do harm. They were placed

in a quite anomalous position; a single family who had continued for two

hundred years in a land which they could only seem in jest to call

theirs, dwelling as guests amid the natives, maintaining peculiar forms

of worship and customs. Collision with the inhabitants seemed

unavoidable as soon as their real character and pretensions oozed out,

and as soon as it seemed at all likely that they really proposed to

become owners and masters in the land. And, in case of such collision,

what could be the result, but that which has ever followed where a few

score men, brave enough to be cut down where they stood, have been

exposed to mass after mass of fierce and blood-thirsty barbarians? A

small number of men have often made good their entrance into lands where

the inhabitants greatly outnumbered them, but these have commonly been

highly disciplined troops, as in the case of the handful of Spaniards

who seized Mexico and Peru; or they have been backed by a power which

could aid with vast resources, as when the Romans held this country, or

when the English lad in India left his pen on his desk and headed his

few resolute countrymen, and held his own against unnumbered millions.

It may be argued that if even Abraham with his own household swept

Canaan clear of invaders, it might now have been possible for his

grandson to do as much with increased means at his disposal. But, not to

mention that every man has not the native genius for command and

military enterprise which Abraham had, it must be taken into account

that a force which is quite sufficient for a marauding expedition or a

night attack, is inadequate for the exigencies of a campaign of several

years' duration. The war which Jacob must have waged, had hostilities

been opened, must have been a war of extermination, and such a war must

have desolated the house of Israel if victorious, and, more probably by

far, would have quite annihilated it.

It is to obviate these dangers, and to secure that Israel grow without

let or hindrance, that Jacob's household is removed to a land where

protection and seclusion would at once be secured to them. In the land

of Goshen, secured from molestation partly by the influence of Joseph,

but much more by the caste-prejudices of the Egyptians, and their hatred

of all foreigners, and shepherds in particular, they enjoyed such

prosperity and attained so rapidly the magnitude of a nation that some,

forgetful alike of the promise of God and of the natural advantages of

Israel's position, have refused to credit the accounts given us of the

increase in their population. In a land so roomy, so fertile, and so

secluded as that in which they were now settled, they had every

advantage for making the transition from a family to a nation. Here they

were preserved from all temptation to mingle with neighbours of a

different race, and so lose their special place as a people called out

by God to stand alone. The Egyptians would have scorned the marriages

which the Canaanites passionately solicited. Here the very contempt in

which they were held proved to be their most valuable bulwark. And if

Christians have any of the wisdom of the serpent, they will often find

in the contempt or exclusiveness of worldly men a convenient barrier,

preventing them, indeed, from enjoying some privileges, but at the same

time enabling them, without molestation, to pursue their own way. I

believe young people especially feel put about by the deprivations which

they have to suffer in order to save their religious scruples; they are

shut off from what their friends and associates enjoy, and they perceive

that they are not so well liked as they would be had they less desire to

live by conscience and by God's will. They feel ostracized, banished,

frowned upon, laid under disabilities; but all this has its

compensations: it forms for them a kind of Goshen where they may worship

and increase, it runs a fence around them which keeps them apart from

much that tempts and from much that enfeebles.

The residence of Israel in Egypt served another important purpose. By

contact with the most civilised people of antiquity they emerged from

the semi-barbarous condition in which they had previously been living.

Going into Egypt mere shepherds, as Jacob somewhat plaintively and

deprecatingly says to Pharaoh; not even possessed, so far as we know, of

the fundamental arts on which civilisation rests, unable to record in

writing the revelations God made, or to read them if recorded; having

the most rudimentary ideas of law and justice, and having nothing to

keep them together and give them form and strength, save the one idea

that God meant to confer on them great distinction; they were

transferred into a land where government had been so long established

and law had come to be so thoroughly administered that life and property

were as safe as among ourselves to-day, where science had made such

advances that even the weather-beaten and time-stained relics of it seem

to point to regions into which even the bold enterprise of modern

investigation has not penetrated, and where all the arts needful for

life were in familiar use, and even some practised which modern times

have as yet been unable to recover. To no better school could the

barbarous sons of Bilhah and Zilpah have been sent; to no more fitting

discipline could the lawless spirits of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi have

been subjected. In Egypt, where human life was sacred, where truth was

worshipped as a deity, and where law was invested with the sanctity

which belonged to what was supposed to have descended from heaven, they

were brought under influences similar to those which ancient Rome

exerted over conquered races.

The unwitting pioneer of this great movement was a man in all respects

fitted to initiate it happily. In Joseph we meet a type of character

rare in any race, and which, though occasionally reproduced in Jewish

history, we should certainly not have expected to meet with at so early

a period. For what chiefly strikes one in Joseph is a combination of

grace and power, which is commonly looked upon as the peculiar result

of civilising influences, knowledge of history, familiarity with foreign

races, and hereditary dignity. In David we find a similar flexibility

and grace of character, and a similar personal superiority. We find the

same bright and humorous disposition helping him to play the man in

adverse circumstances; but we miss in David Joseph's self-control and

incorruptible purity, as we also miss something of his capacity for

difficult affairs of state. In Daniel this latter capacity is abundantly

present, and a facility equal to Joseph's in dealing with foreigners,

and there is also a certain grace or nobility in the Jewish Vizier; but

Joseph had a surplus of power which enabled him to be cheerful and alert

in doleful circumstances, which Daniel would certainly have borne

manfully but probably in a sterner and more passive mood. Joseph,

indeed, seemed to inherit and happily combine the highest qualities of

his ancestors. He had Abraham's dignity and capacity, Isaac's purity and

power of self-devotion, Jacob's cleverness and buoyancy and tenacity.

From his mother's family he had personal beauty, humour, and management.

A young man of such capabilities could not long remain insensible to his

own powers or indifferent to his own destiny. Indeed, the conduct of his

father and brothers towards him must have made him self-conscious, even

though he had been wholly innocent of introspection. The force of the

impression he produced on his family may be measured by the circumstance

that the princely dress given him by his father did not excite his

brothers' ridicule but their envy and hatred. In this dress there was a

manifest suitableness to his person, and this excited them to a keen

resentment of the distinction. So too they felt that his dreams were

not the mere whimsicalities of a lively fancy, but were possessed of a

verisimilitude which gave them importance. In short, the dress and the

dreams were insufferably exasperating to the brothers, because they

proclaimed and marked in a definite way the feeling of Joseph's

superiority which had already been vaguely rankling in their

consciousness. And it is creditable to Joseph that this superiority

should first have emerged in connection with a point of conduct. It was

in moral stature that the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah felt that they were

outgrown by the stripling whom they carried with them as their drudge.

Neither are we obliged to suppose that Joseph was a gratuitous

tale-bearer, or that when he carried their evil report to his father he

was actuated by a prudish, censorious, or in any way unworthy spirit.

That he very well knew how to hold his tongue no man ever gave more

adequate proof; but he that understands that there is a time to keep

silence necessarily sees also that there is a time to speak. And no one

can tell what torture that pure young soul may have endured in the

remote pastures, when left alone to withstand day after day the outrage

of these coarse and unscrupulous men. An elder brother, if he will, can

more effectually guard the innocence of a younger brother than any other

relative can, but he can also inflict a more exquisite torture.

Joseph, then, could not but come to think of his future and of his

destiny in this family. That his father should make a pet of him rather

than of Benjamin, he would refer to the circumstance that he was the

oldest son of the wife of his choice, of her whom first he had loved,

and who had no rival while he lived. To so charming a companion as

Joseph must always have been, Jacob would naturally impart all the

traditions and hopes of the family. In him he found a sympathetic and

appreciative listener, who wiled him on to endless narrative, and whose

imaginativeness quickened his own hopes and made the future seem grander

and the world more wide. And what Jacob had to tell could fall into no

kindlier soil than the opening mind of Joseph. No hint was lost, every

promise was interpreted by some waiting aspiration. And thus, like every

youth of capacity, he came to have his day-dreams. These day-dreams,

though derided by those who cannot see the Caesar in the careless

trifler, and though often awkward and even offensive in their

expression, are not always the mere discontented cravings of youthful

vanity, but are frequently instinctive gropings towards the position

which the nature is fitted to fill. "Our wishes," it has been said, "are

the forefeeling of our capabilities;" and certainly where there is any

special gift or genius in a man, the wish of his youth is predictive of

the attainment of manhood. Whims, no doubt, there are, passing phases

through which natural growth carries us, flutterings of the needle when

too near some powerful influence; yet amidst all variations the true

direction will be discernible and ultimately will be dominant. And it is

a great art to discover what we are fit for, so that we may settle down

to our own work, or patiently wait for our own place, without enviously

striving to rob every other man of his crown and so losing our own. It

is an art that saves us much fretting and disappointment and waste of

time, to understand early in life what it is we can accomplish, and what

precisely we mean to be at; "to recognise in our personal gifts or

station, in the circumstances and complications of our life, in our

relations to others, or to the world--the will of God teaching us what

we are, and for what we ought to live." How much of life often is gone

before its possessor sees the use he can put it to, and ceases to beat

the air! How much of life is an ill-considered but passionate striving

after what can never be attained, or a vain imitation of persons who

have quite different talents and opportunities from ourselves, and who

are therefore set to quite another work than ours.

It was because Joseph's dreams embodied his waking ambition that they

were of importance. Dreams become significant when they are the

concentrated essence of the main stream of the waking thoughts, and

picturesquely exhibit the tendency of the character. "In a dream," says

Elihu, "in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in

slumberings upon the bed; then He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth

their instruction, that He may withdraw man from his purpose." This is

precisely the use of dreams: our tendencies, unbridled by reason and

fact, run on to results; the purposes which the business and other good

influences of the day have kept down act themselves out in our dreams,

and we see the character unimpeded by social checks, and as it would be

were it unmodified by the restraints and efforts and external

considerations of our conscious hours. Our vanity, our pride, our

malice, our impurity, our deceit, our every evil passion, has free play,

and shows us its finished result, and in so vivid and true though

caricatured a form that we are startled and withdrawn from our purpose.

