By Ida Benfey.
“Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” and just now I
find myself almost completely absorbed by the Story of Joseph, which
Tolstoi calls the greatest short story ever written. And he adds,
significantly, that it would make no difference in telling it to the
people of China what the customs were—that the human interest in the
story is so powerful it sweeps all minor details to one side.
Joseph is not at all a perfect man. He hasn’t the kind of faults that
David possessed, that show clearly to the person that isn’t even looking
for them; but he has what seem to be more terrible faults because they
are gilded over with success. And I can think of no character in history
more magnanimous than was Joseph, for when his father was dead and his
brethren came to him and were afraid that he would be avenging, he wept
at their doubting him, and then said these significant words: “Fear not:
for am I in the place of God?” It seems to me that these are the words
that best show the high ideal that ruled Joseph. As far as I can see it
is the same spirit which was in Luther, only in another form—that is,
that each one of us must settle all our doubts with God alone. Human
help is unavailing here. Such a high ideal as this of Joseph fills me
with awe and reverent admiration, and when I realize that he was at the
head of, and the former and the creator of the most stupendous trust
that the world has ever known, I find myself bewildered in trying to
reconcile such different elements in one man,—Joseph’s tenderness and
magnanimity to his brethren, and Joseph’s creating a trust which forced
the Egyptians to sell their land to him and finally their bodies as
slaves to ward off starvation. Think of one man combining such opposite
qualities. Is it because the golden rule that Christ gave us had not yet
come into the world? Of course Joseph did what John D. Rockefeller is
trying to do, and has in no small degree accomplished, though perhaps we
do not see the slave-chains that he has put upon us. But John D.
Rockefeller hasn’t, as far as we know, the godlike nature that Joseph
had. He and Joseph are alike in each possessing the inhuman quality of
being able to crush out the life of their fellowmen.
I wonder if Joseph created this trust and carried it out merely because
he was a man of business, or because he enjoyed the game he was at, as
does Russell Sage. Until I began to study this story, I never knew what
the parable of the wise and foolish virgins meant, but it seems plain to
me now. Joseph was like the wise virgin. The thirteen years which he
spent as a slave and in prison he gave entirely to living each moment to
the glory of God. He wasted no time in bearing hatred towards his
brethren, or thinking how much better he was than the position he
occupied, or wishing God wouldn’t forget him quite so long, but would
try and be a little more attentive to him personally. No, he simply did
each act in the best and sunniest way, and the day when Pharaoh sent
hastily for him and they brought him hurriedly out of the prison, he
stopped and shaved himself and changed his raiment. Why? Because he was
a gentleman and he had been in the habit of daily shaving and of daily
caring for his body in the best possible way. And when we read that he
came in to Pharaoh we know exactly how he walked, with the calm
quietness that belongs to a person that has sufficient self-respect to
last through the night and lap over into the next morning.
Gibbon, in his “History of Rome,” says that the hatred between the
religions began about the fourth century; that people before that had
been willing that people should worship as they thought best, the idea
being that all were striving for the same noble end. I wonder if there
was something of this beautiful spirit in Egypt. It has made a
tremendous impression upon me that Moses, a Hebrew, in telling the story
says that the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews because it is an
abomination for Egyptians to eat with Hebrews. One would have thought
that Moses would have put the Hebrew first, naturally caring most for
his own. And I keep wondering whether he put them in the inferior
position of making them second because of that same exquisite courtesy
which Lincoln exercised when he always mentioned the North first, as
though they were the more guilty in everything connected with the War;
or was it because the Egyptians were the most powerful nation, and, as a
matter of fact, should be mentioned first? This, however, is but a side
issue to the wonderful fact that though the Egyptians would not eat with
the Hebrews, yet Pharaoh and Potiphar immediately saw, and Pharaoh
publicly announced, that the Spirit of God was in Joseph. Why, I hardly
know anyone who is an enthusiastic church worker that feels that the
spirit of God is really and surely in a church worker of another
denomination.
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