Joseph the Successful Man
Whatever way we turn a diamond, it flashes out rays of light — of various hues, but all exquisitely beautiful. Such a gem is the story of Joseph. Indeed, it is in many respects unique. A universal favorite, one over which gentle childhood bends with interest and venerable age with tears, it is in some respects as unrivalled in the Bible, as the Bible is unrivalled among books.
Regarded only as a literary composition, with what inimitable beauty and pathos is the story told? In Jacob’s doting love for the motherless boy — the first-born of his beloved Rachel; in the wildness of that grief the bloody cloak awoke, and sons and daughters rose in vain to comfort; in the rebound of his feelings at the news from Egypt, from the unbelief that heard them as too good to be true, to the vehement emotion that burst out in the cry, ‘‘ Joseph my son is yet alive, I will go and see him before I die;” in the wakening up of the consciences, the dread and the remorse, of the guilty brothers; in the trembling question, “Is your father well, the old man of whom you spake? Is he yet alive?” in the tender recollections that woke at the sight of Benjamin, and sent Joseph to another chamber to preserve his disguise and
relieve his heart by a flood of tears; in that matchless address of Judah’s when, making us forget his crimes and mingle our tears with his, he pleaded for the old man’s sake, and offered himself a ransom for the trembling boy; and in the events that immediately followed the disclosure, when, unable any longer to restrain his feelings, Joseph tore off the mask, and crying, “‘I am Joseph, your brother,” he broke out into such a burst of passionate emotion that his weeping was heard throughout all the house: in these, there are touches of nature which the greatest uninspired genius never approached — so fine, so true, so tender, that no man of ordinary sensibility could read the story aloud, but his tongue would falter and his eyes be dimmed with tears.
Considered simply as a story, what novel paints scenes more interesting, or relates events so picturesque and romantic? To apply a common expression to this portion of sacred Scripture, it is ‘‘eminently sensational:” equally so with those highly-seasoned tales which in our periodical literature, and especially in the lowest departments of it, feed the public appetite for excitement, wonders, crimes, and horrors. Yet how much they differ! Its details are true, while theirs are false; and while their tendency is to debase rather than improve the taste or purify the heart, the history of Joseph recommends itself, as I hope to show, by its lofty morality, the spirit of piety which it breathes, and the lessons of wisdom which it teaches. Seek stories that rouse and sustain our interest by remarkable vicissitudes of fortune, the play of lights and shadows, sudden alternations of sunshine and of storm, scenes both of the wildest grief and of ecstatic joy, hair-breadth
escapes from horrid crimes, from pit, and prison, and deadly perils, where shall we find one to compare with Joseph’s? No man, I ever read of, had such experience of the vicissitudes of life, passed unscathed through so many strange and fiery trials, met with deliverances so signal, or had more apparent cause to doubt, and in the end more real cause to acknowledge, a presiding providence and the goodness of God.
Passed in quiet studies, or domestic duties, or the routine of business, and in the common walks of piety, there are many good lives that would make very dull books. Hence, though their works may be published, and are such that the world would not willingly allow to perish, some great men have found no biographers. Their lives lacked stirring incidents, being marked by none but such as are common to humanity. But while their lives resembled some rich but level country, where cottages stand embowered amid smiling orchards, and village spires and castle towers rise above umbrageous woods, and fields wave with bounteo.s harvests, and fat herds slake their thirst at stream. which flow between sedgy banks quietly to th sea — the life of Joseph is eminently picturesque It resembl.s the scenes that lend their charms to the Alps or Apennines, where the thundering cataract and foaming torrent alternate with lakes that lie asleep in the arms of beauty, where frowning crags look down on flowery meadows, and deep dark valleys are parted by mountains whose peaks pierce the azure sky, and, glistening with eternal snows, seem to bear up the vault of heaven.