The evil thought we have suffered to creep about our heart seems in our

dreams to become a deed, and we wake in horror and thank God we can yet

refrain. Thus the poor woman, who in utter destitution was beginning to

find her child a burden, dreamt she had drowned it, and woke in horror

at the fancied sound of the plunge--woke to clasp her little one to her

breast with the thrill of a grateful affection that never again gave

way. So that while no man is so foolish as to expect instruction from

every dream any more than from every thought that visits his waking

mind, yet every one who has been accumulating some knowledge of himself

is aware that he has drawn a large part of this from his unconscious

hours. As the naturalist would know but a small part of the animal

kingdom by studying the creatures that show themselves in the daylight,

so there are moles and bats of the spirit that exhibit themselves most

freely in the darkness; and there are jungles and waste places in the

character which, if you look on them only in the sunshine, may seem safe

and lovely, but which at night show themselves to be full of all

loathsome and savage beasts.

With the simplicity of a guileless mind, and with the natural proneness

of members of one family to tell in the morning the dreams they have

had, Joseph tells to the rest what seems to himself interesting, if not

very suggestive. Possibly he thought very little of his dream till he

saw how much importance his brothers attached to it. Possibly there

might be discernible in his tone and look some mixture of youthful

arrogance. And in his relation of the second dream, there was

discernible at least a confidence that it would be realised, which was

peculiarly intolerable to his brothers, and to his father seemed a

dangerous symptom that called for rebuke. And yet "his father observed

the saying;" as a parent has sometimes occasion to check his child, and

yet, having done so, feels that that does not end the matter; that his

boy and he are in somewhat different spheres, so that while he was

certainly justified in punishing such and such a manifestation of his

character, there is yet something behind that he does not quite

understand, and for which possibly punishment may not be exactly the

suitable award.

We fall into Jacob's mistake when we refuse to acknowledge as genuine

and God-inspired any religious experience which we ourselves have not

passed through, and which appears in a guise that is not only

unfamiliar, but that is in some particulars objectionable. Up to the

measure of our own religious experience, we recognise as genuine, and

sympathise with, the parallel experience of others; but when they rise

above us and get beyond us, we begin to speak of them as visionaries,

enthusiasts, dreamers. We content ourselves with pointing again and

again to the blots in their manner, and refuse to read the future

through the ideas they add to our knowledge. But the future necessarily

lies, not in the definite and finished attainment, but in the indefinite

and hazy and dream-like germs that have yet growth in them. The future

is not with Jacob, the rebuker, but with the dreaming, and, possibly,

somewhat offensive Joseph. It was certainly a new element Joseph

introduced into the experience of God's people. He saw, obscurely

indeed, but with sufficient clearness to make him thoughtful, that the

man whom God chooses and makes a blessing to others is so far advanced

above his fellows that they lean upon him and pay him homage as if he

were in the place of God to them. He saw that his higher powers were to

be used for his brethren, and that the high destiny he somehow felt to

be his was to be won by doing service so essential that his family

would bow before him and give themselves into his hand. He saw this, as

every man whose love keeps pace with his talent sees it, and he so far

anticipated the dignity of Him who, in the deepest self-sacrifice,

assumed a position and asserted claims which enraged His brethren and

made even His believing mother marvel. Joseph knew that the welfare of

his family rested not with the Esau-like good-nature of Reuben, still

less with the fanatical ferocity of Simeon and Levi, not with the

servile patience of Issachar, nor with the natural force and dignity of

Judah, but with some deeper qualities which, if he himself did not yet

possess, he at least valued and aspired to.

Whatever Joseph thought of the path by which he was to reach the high

dignity which his dreams foreshadowed, he was soon to learn that the

path was neither easy nor short. Each man thinks that, for himself at

least, an exceptional path will be broken out, and that without

difficulties and humiliations he will inherit the kingdom. But it cannot

be so. And as the first step a lad takes towards the attainment of his

position often involves him in trouble and covers him with confusion,

and does so even although he ultimately finds that it was the only path

by which he could have reached his goal; so, that which was really the

first step towards Joseph's high destiny, no doubt seemed to him most

calamitous and fatal. It certainly did so to his brothers, who thought

that they were effectually and for ever putting an end to Joseph's

pretensions. "Behold, this dreamer cometh; come now therefore, and let

us slay him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams." They

were, however, so far turned from their purpose by Reuben as to put him

in a pit, meaning to leave him to die; and, doubtless, they thought

themselves lenient in doing so. The less violent the death inflicted,

the less of murder seems to be in it; so that he who slowly kills the

body by only wounding the affections often counts himself no murderer at

all, because he strikes no blood-shedding blow, and can deceive himself

into the idea that it is the working of his victim's own spirit that is

doing the damage.

The tank into which Joseph's brethren cast him was apparently one of

those huge reservoirs excavated by shepherds in the East, that they may

have a supply of water for their flocks in the end of the dry season,

when the running waters fail them. Being so narrow at the mouth that

they can be covered by a single stone, they gradually widen and form a

large subterranean room; and the facility they thus afford for the

confinement of prisoners was from the first too obvious not to be

commonly taken advantage of. In such a place was Joseph left to die:

under the ground, sinking in mire, his flesh creeping at the touch of

unseen slimy creatures, in darkness, alone; that is to say, in a species

of confinement which tames the most reckless and maddens the best

balanced spirits, which shakes the nerve of the calmest, and has

sometimes left the blankness of idiocy in masculine understandings. A

few wild cries that ring painfully round his prison show him he need

expect no help from without; a few wild and desperate beatings round the

shelving walls of rock show him there is no possibility of escape; he

covers his face, or casts himself on the floor of his dungeon to escape

within himself, but only to find this also in vain, and to rise and

renew efforts he knows to be fruitless. Here, then, is what has come of

his fine dreams. With shame he now remembers the beaming confidence

with which he had related them; with bitterness he thinks of the bright

life above him, from which these few feet cut him so absolutely off, and

of the quick termination that has been put to all his hopes.

Into such tanks do young persons especially get cast; finding themselves

suddenly dropped out of the lively scenery and bright sunshine in which

they have been living, down into roomy graves where they seem left to

die at leisure. They had conceived a way of being useful in the world;

they had found an aim or a hope; they had, like Joseph, discerned their

place and were making towards it, when suddenly they seem to be thrown

out and are left to learn that the world can do very well without them,

that the sun and moon and the eleven stars do not drop from their

courses or make wail because of their sad condition. High aims and

commendable purposes are not so easily fulfilled as they fancied. The

faculty and desire in them to be of service are not recognised. Men do

not make room for them, and God seems to disregard the hopes He has

excited in them. The little attempt at living they have made seems only

to have got themselves and others into trouble. They begin to think it a

mistake their being in the world at all; they curse the day of their

birth. Others are enjoying this life, and seem to be making something of

it, having found work that suits and develops them; but, for their own

part, they cannot get fitted into life at any point, and are excluded

from the onward movement of the world. They are again and again flung

back, until they fear they are not to see the fulfilment of any one

bright dream that has ever visited them, and that they are never, never

at all, to live out the life it is in them to live, or find light and

scope for maturing those germs of the rich human nature that they feel

within them.

All this is in the way to attainment. This or that check, this long

burial for years, does not come upon you merely because stoppage and

hindrance have been useful to others, but because your advancement lies

through these experiences. Young persons naturally feel strongly that

life is all before them, that this life is, in the first place, their

concern, and that God must be proved sufficient for this life, able to

bring them to their ideal. And the first lesson they have to learn is,

that mere youthful confidence and energy are not the qualities that

overcome the world. They have to learn that humility, and the ambition

that seeks great things, but not for ourselves, are the qualities really

indispensable. But do men become humble by being told to become so, or

by knowing they ought to be so? God must make us humble by the actual

experience we meet with in our ordinary life. Joseph, no doubt, knew

very well, what his aged grandfather must often have told him, that a

man must die before he begins to live. But what could an ambitious,

happy youth make of this, till he was thrown into the pit and left

there? as truly passing through the bitterness of death as Isaac had

passed through it, and as keenly feeling the pain of severance from the

light of life. Then, no doubt, he thought of Isaac, and of Isaac's God,

till between himself and the impenetrable dungeon-walls the everlasting

arms seemed to interpose, and through the darkness of his death-like

solitude the face of Jacob's God appeared to beam upon him, and he came

to feel what we must, by some extremity, all be made to feel, that it

was not in this world's life but in God he lived, that nothing could

befall him which God did not will, and that what God had for him to do,

God would enable him to do.

The heartless barbarity with which the brethren of Joseph sat down to

eat and drink the very dainties he had brought them from his father,

while they left him, as they thought, to starve, has been regarded by

all later generations as the height of hard-hearted indifference. Amos,

at a loss to describe the recklessness of his own generation, falls back

upon this incident, and cries woe upon those "that drink wine in bowls,

and anoint themselves with the chief ointment, but they are not grieved

for the affliction of Joseph." We reflect, if we do not substantially

reproduce, their sin when we are filled with animosity against those who

usher in some higher kind of life, effort, or worship, than we ourselves

as yet desire or are fit for, and which, therefore, reflects shame on

our incapacity; and when we would fain, without using violence, get rid

of such persons. There are often schemes set on foot by better men than

ourselves, against which somehow our spirit rises, yet which, did we

consider, we should at the most say with the cautious Gamaliel, Let us

beware of doing anything to hinder this, let us see whether, perchance,

it be not of God. Sometimes there are in families individuals who do not

get the encouragement in well-doing they might expect in a Christian

family, but are rather frowned upon and hindered by the other members of

it, because they seem to be inaugurating a higher style of religion than

the family is used to, and to be reflecting from their own conduct a

condemnation of what has hitherto been current.

