the divine purpose as exhibited in it and in the whole book of Genesis.

IV. He hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and ruler over the land of Egypt.' You might have fancied that these words would have been uttered first. The dignity seemed so much the greater to be lord over a great kingdom, than to preserve a little Palestine family. But it could not be greater in the mind of Joseph; his human affections made the support of that little family a dearer object to him than Pharaoh and all Egypt. And his affections did not give out a false note, they responded to God's own teaching and inspiration; the support of that family was not only a higher and nearer duty to himself, it was a mightier service to mankind. He was maintaining, so he believed, a seed in which all families of the earth were to be blessed; a witness for the divine order upon earth; a witness against all contradictions and subversions of that order. But though this obligation was first, it did not exclude the other. His glory in Egypt had not been sought for by himself; it had been thrust upon him. God, who had sent him to save his own family by a great deliverance, had surely just as much purposed that he should be a father to Pharaoh and a lord of his land. So Joseph judged; on that faith he acted.

I would earnestly entreat you to consider what his course of action was. The commentators on the book of Genesis at the time of the Reformation, when preaching in pulpits was more regarded

and had more influence than it has now, were wont to speak of the patriarchs as great preachers. So I believe that they were very great preachers; yet the specimens of their preaching, which I find in the only book that can have preserved any reports of it, do not answer to our common notions. Joseph did not go to Pharaoh saying, 'We Hebrews have a religion which is much better than the religion of you Egyptians. Cast off your own; embrace ours.' He said nothing at all about a religion. You might suppose, from one part of the policy which he sanctioned and established, that he had forgotten it; for he confirmed the previous privileges of the Egyptian priests, and did not insist that their land should be given up to Pharaoh. Joseph did not understand that he was sent into Egypt to bear witness of a religion, but of the living God, who had called him out, and made a covenant with him and with his fathers. That God he believed had chosen a family to declare His name-to set Him forth as the Righteous Being, the ground of the order of the worldthe only deliverer of it from its disorders. Joseph's sermon to Pharaoh was therefore a simple declaration that this Righteous Being was the Lord over Egypt-that He could set it in order. his sermon to the Egyptians was the proof which his administration gave that he had spoken truth. He shewed them that there was an order in the disposition of seasons; in seed-time, and harvest; an order which sudden prosperity, followed by famines, did not interrupt; of which those

And

startling changes were themselves signs. He shewed that plenty and famine were themselves sent to cultivate self-discipline and providence in men; that men were therefore themselves the subjects of a higher order. He used the experience of their wants and sufferings as a means of leading them to acquiesce in an arrangement, or, rather, to propose it, which made them for the first time conscious that they were under a government which was caring for them, and watching over them; a government not arbitrary, not seeking its own ends, but confessing obligations to its subjects, while it demanded obedience from them. He organized a community-he made the king feel that he stood in an actual living relation to his subjects, and his subjects in an actual relation to him and to each other. Scripture represents this as a divine work, for which a man must have a divine vocation. But it does not represent Joseph as moulding Egypt according to a Jewish type. There is little in his institutions which corresponds to the after-organization of the Jewish nation. Being God's servant, he was to take the materials which he found lying about him, to shew that there was an order in them, however they might have fallen into disorder; not to bring in some scheme or notion of his own. Kings, priests, proprietors, were already there. He was not to alter that fact; not to say that the elements of a human society, but to prove that they were; not to tell Egyptians that God had not been working among them, till a Hebrew boy

these were not

came there; but to shew them that He had, that they ought to have owned his working in all the common business of their lives, to believe that He was working among them for good, and not for evil.

6

But a child of the against false worship.'

covenant ought to testify And was not this a testimony against false worship-the greatest that could be given? Do you mean by false worship idolatrous worship? Did not Joseph declare that an unseen Being was the King and Lord of their society and of outward nature ? Do you mean by false worship devil-worship-the worship of malevolent powers, who were plotting mischief against the land, and those who dwelt in it? Joseph declared by his words and acts that a Righteous Being, one perfectly gracious, who was doing good and only good to those who dwelt in it, ruled over their society and over nature. It is most important to remark that this was the first form of the Jewish protest. When the family became a nation, it was to speak out boldly against idolatry and devil-worship—to maintain a perpetual and dreadful fight against them. But we shall mistake the nature of that fight altogether, if we suppose it was a struggle for a Jewish religion against other religions. The story of Joseph in Egypt is written to confute such a falsehood. Before any law had been given before any word had been spoken about idolatry, as such-the Hebrew youth is uttering that very truth concerning God which Moses and

Joshua and David were to utter in quite other methods. He was declaring Him to be the true and merciful King of the whole earth; he was claiming his right, as a child of the covenant, to exhibit Him in that character, and to organize a society which was not in the covenant, upon that conviction.

If there is anything in these statements, brethren, which jars with previous notions and theories of yours, once and again I say, 'To the law and to the testimony; if we speak not according to this word, there is no light in us.' If I have in any way tortured the Scriptures, if I have departed from their literal meaning, I would beseech you not to heed what I have said. The effort to follow them strictly has removed a great many crude and artificial notions from my mind. I think it would have that effect upon yours. I never can believe that the Bible has less power of making itself intelligible than other books; I have always found that it threw much more light upon others than it received from them. Its commentators are often of exceeding value when we use it to expound them; otherwise they are very difficult. But it is especially when we ask its help in unravelling the tangled skein of our own personal and social life, that its meaning comes out to us strong and clear. We see then that it is not telling us about itself or teaching us to make it an object of our worship; that it tells us of a living Lord who was with Joseph, and who is with us. It is telling us what the will and purpose of that living Being is