ruler over all the land of Egypt,* added yet this as the final proof of his high regard, that "he gave him to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, Priest of On?"† When therefore the priests were thus held in esteem by Pharaoh, and when the minister of Pharaoh, under whose immediate directions all the regulations of the polity of Egypt were at that time conducted, had the daughter of one of them for his wife, is it not the most natural thing in the world to have happened, that their lands should be spared?

XII.

I HAVE already found an argument for the veracity of Moses in the identity of Jacob's

character, I now find

tity of that of Joseph.

* Genesis, xli. 43.

another in the iden

There is one quality

† Ibid. xli. 45.

(as it has been often observed, though with a different view from mine,) which runs like a thread through his whole history, his affection for his father. Israel loved him, we read, more than all his children-he was the child of his age-his mother died whilst he was yet young, and a double care of him consequently devolved upon his surviving parent. He made him a coat of many colours-he kept him at home when his other sons were sent to feed the flocks. When the bloody garment was brought in, Jacob in his affection for him, (that same affection which on a subsequent occasion, when it was told him that after all Joseph was alive, made him as slow to believe the good tidings as he was now quick to apprehend the sad,) in this his affection for him,

I

say, Jacob at once concluded the worst, and "he rent his clothes and put sackcloth

upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days, and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, for I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning."

When the

Now what were the feelings in Joseph which responded to these? sons of Jacob went down to Egypt, and Joseph knew them though they knew not him, for they (it may be remarked, and this again is not like fiction,) were of an age not to be greatly changed by the lapse of years, and were still sustaining the character in which Joseph had always seen them, whilst he himself had meanwhile grown out of the stripling into the man, and from a shepherd-boy was become the ruler of a kingdom-when his brethren thus came before him, his question was, "Is your father yet alive?" * They went down a

*Genesis, xliii. 7.

second time, and again the question was, "Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake, is he yet alive?" More he could not venture to ask, whilst he was yet in his disguise. By a stratagem he now detains Benjamin, leaving the others, if they would, to go their way. But Judah came near unto him, and entreated him for his brother, telling him how that he had been "surety to his father" to bring him back, how that "his father was an old man," and that this was the "child of his old age, and that he loved him,"-how it would come to pass that if he should not see the lad with him he would die, and his grey hairs be brought with sorrow to the grave; for "how shall I go to my father, and the lad be not with me,-lest, peradventure, I see the evil that shall come on my father." Here, without knowing it, he had struck

the string that was the tenderest of all. Joseph's firmness forsook him at this repeated mention of his father, and in terms so touching he could not refrain himself any longer, and causing every man to go out, he made himself known to his brethren. Then even in the paroxysm which came on him, (for he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard,) still his first words uttered from the fullness of his heart were, "doth my father yet live?" He now bids them hasten and bring the old man down, bearing to him tokens of his love and tidings of his glory. He goes to meet him -he presents himself unto him, and falls on his neck and weeps on his neck a good while he provides for him and his household out of the fat of the land-he sets him before Pharaoh. By and by he hears that he is sick, and hastens to visit him