This treatment, who among us has not extended to Him who in His whole

experience so closely resembles Joseph? So long as Christ is to us

merely, as it were, the pet of the family, the innocent, guileless,

loving Being on whom we can heap pretty epithets, and in whom we find

play for our best affections, to whom it is easier to show ourselves

affectionate and well-disposed than to the brothers who mingle with us

in all our pursuits; so long as He remains to us as a child whose

demands it is a relaxation to fulfil, we fancy that we are giving Him

our hearts, and that He, if any, has our love. But when He declares to

us His dreams, and claims to be our Lord, to whom with most absolute

homage we must bow, who has a right to rule and means to rule over us,

who will have His will done by us and not our own, then the love we

fancied seems to pass into something like aversion. His purposes we

would fain believe to be the idle fancies of a dreamer which He Himself

does not expect us to pay much heed to. And if we do not resent the

absolute surrender of ourselves to Him which He demands, if the bowing

down of our fullest sheaves and brightest glory to Him is too little

understood by us to be resented; if we think such dreams are not to come

true, and that He does not mean much by demanding our homage, and

therefore do not resent the demand; yet possibly we can remember with

shame how we have "anointed ourselves with the chief ointment," lain

listlessly enjoying some of those luxuries which our Brother has brought

us from the Father's house, and yet let Himself and His cause be buried

out of sight--enjoyed the good name of Christian, the pleasant social

refinements of a Christian land, even the peace of conscience which the

knowledge of the Christian's God produces, and yet turned away from the

deeper emotions which His personal entreaties stir, and from those

self-sacrificing efforts which His cause requires if it is to prosper.

There are, too, unstable Reubens still, whom something always draws

aside, and who are ever out of the way when most needed; who, like him,

are on the other side of the hill when Christ's cause is being betrayed;

who still count their own private business that which must be done, and

God's work that which may be done--work for themselves necessary, and

God's work only voluntary and in the second place. And there are also

those who, though they would be honestly shocked to be charged with

murdering Christ's cause, can yet leave it to perish.

XXVI.

_JOSEPH IN PRISON._

GENESIS xxxix.

"Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried,

he shall receive the crown of life."--JAMES i. 12.

Dramatists and novelists who make it their business to give accurate

representations of human life, proceed upon the understanding that there

is a plot in it, and that if you take the beginning or middle without

the end, you must fail to comprehend these prior parts. And a plot is

pronounced good in proportion as, without violating truth to nature, it

brings the leading characters into situations of extreme danger or

distress, from which there seems no possible exit, and in which the

characters themselves may have fullest opportunity to display and ripen

their individual excellences. A life is judged poor and without

significance, certainly unworthy of any longer record than a monumental

epitaph may contain, if there be in it no critical passages, no

emergencies when all anticipation of the next step is baffled, or when

ruin seems certain. Though it has been brought to a successful issue,

yet, to make it worthy of our consideration, it must have been brought

to this issue through hazard, through opposition, contrary to many

expectations that were plausibly entertained at the several stages of

its career All men, in short, are agreed that the value of a human life

consists very much in the hazards and conflicts through which it is

carried; and yet we resent God's dealing with us when it comes to be our

turn to play the hero, and by patient endurance and righteous endeavour

to bring our lives to a successful issue. How flat and tame would this

narrative have read had Joseph by easy steps come to the dignity he at

last reached through a series of misadventures that called out and

ripened all that was manly and strong and tender in his character. And

take out of your own life all your difficulties, all that ever pained,

agitated, depressed you, all that disappointed or postponed your

expectations, all that suddenly called upon you to act in trying

situations, all that thoroughly put you to the proof--take all this

away, and what do you leave, but a blank insipid life that not even

yourself can see any interest in?

And when we speak of Joseph's life as typical, we mean that it

illustrates on a great scale and in picturesque and memorable situations

principles which are obscurely operative in our own experience. It

pleases the fancy to trace the incidental analogies between the life of

Joseph and that of our Lord. As our Lord, so Joseph was the beloved of

his father, sent by him to visit his brethren, and see after their

well-being, seized and sold by them to strangers, and thus raised to be

their Saviour and the Saviour of the world. Joseph in prison pronouncing

the doom of one of his fellow-prisoners and the exaltation of the other,

suggests the scene on Calvary where the one fellow-sufferer was taken,

the other left. Joseph's contemporaries had of course no idea that his

life foreshadowed the life of the Redeemer, yet they must have seen, or

ought to have seen, that the deepest humiliation is often the path to

the highest exaltation, that the deliverer sent by God to save a people

may come in the guise of a slave, and that false accusations,

imprisonment, years of suffering, do not make it impossible nor even

unlikely that he who endures all these may be God's chosen Son.

In Joseph's being lifted out of the pit only to pass into slavery, many

a man of Joseph's years has seen a picture of what has happened to

himself. From a position in which they have been as if buried alive,

young men not uncommonly emerge into a position preferable certainly to

that out of which they have been brought, but in which they are

compelled to work beyond their strength, and _that_ for some superior in

whom they have no special interest. Grinding toil, and often cruel

insult, are their portion; and no necklace heavy with tokens of honour

that afterwards may be allotted them can ever quite hide the scars made

by the iron collar of the slave. One need not pity them over much, for

they are young and have a whole life-time of energy and power of

resistance in their spirit. And yet they will often call themselves

slaves, and complain that all the fruit of their labour passes over to

others and away from themselves, and all prospect of the fulfilment of

their former dreams is quite cut off. That which haunts their heart by

day and by night, that which they seem destined and fit for, they never

get time nor liberty to work out and attain. They are never viewed as

proprietors of themselves, who may possibly have interests of their own

and hopes of their own.

In Joseph's case there were many aggravations of the soreness of such a

condition. He had not one friend in the country. He had no knowledge of

the language, no knowledge of any trade that could make him valuable in

Egypt--nothing, in short, but his own manhood and his faith in God. His

introduction to Egypt was of the most dispiriting kind. What could he

expect from strangers, if his own brothers had found him so obnoxious?

Now when a man is thus galled and stung by injury, and has learned how

little he can depend upon finding good faith and common justice in the

world, his character will show itself in the attitude he assumes towards

men and towards life generally. A weak nature, when it finds itself thus

deceived and injured, will sullenly surrender all expectation of good,

and will vent its spleen on the world by angry denunciations of the

heartless and ungrateful ways of men. A proud nature will gather itself

up from every blow, and determinedly work its way to an adequate

revenge. A mean nature will accept its fate, and while it indulges in

cynical and spiteful observations on human life, will greedily accept

the paltriest rewards it can secure. But the supreme healthiness of

Joseph's nature resists all the infectious influences that emanate from

the world around him, and preserves him from every kind of morbid

attitude towards the world and life. So easily did he throw off all vain

regrets and stifle all vindictive and morbid feelings, so readily did he

adjust himself to and so heartily enter into life as it presented itself

to him, that he speedily rose to be overseer in the house of Potiphar.

His capacity for business, his genial power of devoting himself to other

men's interests, his clear integrity, were such, that this officer of

Pharaoh's could find no more trustworthy servant in all Egypt--"he left

all that he had in Joseph's hand: and he knew not ought he had, save the

bread which he did eat."

Thus Joseph passed safely through a critical period of his life--the

period during which men assume the attitude towards life and their

fellow-men which they commonly retain throughout. Too often we accept

the weapons with which the world challenges us, and seek to force our

way by means little more commendable than the injustice and coldness we

ourselves resent. Joseph gives the first great evidence of moral

strength by rising superior to this temptation, to which almost all men

in one degree or other succumb. You can hear him saying, deep down in

his heart and almost unconsciously to himself: If the world is full of

hatred, there is all the more need that at least one man should forgive

and love; if men's hearts are black with selfishness, ambition, and

lust, all the more reason for me to be pure and to do my best for all

whom my service can reach; if cruelty, lying, and fraud meet me at every

step, all the more am I called to conquer these by integrity and

guilelessness.

His capacity, then, and power of governing others, were no longer dreams

of his own, but qualities with which he was accredited by those who

judged dispassionately and from the bare actual results. But this

recognition and promotion brought with it serious temptation. So capable

a person was he that a year or two had brought him to the highest post

he could expect as a slave. His advancement, therefore, only brought his

actual attainment into more painful contrast with the attainment of his

dreams. As this sense of disappointment becomes more familiar to his

heart, and threatens, under the monotonous routine of his household

work, to deepen into a habit, there suddenly opens to him a new and

unthought-of path to high position. An intrigue with Potiphar's wife

might lead to the very advancement he sought. It might lift him out of

the condition of a slave. It may have been known to him that other men

had not scrupled so to promote their own interests. Besides, Joseph was

young, and a nature like his, lively and sympathetic, must have felt

deeply that in his position he was not likely to meet such a woman as

could command his cordial love. That the temptation was in any degree to

the sensual side of his nature there is no evidence whatever. For all

that the narrative says, Potiphar's wife may not have been attractive in

person. She _may_ have been; and as she used persistently, "day by day,"

every art and wile by which she could lure Joseph to her mind, in some

of his moods and under such circumstances as she would study to arrange

he may have felt even this element of the temptation. But it is too

little observed, and especially by young men who have most need to

observe it, that in such temptations it is not only what is sensual that

needs to be guarded against, but also two much deeper-lying

tendencies--the craving for loving recognition, and the desire to

respond to the feminine love for admiration and devotion. The latter

tendency may not seem dangerous, but I am sure that if an analysis could

be made of the broken hearts and shame-crushed lives around us, it would

be found that a large proportion of misery is due to a kind of

uncontrolled and mistaken chivalry. Men of masculine make are prone to

show their regard for women. This regard, when genuine and manly, will

show itself in purity of sympathy and respectful attention. But when

this regard is debased by a desire to please and ingratiate oneself, men

are precipitated into the unseemly expressions of a spurious manhood.

The other craving--the craving for love--acts also in a somewhat latent

way. It is this craving which drives men to seek to satisfy themselves

with the expressions of love, as if thus they could secure love itself.

They do not distinguish between the two; they do not recognise that what

they most deeply desire is love, rather than the expression of it; and

they awake to find that precisely in so far as they have accepted the

expression without the sentiment, in so far have they put love itself

beyond their reach.

