"By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.

"Joseph is a fruitful bough,

Even a fruitful bough by a well;

Whose branches run over the wall:
The archers have sorely grieved him,

And shot at nim, and hated him:

But his bow abode in strength,

And the arms of his hands were made strong

By the hands of the mighty God of Jacob:

(From thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel :)

Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee,

And by the Almighty, who shall bless thee,

With blessings of heaven above,

Blessings of the deep that lieth under,

Blessings of the breasts, and of the womb.

Heb. xi. 22.

The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors

Unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills :

They shall be on the head of Joseph,

And on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren."

JOSEPH.

His general excellence of character-Remarkable freedom from fault-Yet not deficient in force-Treatment by his brethren not unprovoked-Over-ruling Providence displayed in the events of his life-Resistance of temptation-Deportment towards his brethren-Faith the root of all his excellence.

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NLIKE most of those who preceded him, the faith of Joseph is seen more in his general excellence than in any particular incident in his life. It does not manifest itself in any decided change of character, as in the case of his father Jacob. It does not come prominently into view at several important crises as in the case of his ancestor Abraham. It is not tried as Noah's was at the Flood, nor rewarded as Enoch's was in his translation; but it underlies the whole of his life, and accounts for that general excellence by which he was characterised. A believer from his youth, as there is reason to believe, his faith gradually produced that goodly display of moral qualities which his life presents, and that freedom from fault which is remarkable in one who possessed such force of character. For of all the lives men

tioned by the Apostle, there is not one presented to us in such detail in which there is so little to be shunned. Although not faultless, his faults are so few and trivial that they attract but little notice, and by most readers of his history they are scarcely ever observed.

He presents, in this respect, a striking contrast to his father. In Jacob, we see a youth of some promise, whose good and promising qualities are frequently over-shadowed by their kindred vices, so that it is difficult to say which of the two sides of his nature shall ultimately triumph. Will he become a grasping, avaricious, deceitful, and dishonest worldling, or a man who, subjecting the fleshly to the control of the spiritual nature, is willing to forego everything in order that he may gain the Divine approval, and an inheritance in the world to come? In the case of Joseph, no such conflicting elements appear. The promise of his youth is equal to the performance of his manhood. And the Joseph who governs Egypt, and welcomes his father and his brethren there, is the same Joseph with whom we first become acquainted as a lad in his father's house.

Even Abraham's life, though it attained to a higher degree of excellence, is not so free from striking faults. There is a simple grandeur in the "Father of the Faithful" suited to the earlier time in which he lived, and to the more primitive customs with which he was surrounded, which his descendant did not possess, and to which, perhaps, his connection with Egyptian civilisation was not very favourable; but there are also dark blots in his life from which Joseph's appears to have been entirely free. If he did not attain to Abraham's moral grandeur, neither did he share in Abraham's falls. If he never sacrificed his Isaac-never being required so to do-neither did he fail in the hour of temptation, now equivocating, and now yielding to the sug

Blameless yet not Weak.

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gestions of his wife, in a manner which brought trouble upon others, and strife and misery into his own household.

And yet, while so free from fault, he is by no means deficient in force of character. His excellences are not merely of a negative kind, like those of many who have neither faults nor virtues, their whole life being of a neutral tint, without decided colouring of any kind, having little either of good or evil in them; never going far wrong, because they never go far in any direction; seldom taking a wrong step, because they generally stand still. He is a very different man from his grandfather Isaac, whose deficiency in force of character kept him at once from committing the errors, and from performing the great deeds, of some of his relatives. There was nothing like weakness or deficiency in force in the youth who, from being a slave, became almost a sovereign, rising from a dungeon to a place by the throne of Egypt.

To a large extent he seems to have inherited the excellences of all his ancestors whom we have named. His trust in God and determination to do right in spite of consequences, fearing nothing so much as the Divine displeasure, valuing nothing so much as the Divine approval, shows that he had not a little of Abraham's strong faith in God. We can trace a resemblance to Isaac in the meditative habits of his youth, and the general harmlessness of his life. Like his father Jacob, he is gifted with prudent foresight, without any of his selfish, over-reaching cunning; and like him hẹ is, as his after position proves, a man of affairs, capable of attending to secular duties while cultivating habits of devotion. "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."

From the very first his character impresses us favourably, and if it does not enable us to anticipate, it at least prepares

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us for, his after course. Those dreams of his, foreshadowing his future greatness, were strictly in accordance with his nature and habits. He is of profounder and loftier soul than his brethren-less given to vehement action, more to quiet thoughtfulness. These natural qualities, fostered by his father's partiality for him, excited the hostility of his brethren. That hostility, it must be confessed, though not justifiable, was not altogether unnatural. Jacob's favouritism, whatever grounds there may have been for it, and whether wisely cherished or not, was not very wisely expressed. That coat of many colours was too striking a manifestation of his preference for the son, whose youth did not entitle him to take precedence of his brethren. It was fitted to excite their jealousy; and in Jacob it seems all the more inexcusable, since a similar favouritism in his father's house had excited such an unhappy influence on himself and his brother Esau. Nor does it now pass with impunity. However much we may attribute to Providence the events which follow, there can be no doubt that the sufferings of Jacob, on account of his favourite son, are the natural and judicial results of the partiality which he has so injudiciously shown. Nor was Joseph's rehearsal of his dreams fitted to exert a soothing influence on the minds of his brethren. It was not very likely that they would receive with pleasure any statement which showed that the youngest of the family aspired to fill the loftiest place. Even Jacob, when the second dream was made known to him, was displeased with and rebuked the ambitious prognostications which his favouritism, in all probability, had helped to foster.

But, while the hostility of his brethren was not wholly unprovoked, and though Joseph may have been ambitious and not over wise in the manner in which that ambition was displayed, nevertheless, our sympathy and affection are