This temptation was, in Joseph's case, aggravated by his being in a

foreign country, unrestrained by the expectations of his own family, or

by the eye of those he loved. He had, however, that which restrained

him, and made the sin seem to him an impossible wickedness, the thought

of which he could not, for a moment, entertain. "Behold, my master

wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that

he hath to my hand; there is none greater in this house than I; neither

hath he kept back anything from me but thee, because thou art his wife:

how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" Gratitude

to the man who had pitied him in the slave market, and shown a generous

confidence in a comparative stranger, was, with Joseph, a stronger

sentiment than any that Potiphar's wife could stir in him. One can well

believe it. We know what enthusiastic devotedness a young man of any

worth delights to give to his superior who has treated him with justice,

generosity, and confidence; who himself occupies a station of importance

in public life; and who, by a dignified graciousness of demeanour, can

make even the slave feel that he too is a man, and that through his

slave's dress his proper manhood and worth are recognised. There are few

stronger sentiments than the enthusiasm or quiet fidelity that can thus

be kindled, and the influence such a superior wields over the young

mind is paramount. To disregard the rights of his master seemed to

Joseph a great wickedness and sin against God. The treachery of the sin

strikes him; his native discernment of the true rights of every party in

the case cannot, for a moment, be hoodwinked. He is not a man who can,

even in the excitement of temptation, overlook the consequences his sin

may have on others. Not unsteadied by the flattering solicitations of

one so much above him in rank, nor sullied by the contagion of her

vehement passion; neither afraid to incur the resentment of one who so

regarded him, nor kindled to any impure desire by contact with her

blazing lust; neither scrupling thoroughly to disappoint her in himself,

nor to make her feel her own great guilt, he flung from him the strong

inducements that seemed to net him round and entangle him as his garment

did, and tore himself, shocked and grieved, from the beseeching hand of

his temptress.

The incident is related not because it was the most violent temptation

to which Joseph was ever exposed, but because it formed a necessary link

in the chain of circumstances that brought him before Pharaoh. And

however strong this temptation may have been, more men would be found

who could thus have spoken to Potiphar's wife than who could have kept

silence when accused by Potiphar. For his purity you will find his

equal, one among a thousand; for his mercy scarcely one. For there is

nothing more intensely trying than to live under false and painful

accusations, which totally misrepresent and damage your character; which

effectually bar your advancement, and which yet you have it in your

power to disprove. Joseph, feeling his indebtedness to Potiphar,

contents himself with the simple averment that he himself is innocent.

The word is on his tongue that can put a very different face on the

matter, but rather than utter that word, Joseph will suffer the stroke

that otherwise must fall on his master's honour; will pass from his high

place and office of trust, through the jeering or possibly

compassionating slaves, branded as one who has betrayed the frankest

confidence, and is fitter for the dungeon than the stewardship of

Potiphar. He is content to lie under the cruel suspicion that he had in

the foulest way wronged the man whom most he should have regarded, and

whom in point of fact he did enthusiastically serve. There was one man

in Egypt whose good-will he prized, and this man now scorned and

condemned him, and this for the very act by which Joseph had proved most

faithful and deserving.

And even after a long imprisonment, when he had now no reputation to

maintain, and when such a little bit of court scandal as he could have

retailed would have been highly palatable and possibly useful to some of

those polished ruffians and adventurers who made their dungeon ring with

questionable tales, and with whom the free and levelling intercourse of

prison life had put him on the most familiar footing, and when they

twitted and taunted him with his supposed crime, and gave him the prison

sobriquet that would most pungently embody his villainy and failure, and

when it might plausibly have been pleaded by himself that such a woman

should be exposed, Joseph uttered no word of recrimination, but quietly

endured, knowing that God's providence could allow him to be merciful;

protesting, when needful, that he himself was innocent, but seeking to

entangle no one else in his misfortune.

It is this that has made the world seem so terrible a place to

many--that the innocent must so often suffer for the guilty, and that,

without appeal, the pure and loving must lie in chains and bitterness,

while the wicked live and see good days. It is this that has made men

most despairingly question whether there be indeed a God in heaven Who

knows who the real culprit is, and yet suffers a terrible doom slowly to

close around the innocent; Who sees where the guilt lies, and yet moves

no finger nor speaks the word that would bring justice to light, shaming

the secure triumph of the wrongdoer, and saving the bleeding spirit from

its agony. It was this that came as the last stroke of the passion of

our Lord, that He was numbered among the transgressors; it was this that

caused or materially increased the feeling that God had deserted Him;

and it was this that wrung from Him the cry which once was wrung from

David, and may well have been wrung from Joseph, when, cast into the

dungeon as a mean and treacherous villain, whose freedom was the peril

of domestic peace and honour, he found himself again helpless and

forlorn, regarded now not as a mere worthless lad, but as a criminal of

the lowest type. And as there always recur cases in which exculpation is

impossible just in proportion as the party accused is possessed of

honourable feeling, and where silent acceptance of doom is the result

not of convicted guilt, but of the very triumph of self-sacrifice, we

must beware of over-suspicion and injustice. There is nothing in which

we are more frequently mistaken than in our suspicions and harsh

judgments of others.

"But the Lord was with Joseph, and allowed him mercy, and gave him

favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison." As in Potiphar's

house, so in the king's house of detention, Joseph's fidelity and

serviceableness made him seem indispensable, and by sheer force of

character he occupied the place rather of governor than of prisoner. The

discerning men he had to do with, accustomed to deal with criminals and

suspects of all shades, very quickly perceived that in Joseph's case

justice was at fault, and that he was a mere scape-goat. Well might

Potiphar's wife, like Pilate's, have had warning dreams regarding the

innocent person who was being condemned; and probably Potiphar himself

had suspicion enough of the true state of matters to prevent him from

going to extremities with Joseph, and so to imprison him more out of

deference to the opinion of his household, and for the sake of

appearances, than because Joseph alone was the object of his anger. At

any rate, such was the vitality of Joseph's confidence in God, and such

was the light-heartedness that sprang from his integrity of conscience,

that he was free from all absorbing anxiety about himself, and had

leisure to amuse and help his fellow-prisoners, so that such promotion

as a gaol could afford he won, from a dungeon to a chain, from a chain

to his word of honour. Thus even in the unlatticed dungeon the sun and

moon look in upon him and bow to him; and while his sheaf seems at its

poorest, all rust and mildew, the sheaves of his masters do homage.

After the arrival of two such notable criminals as the chief butler and

baker of Pharaoh--the chamberlain and steward of the royal

household--Joseph, if sometimes pensive, must yet have had sufficient

entertainment at times in conversing with men who stood by the king, and

were familiar with the statesmen, courtiers, and military men who

frequented the house of Potiphar. He had now ample opportunity for

acquiring information which afterwards stood him in good stead, for

apprehending the character of Pharaoh, and for making himself

acquainted with many details of his government, and with the general

condition of the people. Officials in disgrace would be found much more

accessible and much more communicative of important information than

officials in court favour could have been to one in Joseph's position.

It is not surprising that three nights before Pharaoh's birthday these

functionaries of the court should have recalled in sleep such scenes as

that day was wont to bring round, nor that they should vividly have seen

the parts they themselves used to play in the festival. Neither is it

surprising that they should have had very anxious thoughts regarding

their own fate on a day which was chosen for deciding the fate of

political or courtly offenders. But it is remarkable that they having

dreamed these dreams Joseph should have been found willing to interpret

them. One desires some evidence of Joseph's attitude towards God during

this period when God's attitude towards him might seem doubtful, and

especially one would like to know what Joseph by this time thought of

his juvenile dreams, and whether in the prison his face wore the same

beaming confidence in his own future which had smitten the hearts of his

brothers with impatient envy of the dreamer. We seek some evidence, and

here we find it. Joseph's willingness to interpret the dreams of his

fellow-prisoners proves that he still believed in his own, that among

his other qualities he had this characteristic also of a steadfast and

profound soul, that he "reverenced as a man the dreams of his youth."

Had he not done so, and had he not yet hoped that somehow God would

bring truth out of them, he would surely have said: Don't you believe in

dreams; they will only get you into difficulties. He would have said

what some of us could dictate from our own thoughts: I won't meddle

with dreams any more; I am not so young as I once was; doctrines and

principles that served for fervent romantic youth seem puerile now, when

I have learned what human life actually is; I can't ask this man, who

knows the world and has held the cup for Pharaoh, and is aware what a

practical shape the king's anger takes, to cherish hopes similar to

those which often seem so remote and doubtful to myself. My religion has

brought me into trouble: it has lost me my situation, it has kept me

poor, it has made me despised, it has debarred me from enjoyment. Can I

ask this man to trust to inward whisperings which seem to have so misled

me? No, no; let every man bear his own burden. If he wishes to become

religious, let not me bear the responsibility. If he will dream, let him

find some other interpreter.

This casual conversation, then, with his fellow-prisoners was for Joseph

one of those perilous moments when a man holds his fate in his hand, and

yet does not know that he is specially on trial, but has for his

guidance and safe-conduct through the hazard only the ordinary

safeguards and lights by the aid of which he is framing his daily life.

A man cannot be forewarned of trial, if the trial is to be a fair test

of his habitual life. He must not be called to the lists by the herald's

trumpet warning him to mind his seat and grasp his weapon; but must be

suddenly set upon if his habit of steadiness and balance is to be

tested, and the warrior-instinct to which the right weapon is ever at

hand. As Joseph, going the round of his morning duty and spreading what

might stir the appetite of these dainty courtiers, noted the gloom on

their faces, had he not been of a nature to take upon himself the

sorrows of others, he might have been glad to escape from their

presence, fearful lest he should be infected by their depression, or

should become an object on which they might vent their ill-humour. But

he was girt with a healthy cheerfulness that could bear more than his

own burden; and his pondering of his own experience made him sensitive

to all that affected the destinies of other men.

Thus Joseph in becoming the interpreter of the dreams of other men

became the fulfiller of his own. Had he made light of the dreams of his

fellow-prisoners because he had already made light of his own, he would,

for aught we can see, have died in the dungeon. And, indeed, what hope

is left for a man, and what deliverance is possible, when he makes light

of his own most sacred experience, and doubts whether after all there

was any Divine voice in that part of his life which once he felt to be

full of significance? Sadness, cynical worldliness, irritability, sour

and isolating selfishness, rapid deterioration in every part of the

character--these are the results which follow our repudiation of past

experience and denial of truth that once animated and purified us; when,

at least, this repudiation and denial are not themselves the results of

our advance to a higher, more animating, and more purifying truth. We

cannot but leave behind us many "childish things," beliefs that we now

recognise as mere superstitions, hopes and fears which do not move the

maturer mind; we cannot but seek always to be stripping ourselves of

modes of thinking which have served their purpose and are out of date,

but we do so only for the sake of attaining freer movement in all

serviceable and righteous conduct, and more adequate covering for the

permanent weaknesses of our own nature--"not for that we would be

unclothed, but clothed upon," that truth partial and dawning may be

swallowed up in the perfect light of noon. And when a supposed advance

in the knowledge of things spiritual robs us of all that sustains true

spiritual life in us, and begets an angry contempt of our own past

experience and a proud scorning of the dreams that agitate other men;

when it ministers not at all to the growth in us of what is tender and

pure and loving and progressive, but hardens us to a sullen or coarsely

riotous or coldly calculating character, we cannot but question whether

it is not a delusion rather than a truth that has taken possession of

us.

If it is fanciful, it is yet almost inevitable, to compare Joseph at

this stage of his career to the great Interpreter who stands between God

and us, and makes all His signs intelligible. Those Egyptians could not

forbear honouring Joseph, who was able to solve to them the mysteries on

the borders of which the Egyptian mind continually hovered, and which it

symbolized by its mysterious sphinxes, its strange chambers of imagery,

its unapproachable divinities. And we bow before the Lord Jesus Christ,

because He can read our fate and unriddle all our dim anticipations of

good and evil, and make intelligible to us the visions of our own

hearts. There is that in us, as in these men, from which a skilled eye

could already read our destiny. In the eye of One who sees the end from

the beginning, and can distinguish between the determining influences of

character and the insignificant manifestations of a passing mood, we are

already designed to our eternal places. And it is in Christ alone your

future is explained. You cannot understand your future without taking

Him into your confidence. You go forward blindly to meet you know not

what, unless you listen to His interpretation of the vague presentiments

that visit you. Without Him what can we make of those suspicions of a

future judgment, or of those yearnings after God, that hang about our

hearts? Without Him what can we make of the idea and hope of a better

life than we are now living, or of the strange persuasion that all will

yet be well--a persuasion that seems so groundless, and which yet will

not be shaken off, but finds its explanation in Christ? The excess of

side light that falls across our path from the present seems only to

make the future more obscure and doubtful, and from Him alone do we

receive any interpretation of ourselves that even seems to be

satisfying. Our fellow-prisoners are often seen to be so absorbed in

their own affairs that it is vain to seek light from them; but He, with

patient, self-forgetting friendliness, is ever disengaged, and even

elicits, by the kindly and interrogating attitude He takes towards us,

the utterance of all our woes and perplexities. And it is because He has

had dreams Himself that He has become so skilled an interpreter of ours.

It is because in His own life He had His mind hard pressed for a

solution of those very problems which baffle us, because He had for

Himself to adjust God's promise to the ordinary and apparently casual

and untoward incidents of a human life, and because He had to wait long

before it became quite clear how one Scripture after another was to be

fulfilled by a course of simple confiding obedience--it is because of

this experience of His own, that He can now enter into and rightly guide

to its goal every longing we cherish.

XXVII.

_PHARAOH'S DREAMS._

GENESIS xli.

"Thus saith the Lord, that frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and

maketh diviners mad; that confirmeth the word of His servant, and

performeth the counsel of His messengers: that saith of Cyrus, He is

My shepherd, and shall perform all My pleasure."--ISA. xliv. 25, 28.

The preceding act in this great drama--the act comprising the scenes of

Joseph's temptation, unjust imprisonment, and interpretation of his

fellow-prisoners' dreams--was written for the sake of explaining how

Joseph came to be introduced to Pharaoh. Other friendships may have been

formed in the prison, and other threads may have been spun which went to

make up the life of Joseph, but this only is pursued. For a time,

however, there seemed very little prospect that this would prove to be

the thread on which his destiny hung. Joseph made a touching appeal to

the Chief Butler: "yet did not the Chief Butler remember Joseph, but

forgat him." You can see him in the joy of his release affectionately

pressing Joseph's hand as the king's messengers knocked off his fetters.

You can see him assuring Joseph, by his farewell look, that he might

trust him; mistaking mere elation at his own release for warmth of

feeling towards Joseph, though perhaps even already feeling just the

slightest touch of awkwardness at being seen on such intimate terms

with a Hebrew slave. How could he, when in the palace of Pharaoh and

decorated with the insignia of his office and surrounded by courtiers,

break through the formal etiquette of the place? What with the pleasant

congratulations of old friends, and the accumulation of business since

he had been imprisoned, and the excitement of restoration from so low

and hopeless to so high and busy a position, the promise to Joseph is

obliterated from his mind. If it once or twice recurs to his memory, he

persuades himself he is waiting for a good opening to mention Joseph. It

would perhaps be unwarrantable to say that he admits the idea that he is

in no way indebted to Joseph, since all that Joseph had done was to

interpret, but by no means to determine, his fate.

The analogy which we could not help seeing between Joseph's relation to

his fellow-prisoners, and our Lord's relation to us, pursues us here.

For does not the bond between us and Him seem often very slender, when

once we have received from Him the knowledge of the King's good-will,

and find ourselves set in a place of security? Is not Christ with many a

mere stepping-stone for their own advancement, and of interest only so

long as they are in anxiety about their own fate? Their regard for Him

seems abruptly to terminate as soon as they are ushered to freer air.

Brought for a while into contact with Him, the very peace and prosperity

which that intercourse has introduced them to become opiates to dull

their memory and their gratitude. They have received all they at present

desire, they have no more dreams, their life has become so plain and

simple and glad that they need no interpreter. They seem to regard Him

no more than an official is regarded who is set to discharge to all

comers some duty for which he is paid; who mingles no love with his

work, and from whom they would receive the same benefits whether he had

any personal interest in them or no. But there is no Christianity where

there is no loving remembrance of Christ. If your contact with Him has

not made Him your Friend whom you can by no possibility forget, you have

missed the best result of your introduction to Him. It makes one think

meanly of the Chief Butler that such a personality as Joseph's had not

more deeply impressed him--that everything he heard and saw among the

courtiers did not make him say to himself: There is a friend of mine, in

prison hard by, that for beauty, wisdom, and vivacity would more than

match the finest of you all. And it says very little for us if we can

have known anything of Christ without seeing that in Him we have what is

nowhere else, and without finding that He has become the necessity of

our life to whom we turn at every point.

But, as things turned out, it was perhaps as well for Joseph that his

promising friend did forget him. For, supposing the Chief Butler had

overcome his natural reluctance to increase his own indebtedness to

Pharaoh by interceding for a friend, supposing he had been willing to

risk the friendship of the Captain of the Guard by interfering in so

delicate a matter, and supposing Pharaoh had been willing to listen to

him, what would have been the result? Probably that Joseph would have

been sold away to the quarries, for certainly he could not have been

restored to Potiphar's house; or, at the most, he might have received

his liberty, and a free pass out of Egypt. That is to say, he would have

obtained liberty to return to sheep-shearing and cattle-dealing and

checkmating his brother's plots. In any probable case his career would

have tended rather towards obscurity than towards the fulfilment of his

dreams.

There seems equal reason to congratulate Joseph on his friend's

forgetfulness, when we consider its probable effects, not on his career,

but on his character. When he was left in prison after so sudden and

exciting an incursion of the outer world as the king's messengers would

make, his mind must have run chiefly in two lines of thought. Naturally

he would feel some envy of the man who was being restored; and when day

after day passed and more than the former monotony of prison routine

palled on his spirit; when he found how completely he was forgotten, and

how friendless and lone a creature he was in that strange land where

things had gone so mysteriously against him; when he saw before him no

other fate than that which he had seen befall so many a slave thrown

into a dungeon at his master's pleasure and never more heard of, he must

have been sorely tempted to hate the whole world, and especially those

brethren who had been the beginning of all his misfortunes. Had there

been any selfishness in solution in Joseph's character, this is the

point at which it would have quickly crystallized into permanent forms.

For nothing more certainly elicits and confirms selfishness than bad

treatment. But from his conduct on his release, we see clearly enough

that through all this trying time his heroism was not only that of the

strong man who vows that though the whole world is against him the day

will come when the world shall have need of him, but of the saint of God

in whom suffering and injustice leave no bitterness against his fellows,

nor even provoke one slightest morbid utterance.

But another process must have been going on in Joseph's mind at the

same time. He must have felt that it was a very serious thing that he

had been called upon to do in interpreting God's will to his

fellow-prisoners. No doubt he fell into it quite naturally and aptly,

because it was liker his proper vocation, and more of his character

could come out in it than in anything he had yet done. Still, to be

mixed up thus with matters of life and death concerning other people,

and to have men of practical ability and experience and high position

listening to him as to an oracle, and to find that in very truth a great

power was committed to him, was calculated to have _some_ considerable

result one way or other on Joseph. And these two years of unrelieved and

sobering obscurity cannot but be considered most opportune. For one of

two things is apt to follow the world's first recognition of a man's

gifts. He is either induced to pander to the world's wonder and become

artificial and strained in all he does, so losing the spontaneity and

naturalness and sincerity which characterise the best work; or he is

awed and steadied. And whether the one or the other result follow, will

depend very much on the other things that are happening to him. In

Joseph's case it was probably well that after having made proof of his

powers he was left in such circumstances as would not only give him time

for reflection, but also give a humble and believing turn to his

reflections. He was not at once exalted to the priestly caste, nor

enrolled among the wise men, nor put in any position in which he would

have been under constant temptation to display and trifle with his

power; and so he was led to the conviction that deeper even than the joy

of receiving the recognition and gratitude of men was the abiding

satisfaction of having done the thing God had given him to do.

These two years, then, during which Joseph's active mind must

necessarily have been forced to provide food for itself, and have been

thrown back upon his past experience, seem to have been of eminent

service in maturing his character. The self-possessed dignity and ease

of command which appear in him from the moment when he is ushered into

Pharaoh's presence have their roots in these two years of silence. As

the bones of a strong man are slowly, imperceptibly knit, and gradually

take the shape and texture they retain throughout; so during these years

there was silently and secretly consolidating a character of almost

unparalleled calmness and power. One has no words to express how

tantalizing it must have been to Joseph to see this Egyptian have his

dreams so gladly and speedily fulfilled, while he himself, who had so

long waited on the true God, was left waiting still, and now so utterly

unbefriended that there seemed no possible way of ever again connecting

himself with the world outside the prison walls. Being pressed thus for

an answer to the question, What does God mean to make of my life? he was

brought to see and to hold as the most important truth for him, that the

first concern is, that God's purposes be accomplished; the second, that

his own dreams be fulfilled. He was enabled, as we shall see in the

sequel, to put God truly in the first place, and to see that by

forwarding the interests of other men, even though they were but

light-minded chief butlers at a foreign court, he might be as

serviceably furthering the purposes of God, as if he were forwarding his

own interests. He was compelled to seek for some principle that would

sustain and guide him in the midst of much disappointment and

perplexity, and he found it in the conviction that the essential thing

to be accomplished in this world, and to which every man must lay his

shoulder, is God's purpose. Let that go on, and all else that should go

on will go on. And he further saw that he best fulfils God's purpose

who, without anxiety and impatience, does the duty of the day, and gives

himself without stint to the "charities that soothe and heal and bless."

His perception of the breadth of God's purpose, and his profound and

sympathetic and active submission to it, were qualities too rare not to

be called into influential exercise. After two years he is suddenly

summoned to become God's interpreter to Pharaoh. The Egyptian king was

in the unhappy though not uncommon position of having a revelation from

God which he could not read, intimations and presentiments he could not

interpret. To one man is given the revelation, to another the

interpretation. The official dignity of the king is respected, and to

him is given the revelation which concerns the welfare of the whole

people. But to read God's meaning in a revelation requires a spiritual

intelligence trained to sympathy with His purposes, and such a spirit

was found in Joseph alone.

The dreams of Pharaoh were thoroughly Egyptian. The marvel is, that a

symbolism so familiar to the Egyptian eye should not have been easily

legible to even the most slenderly gifted of Pharaoh's wise men. "In my

dream," says the king, "behold, I stood upon the bank of the river: and,

behold, there came up out of the river seven kine," and so on. Every

land or city is proud of its river, but none has such cause to be so as

Egypt of its Nile. The country is accurately as well as poetically

called "the gift of Nile." Out of the river do really come good or bad

years, fat or lean kine. Wholly dependent on its annual rise and

overflow for the irrigating and enriching of the soil, the people

worship it and love it, and at the season of its overflow give way to

the most rapturous expressions of joy. The cow also was reverenced as

the symbol of the earth's productive power. If then, as Joseph avers,

God wished to show to Pharaoh that seven years of plenty were

approaching, this announcement could hardly have been made plainer in

the language of dreams than by showing to Pharaoh seven well-favoured

kine coming up out of the bountiful river to feed on the meadow made

richly green by its waters. If the king had been sacrificing to the

river, such a sight, familiar as it was to the dwellers by the Nile,

might well have been accepted by him as a promise of plenty in the land.

But what agitated Pharaoh, and gave him the shuddering presentiment of

evil which accompanies some dreams, was the sequel. "Behold, seven other

kine came up after them, poor and very ill-favoured and lean-fleshed,

such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness: and the lean

and the ill-favoured kine did eat up the first seven fat kine: and when

they had eaten them up it could not be known that they had eaten them;

but they were still ill-favoured, as at the beginning,"--a picture which

to the inspired dream-reader represented seven years of famine so

grievous, that the preceding plenty should be swallowed up and not be

known. A similar image occurred to a writer who, in describing a more

recent famine in the same land, says: "The year presented itself as a

monster whose wrath must annihilate all the resources of life and all

the means of subsistence."

It tells in favour of the court magicians and wise men that not one of

them offered an interpretation of dreams to which it would certainly not

have been difficult to attach some tolerably feasible interpretation.

Probably these men were as yet sincere devotees of astrology and occult

science, and not the mere jugglers and charlatans their successors seem

to have become. When men cannot make out the purpose of God regarding

the future of the race, it is not wonderful that they should endeavour

to catch the faintest, most broken echo of His voice to the world,

wherever they can find it. Now there is a wide region, a borderland

between the two worlds of spirit and of matter, in which are found a

great many mysterious phenomena which cannot be explained by any known

laws of nature, and through which men fancy they get nearer to the

spiritual world. There are many singular and startling appearances,

coincidences, forebodings, premonitions which men have always been

attracted towards, and which they have considered as open ways of

communication between God and man. There are dreams, visions, strange

apprehensions, freaks of memory, and other mental phenomena, which, when

all classed together, assorted, and skilfully applied to the reading of

the future, once formed quite a science by itself. When men have no word

from God to depend upon, no knowledge at all of where either the race or

individuals are going to, they will eagerly grasp at anything that even

seems to shed a ray of light on their future. We for the most part make

light of that whole category of phenomena, because we have a more sure

word of prophecy by which, as with a light in a dark place, we can tell

where our next step should be, and what the end shall be. But invariably

in heathen countries, where no guiding Spirit of God was believed in,

and where the absence of His revealed will left numberless points of

duty doubtful and all the future dark, there existed in lieu of this a

class of persons who, under one name or other, undertook to satisfy the

craving of men to see into the future, to forewarn them of danger, and

advise them regarding matters of conduct and affairs of state.

At various points of the history of God's revelation these professors of

occult science appear. In each case a profound impression is made by the

superior wisdom or power displayed by the "wise men" of God. But in

reading the accounts we have of these collisions between the wisdom of

God and that of the magicians, a slight feeling of uneasiness sometimes

enters the mind. You may feel that these wonders of Joseph, Moses, and

Daniel have a romantic air about them, and you feel, perhaps, a slight

scruple in granting that God would lend Himself to such

displays--displays so completely out of date in our day. But we are to

consider not only that there is nothing of the kind more certain than

that dreams do sometimes even now impart most significant warning to

men; but, also, that the time in which Joseph lived was the childhood of

the world, when God had neither spoken much to men, nor could speak

much, because as yet they had not learned His language, but were only

being slowly taught it by signs suited to their capacity. If these men

were to receive any knowledge beyond what their own unaided efforts

could attain, they must be taught in a language they understood. They

could not be dealt with as if they had already attained a knowledge and

a capacity which could only be theirs many centuries after; they must be

dealt with by signs and wonders which had perhaps little moral teaching

in them, but yet gave evidence of God's nearness and power such as they

could and did understand. God thus stretched out His hand to men in the

darkness, and let them feel His strength before they could look on His

face and understand His nature.

It is the existence at the court of Pharaoh of this highly respected

class of dream-interpreters and wise men, which lends significance to

the conduct of Joseph when summoned into the royal presence. Such wisdom

as he displayed in reading Pharaoh's visions was looked upon as

attainable by means within the reach of any man who had sufficient

faculty for the science. And the first idea in the minds of the

courtiers would probably have been, had Joseph not solemnly protested

against it, that he was an adept where they were apprentices and

bunglers, and that his success was due purely to professional skill.

This was of course perfectly well known to Joseph, who for a number of

years had been familiar with the ideas prevalent at the court of

Pharaoh; and he might have argued that there could be no great harm in

at least effecting his deliverance from an unjust imprisonment by

allowing Pharaoh to suppose that it was to him he was indebted for the

interpretation of his dreams. But his first word to Pharaoh is a

self-renouncing exclamation: "Not in me: _God_ shall give Pharaoh an

answer of peace." Two years had elapsed since anything had occurred

which looked the least like the fulfilment of his own dreams, or gave

him any hope of release from prison; and now, when measuring himself

with these courtiers and feeling able to take his place with the best of

them, getting again a breath of free air and feeling once more the charm

of life, and having an opening set before his young ambition, being so

suddenly transferred from a place where his very existence seemed to be

forgotten to a place where Pharaoh himself and all his court eyed him

with the intensest interest and anxiety, it is significant that he

should appear regardless of his own fate, but jealously careful of the

glory of God. Considering how jealous men commonly are of their own

reputation, and how impatiently eager to receive all the credit that is

due to them for their own share in any good that is doing, and

considering of what essential importance it seemed that Joseph should

seize this opportunity of providing for his own safety and advancement,

and should use this as the tide in his affairs that led to fortune, his

words and bearing before Pharaoh undoubtedly disclose a deeply

in-wrought fidelity to God, and a magnanimous patience regarding his own

personal interests.

For it is extremely unlikely that in proposing to Pharaoh to set a man

over this important business of collecting corn to last through the

years of famine, it presented itself to Joseph as a conceivable result

that he should be the person appointed--he a Hebrew, a slave, a

prisoner, cleaned but for the nonce, could not suppose that Pharaoh

would pass over all those tried officers and ministers of state around

him and fix upon a youth who was wholly untried, and who might, by his

different race and religion, prove obnoxious to the people. Joseph may

have expected to make interest enough with Pharaoh to secure his

freedom, and possibly some subordinate berth where he could hopefully

begin the world again; but his only allusion to himself is of a

depreciatory kind, while his reference to God is marked with a profound

conviction that this is God's doing, and that to Him is due whatever is

due. Well may the Hebrew race be proud of those men like Joseph and

Daniel, who stood in the presence of foreign monarchs in a spirit of

perfect fidelity to God, commanding the respect of all, and clothed with

the dignity and simplicity which that fidelity imparted. It matters not

to Joseph that there may perhaps be none in that land who can appreciate

his fidelity to God or understand his motive. It matters not what he may

lose by it, or what he could gain by falling in with the notions of

those around him. He himself knows the real state of the case, and will

not act untruly to his God, even though for years he seems to have been

forgotten by Him. With Daniel he says in spirit, "Let thy gifts be to

thyself, and give thy rewards to another. As for me, this secret is not

revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but that

the interpretation may be known to the king, and that thou mayest know

the thoughts of thine heart. He that revealeth secrets maketh known to

thee what shall come to pass." There is something particularly noble and

worthy of admiration in a man thus standing alone and maintaining the

fullest allegiance to God, without ostentation, and with a quiet dignity

and naturalness that show he has a great fund of strength behind.

That we do not misjudge Joseph's character or ascribe to him qualities

which were invisible to his contemporaries, is apparent from the

circumstance that Pharaoh and his advisers, with little or no

hesitation, agreed that to no man could they more safely entrust their

country in this emergency. The mere personal charm of Joseph might have

won over those experienced advisers of the crown to make compensation

for his imprisonment by an unusually handsome reward, but no mere

attractiveness of person and manner, nor even the unquestionable

guilelessness of his bearing, could have induced them to put such an

affair as this into his hands. Plainly they were impressed with Joseph;

almost supernaturally impressed, and felt God through him. He stood

before them as one mysteriously appearing in their emergency, sent out

of unthought-of quarters to warn and save them. Happily there was as yet

no jealousy of the God of the Hebrews, nor any exclusiveness on the part

of the chosen people: Pharaoh and Joseph alike felt that there was one

God over all and through all. And it was Joseph's self-abnegating

sympathy with the purposes of this Supreme God that made him a

transparent medium, so that in his presence the Egyptians felt

themselves in the presence of God. It is so always. Influence in the

long run belongs to those who rid their minds of all private aims, and

get close to the great centre in which all the race meets and is cared

for. Men feel themselves safe with the unselfish, with persons in whom

they meet principle, justice, truth, love, God. We are unattractive,

useless, uninfluential, just because we are still childishly craving a

private and selfish good. We know that a life which does not pour itself

freely into the common stream of public good is lost in dry and sterile

sands. We know that a life spent upon self is contemptible, barren,

empty, yet how slowly do we come to the attitude of Joseph, who watched

for the fulfilment of God's purposes, and found his happiness in

forwarding what God designed for the people.

XXVIII.

_JOSEPH'S ADMINISTRATION._

GEN. xli. 37-57, and xlvii. 13-26.

"He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his substance: To

bind his princes at his pleasure; and teach his senators

wisdom."--PSALM. cv. 21, 22.

"Many a monument consecrated to the memory of some nobleman gone to his

long home, who during life had held high rank at the court of Pharaoh,

is decorated with the simple but laudatory inscription, 'His ancestors

were unknown people'"--so we are told by our most accurate informant

regarding Egyptian affairs. Indeed, the tales we read of adventurers in

the East, and the histories which recount how some dynasties have been

founded, are sufficient evidence that, in other countries besides Egypt,

sudden elevation from the lowest to the highest rank is not so unusual

as amongst ourselves. Historians have recently made out that in one

period of the history of Egypt there are traces of a kind of Semitic

mania, a strong leaning towards Syrian and Arabian customs, phrases, and

persons. Such manias have occurred in most countries. There was a period

in the history of Rome when everything that had a Greek flavour was

admired; an Anglo-mania once affected a portion of the French

population, and reciprocally, French manners and ideas have at times

found a welcome among ourselves. It is also clear that for a time Lower

Egypt was under the dominion of foreign rulers who were in race more

nearly allied to Joseph than to the native population. But there is no

need that so complicated a question as the exact date of this foreign

domination be debated here, for there was that in Joseph's bearing which

would have commended him to any sagacious monarch. Not only did the

court accept him as a messenger from God, but they could not fail to

recognise substantial and serviceable human qualities alongside of what

was mysterious in him. The ready apprehension with which he appreciated

the magnitude of the danger, the clear-sighted promptitude with which he

met it, the resource and quiet capacity with which he handled a matter

involving the entire condition of Egypt, showed them that they were in

the presence of a true statesman. No doubt the confidence with which he

described the best method of dealing with the emergency was the

confidence of one who was convinced he was speaking for God. This was

the great distinction they perceived between Joseph and ordinary

dream-interpreters. It was not guesswork with him. The same distinction

is always apparent between revelation and speculation. Revelation speaks

with authority; speculation gropes its way, and when wisest is most

diffident. At the same time Pharaoh was perfectly right in his

inference: "Forasmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is none so

discreet and wise as thou art." He believed that God had chosen him to

deal with this matter because he was wise in heart, and he believed his

wisdom would remain because God had chosen him.

At length, then, Joseph saw the fulfilment of his dreams within his

reach. The coat of many colours with which his father had paid a

tribute to the princely person and ways of the boy, was now replaced by

the robe of state and the heavy gold necklace which marked him out as

second to Pharaoh. Whatever nerve and self-command and humble dependence

on God his varied experience had wrought in him were all needed when

Pharaoh took his hand and placed his own ring on it, thus transferring

all his authority to him, and when turning from the king he received the

acclamations of the court and the people, bowed to by his old masters,

and acknowledged the superior of all the dignitaries and potentates of

Egypt. Only once besides, so far as the Egyptian inscriptions have yet

been deciphered, does it appear that any subject was raised to be Regent

or Viceroy with similar powers. Joseph is, as far as possible,

naturalised as an Egyptian. He receives a name easier of pronunciation

than his own, at least to Egyptian tongues--Zaphnath-Paaneah, which,

however, was perhaps only an official title meaning "Governor of the

district of the place of life," the name by which one of the Egyptian

counties or states was known. The king crowned his liberality and

completed the process of naturalisation by providing him with a wife,

Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On. This city was not far

from Avaris or Haouar, where Joseph's Pharaoh, Ra-apepi II., at this

time resided. The worship of the sun-god, Ra, had its centre at On (or

Heliopolis, as it was called by the Greeks), and the priests of On took

precedence of all Egyptian priests. Joseph was thus connected with one

of the most influential families in the land, and if he had any scruples

about marrying into an idolatrous family, they were too insignificant to

influence his conduct, or leave any trace in the narrative.

His attitude towards God and his own family was disclosed in the names

which he gave to his children. In giving names which had a meaning at

all, and not merely a taking sound, he showed that he understood, as

well he might, that every human life has a significance and expresses

some principle or fact. And in giving names which recorded his

acknowledgment of God's goodness, he showed that prosperity had as

little influence as adversity to move him from his allegiance to the God

of his fathers. His first son he called Manasseh, _Making to forget_,

"for God," said he, "hath made me forget all my toil and all my father's

house"--not as if he were now so abundantly satisfied in Egypt that the

thought of his father's house was blotted from his mind, but only that

in this child the keen longings he had felt for kindred and home were

somewhat alleviated. He again found an object for his strong family

affection. The void in his heart he had so long felt was filled by the

little babe. A new home was begun around him. But this new affection

would not weaken, though it would alter the character of, his love for

his father and brethren. The birth of this child would really be a new

tie to the land from which he had been stolen. For, however ready men

are to spend their own life in foreign service, you see them wishing

that their children should spend their days among the scenes with which

their own childhood was familiar.

In the naming of his second son Ephraim he recognises that God had made

him fruitful in the most unlikely way. He does not leave it to us to

interpret his life, but records what he himself saw in it. It has been

said: "To get at the truth of any history is good; but a man's own

history--when he reads that truly, ... and knows what he is about and

has been about, it is a Bible to him." And now that Joseph, from the

height he had reached, could look back on the way by which he had been

led to it, he cordially approved of all that God had done. There was no

resentment, no murmuring. He would often find himself looking back and

thinking, Had I found my brothers where I thought they were, had the pit

not been on the caravan-road, had the merchants not come up so

opportunely, had I not been sold at all or to some other master, had I

not been imprisoned, or had I been put in another ward--had any one of

the many slender links in the chain of my career been absent, how

different might my present state have been. How plainly I now see that

all those sad mishaps that crushed my hopes and tortured my spirit were

steps in the only conceivable path to my present position.

Many a man has added his signature to this acknowledgment of Joseph's,

and confessed a providence guiding his life and working out good for him

through injuries and sorrows, as well as through honours, marriages,

births. As in the heat of summer it is difficult to recall the sensation

of winter's bitter cold, so the fruitless and barren periods of a man's

life are sometimes quite obliterated from his memory. God has it in His

power to raise a man higher above the level of ordinary happiness than

ever he has sunk below it; and as winter and spring-time, when the seed

is sown, are stormy and bleak and gusty, so in human life seed-time is

not bright as summer nor cheerful as autumn; and yet it is then, when

all the earth lies bare and will yield us nothing, that the precious

seed is sown: and when we confidently commit our labour or patience of

to-day to God, the land of our affliction, now bare and desolate, will

certainly wave for us, as it has waved for others, with rich produce

whitened to the harvest.

There is no doubt then that Joseph had learned to recognise the

providence of God as a most important factor in his life. And the man

who does so, gains for his character all the strength and resolution

that come with a capacity for waiting. He saw, most legibly written on

his own life, that God is never in a hurry. And for the resolute

adherence to his seven-years' policy such a belief was most necessary.

Nothing, indeed, is said of opposition or incredulity on the part of the

Egyptians. But was there ever a policy of such magnitude carried out in

any country without opposition or without evilly-disposed persons using

it as a weapon against its promoter? No doubt during these years he had

need of all the personal determination as well as of all the official

authority he possessed. And if, on the whole, remarkable success

attended his efforts, we must ascribe this partly to the unchallengeable

justice of his arrangements, and partly to the impression of commanding

genius Joseph seems everywhere to have made. As with his father and

brethren he was felt to be superior, as in Potiphar's house he was

quickly recognised, as in the prison no prison-garb or slave-brand could

disguise him, as in the court his superiority was instinctively felt, so

in his administration the people seem to have believed in him.

And if, on the whole and in general, Joseph was reckoned a wise and

equitable ruler, and even adored as a kind of saviour of the world, it

would be idle in us to canvass the wisdom of his administration. When we

have not sufficient historical material to apprehend the full

significance of any policy, it is safe to accept the judgment of men who

not only knew the facts, but were themselves so deeply involved in them

that they would certainly have felt and expressed discontent had there

been ground for doing so. The policy of Joseph was simply to economize

during the seven years of abundance to such an extent that provision

might be made against the seven years of famine. He calculated that

one-fifth of the produce of years so extraordinarily plenteous would

serve for the seven scarce years. This fifth he seems to have bought in

the king's name from the people, buying it, no doubt, at the cheap rates

of abundant years. When the years of famine came, the people were

referred to Joseph; and, till their money was gone, he sold corn to

them, probably not at famine prices. Next he acquired their cattle, and

finally, in exchange for food, they yielded to him both their lands and

their persons. So that the result of the whole was, that the people who

would otherwise have perished were preserved, and in return for this

preservation they paid a tax or rent on their farm-lands to the amount

of one-fifth of their produce. The people ceased to be proprietors of

their own farms, but they were not slaves with no interest in the soil,

but tenants sitting at easy rents--a fair enough exchange for being

preserved in life. This kind of taxation is eminently fair in principle,

securing, as it does, that the wealth of the king and government shall

vary with the prosperity of the whole land. The chief difficulty that

has always been experienced in working it, has arisen from the necessity

of leaving a good deal of discretionary power in the hands of the

collectors, who have generally been found not slow to abuse this power.

The only semblance of despotism in Joseph's policy is found in the

curious circumstance that he interfered with the people's choice of

residence, and shifted them from one end of the land to another. This

may have been necessary not only as a kind of seal on the deed by which

the lands were conveyed to the king, and as a significant sign to them

that they were mere tenants, but also Joseph probably saw that for the

interests of the country, if not of agricultural prosperity, this

shifting had become necessary for the breaking up of illegal

associations, nests of sedition, and sectional prejudices and enmities

which were endangering the community.[1] Modern experience supplies us

with instances in which, by such a policy, a country might be

regenerated and a seven years' famine hailed as a blessing if, without

famishing the people, it put them unconditionally into the hands of an

able, bold, and beneficent ruler. And this was a policy which could be

much better devised and executed by a foreigner than by a native.

Egypt's indebtedness to Joseph was, in fact, two-fold. In the first

place he succeeded in doing what many strong governments have failed to

do: he enabled a large population to survive a long and severe famine.

Even with all modern facilities for transport and for making the

abundance of remote countries available for times of scarcity, it has

not always been found possible to save our own fellow-subjects from

starvation. In a prolonged famine which occurred in Egypt during the

middle ages, the inhabitants, reduced to the unnatural habits which are

the most painful feature of such times, not only ate their own dead, but

kidnapped the living on the streets of Cairo and consumed them in

secret. One of the most touching memorials of the famine with which

Joseph had to deal is found in a sepulchral inscription in Arabia. A

flood of rain laid bare a tomb in which lay a woman having on her person

a profusion of jewels which represented a very large value. At her head

stood a coffer filled with treasure, and a tablet with this inscription:

"In Thy name, O God, the God of Himyar, I, Tayar, the daughter of Dzu

Shefar, sent my steward to Joseph, and he delaying to return to me, I

sent my handmaid with a measure of silver to bring me back a measure of

flour; and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of

gold; and not being able to procure it, I sent her with a measure of

pearls; and not being able to procure it, I commanded them to be ground;

and finding no profit in them, I am shut up here." If this inscription

is genuine--and there seems no reason to call it in question--it shows

that there is no exaggeration in the statement of our narrator that the

famine was very grievous in other lands as well as in Egypt. And,

whether genuine or not, one cannot but admire the grim humour of the

starving woman getting herself buried in the jewels which had suddenly

dropped to less than the value of a loaf of bread.

But besides being indebted to Joseph for their preservation, the

Egyptians owed to him an extension of their influence; for, as all the

lands round about became dependent on Egypt for provision, they must

have contracted a respect for the Egyptian administration. They must

also have added greatly to Egypt's wealth and during those years of

constant traffic many commercial connections must have been formed which

in future years would be of untold value to Egypt. But above all, the

permanent alterations made by Joseph on their tenure of land, and on

their places of abode, may have convinced the most sagacious of the

Egyptians that it was well for them that their money had failed, and

that they had been compelled to yield themselves unconditionally into

the hands of this remarkable ruler. It is the mark of a competent

statesman that he makes temporary distress the occasion for permanent

benefit; and from the confidence Joseph won with the people, there seems

every reason to believe that the permanent alterations he introduced

were considered as beneficial as certainly they were bold.

And for our own spiritual uses it is this point which seems chiefly

important. In Joseph is illustrated the principle that, in order to the

attainment of certain blessings, unconditional submission to God's

delegate is required. If we miss this, we miss a large part of what his

history exhibits, and it becomes a mere pretty story. The prominent idea

in his dreams was that he was to be worshipped by his brethren. In his

exaltation by Pharaoh, the absolute authority given to him is again

conspicuous: "Without thee shall no man lift up hand or foot in all the

land of Egypt." And still the same autocracy appears in the fact that

not one Egyptian who was helpful to him in this matter is mentioned; and

no one has received such exclusive possession of a considerable part of

Scripture, so personal and outstanding a place. All this leaves upon the

mind the impression that Joseph becomes a benefactor, and in his degree

a saviour, to men by becoming their absolute master. When this was

hinted in his dreams at first his brothers fiercely resented it. But

when they were put to the push by famine, both they and the Egyptians

recognised that he was appointed by God to be their saviour, while at

the same time they markedly and consciously submitted themselves to him.

Men may always be expected to recognise that he who can save them alive

in famine has a right to order the bounds of their habitation; and also

that in the hands of one who, from disinterested motives, has saved

them, they are likely to be quite as safe as in their own. And if we are

all quite sure of this, that men of great political sagacity can

regulate our affairs with tenfold the judgment and success that we

ourselves could achieve, we cannot wonder that in matters still higher,

and for which we are notoriously incompetent, there should be One into

whose hands it is well to commit ourselves--One whose judgment is not

warped by the prejudices which blind all mere natives of this world, but

who, separate from sinners yet naturalised among us, can both detect and

rectify everything in our condition which is less than perfect. If there

are certainly many cases in which explanations are out of the question,

and in which the governed, if they are wise, will yield themselves to a

trusted authority, and leave it to time and results to justify his

measures, any one, I think, who anxiously considers our spiritual

condition must see that here too obedience is for us the greater part of

wisdom, and that, after all speculation and efforts at sufficing

investigation, we can still do no better than yield ourselves absolutely

to Jesus Christ. He alone understands our whole position; He alone

speaks with the authority that commands confidence, because it is felt

to be the authority of the truth. We feel the present pressure of

famine; we have discernment enough, some of us, to know we are in

danger, but we cannot penetrate deeply either into the cause or the

possible consequences of our present state. But Christ--if we may

continue the figure--legislates with a breadth of administrative

capacity which includes not only our present distress but our future

condition, and, with the boldness of one who is master of the whole

case, requires that we put ourselves wholly into His hand. He takes the

responsibility of all the changes we make in obedience to Him, and

proposes so to relieve us that the relief shall be permanent, and that

the very emergency which has thrown us upon His help shall be the

occasion of our transference not merely out of the present evil, but

into the best possible form of human life.

From this chapter, then, in the history of Joseph, we may reasonably

take occasion to remind ourselves, first, that in all things pertaining

to God unconditional submission to Christ is necessarily required of us.

Apart from Christ we cannot tell what are the necessary elements of a

permanently happy state; nor, indeed, even whether there is any such

state awaiting us. There is a great deal of truth in what is urged by

unbelievers to the effect that spiritual matters are in great measure

beyond our cognizance, and that many of our religious phrases are but,

as it were, thrown out in the direction of a truth but do not perfectly

represent it. No doubt we are in a provisional state, in which we are

not in direct contact with the absolute truth, nor in a final attitude

of mind towards it; and certain representations of things given in the

Word of God may seem to us not to cover the whole truth. But this only

compels the conclusion that for us Christ is the way, the truth, and the

life. To probe existence to the bottom is plainly not in our power. To

say precisely what God is, and how we are to carry ourselves towards

Him, is possible only to him who has been with God and is God. To submit

to the Spirit of Christ, and to live under those influences and views

which formed His life, is the only method that promises deliverance from

that moral condition which makes spiritual vision impossible.

We may remind ourselves, secondly, that this submission to Christ should

be consistently adhered to in connection with those outward occurrences

in our life which give us opportunity of enlarging our spiritual

capacity. There can be little doubt that there would be presented to

Joseph many a plan for the better administration of this whole matter,

and many a petition from individuals craving exemption from the

seemingly arbitrary and certainly painful and troublesome edict

regulating change of residence. Many a man would think himself much

wiser than the minister of Pharaoh in whom was the Spirit of God. When

we act in a similar manner, and take upon us to specify with precision

the changes we should like to see in our condition, and the methods by

which these changes might best be accomplished, we commonly manifest our

own incompetence. The changes which the strong hand of Providence

enforces, the dislocation which our life suffers from some irresistible

blow, the necessity laid upon us to begin life again and on apparently

disadvantageous terms, are naturally resented; but these things being

certainly the result of some unguardedness, improvidence, or weakness in

our past state, are necessarily the means most appropriate for

disclosing to us these elements of calamity and for securing our

permanent welfare. We rebel against such perilous and sweeping

revolutions as the basing of our life on a new foundation demands; we

would disregard the appointments of Providence if we could; but both

our voluntary consent to the authority of Christ and the impossibility

of resisting His providential arrangements, prevent us from refusing to

fall in with them, however needless and tyrannical they seem, and

however little we perceive that they are intended to accomplish our

permanent well-being. And it is in after years, when the pain of

severance from old friends and habits is healed, and when the discomfort

of adapting ourselves to a new kind of life is replaced by peaceful and

docile resignation to new conditions, that we reach the clear perception

that the changes we resented have in point of fact rendered harmless the

seeds of fresh disaster, and rescued us from the results of long bad

government. He who has most keenly felt the hardship of being diverted

from his original course in life, will in after life tell you that had

he been allowed to hold his own land, and remain his own master in his

old loved abode, he would have lapsed into a condition from which no

worthy harvest could be expected. If a man only wishes that his own

conceptions of prosperity be realised, then let him keep his land in his

own hand and work his material irrespective of God's demands; for

certainly if he yields himself to God, his own ideas of prosperity will

not be realised. But if he suspects that God may have a more liberal

conception of prosperity and may understand better than he what is

eternally beneficial, let him commit himself and all his material of

prosperity without doubting into God's hand, and let him greedily obey

all God's precepts; for in neglecting one of these, he so far neglects

and misses what God would have him enter into.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "It happened very often that the inhabitants of one district

threatened an attack on the occupants of another on account of some

dispute about divine or human questions. The hostile feelings of the

opponents not unfrequently broke out into a hard struggle, and it

required the whole armed power of the king to extinguish at its first

outburst the flaming torch of war, kindled by domineering chiefs of

nomes or ambitious priests."--Brugsch, _History of Egypt_, i. 16.

XXIX.

_VISITS OF JOSEPH'S BRETHREN._