The interest of such scenes and the pleasure they afford is much enhanced if religion lends them her dignity, and their physical is associated with circumstances of moral grandeur. Such is the case, for example, in the grand valleys of Piedmont, the mountain-home of the Waldenses, where their fathers prayed and fought for three long centuries — so persecuted by bloody Papists, that, as one of their historians says, ‘‘every rock became a monument, every meadow saw executions, and every village had its roll of martyrs.” Even so, the interest of Joseph’s story deepens when, penetrating beneath the surface, we discover in him a type of Christ, and see how many of the events of his life appear to foreshadow some of the leading incidents in our Saviour’s. Many are the points of resemblance in the histories of Joseph and of Jesus. This may be, so to speak, more of accident than intention; yet the analogies between the two are remarkable, and will interest and instruct us, if they do nothing more.
Both were the beloved sons of their fathers. Both were envied and hated of their brethren. Both were the victims of base conspirators. Both had a remarkable garment, and were stripped of it by cruel hands. Both, though innocent, were accused of the foulest crimes. Both were tempted to great sins, and both alike recoiled from and repelled the tempters — the “‘ Get thee behind me, Satan!” of Jesus recalling Joseph’s words when starting back, horror sitting on his face, he protested, saying, ‘‘ How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” Both were slain — the one in fact, the other in intention. Both not only forgave, but saved their murderers. In both cases these “thought evil, but God meant it unto good.” Joseph’s burial in the pit is a symbol of Christ’s in the tomb. He comes from both pit and prison a type of Him whom death could not hold in his grasp, nor the grave in her ancient fetters. And in that young Hebrew whom Pharaoh calls from a prison to the palace that he may invest him with imperial authority, and commit into his hands the management of his kingdom — in the words of Scripture, to put his seal on his hand, to array him in vesture of fine linen, to put a gold chain upon his neck, to make him ride in the second chariot which he had, to send heralds before him, crying, ‘‘Bow the knee,” — we see Jesus. Here is a type and shadow of our glorified and ascended Lord, as He stands at the right hand of God, and at the mandate, ‘‘ Let all the angels of God worship Him,” ten times ten thousand fall prostrate at his feet. From Egypt’s streets and palace we are carried away to the celestial city — to the scene where the four living creatures, and the four-and-twenty elders, with harps and golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of saints, fall down before the Lamb, and sing the new song, saying, “Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”
In leaving such sacred and lofty topics for that feature of Joseph’s life which is indicated in the title of this article, it may appear that I am making a great descent. Success is not always another term for merit and worth, for excellence of conduct and nobleness of character. But however some may have climbed up by foul means, marking their path with slime, so did not this child, not of fortune, but of God. While its success is one of the most remarkable features of Joseph’s career, it was won, with God’s blessing, by those virtues which form the true foundations of a happy, useful, and successful life. It may be to our profit and advantage to consider his history in this light. Promising before we part to trace his success to these, and draw from his career some useful lessons, let me now ask my readers to look at him as the very type and model of A Successful Man.
The heathens had a goddess whom they called Fortune. She is commonly represented standing by awheel. From this, which she turns round and round, are drawn the blanks and prizes in which she assigns their different destinies to men, without any respect whatever to their merits and demerits. She could not do otherwise, indeed; for while her hand is on the wheel, a bandage is on her eyes. So all things fall out by chance, blind and indiscriminating chance, — a man who deserves a prize often receiving a blank, while success falls to the lot of such as, indolent and unworthy, have no claim to reward.
No picture of the world could be more fallacious. Dethroning God, it denies a superintending Providence; and reducing everything to blind fate and chaotic confusion, it makes man the sport of elements over which neither he, nor any one else, has the least control. In its practical influence this doctrine must beeminently pernicious. It weakens, or rather destroys, all the springs of activity, and furnishes sloth, and self-indulgence, and vice itself with a too acceptable excuse.
Unchristian as it is, this old heathen notion is still, and to some extent, current among us. This may be owing to those occasional cases where we see success attending such as appear to have done nothing to deserve it; and where, on the other hand, we see meritorious men outstripped by inferior rivals. From such cases we, ignorant of all the circumstances, are apt to draw too hasty conclusions — looking on them with the gloomy eyes of him who complained, “I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill: but time and chance happeneth to all.” Account for it as we may, Fortune, though she has no temple, has still her worshippers. More than would be willing to confess it, trust not a little tochance. Reckless or lazy, they hope that something will turn up: and to how great an extent the old heathen notion still exists, and keeps its hold of men, crops out in the terms so frequently applied to one whose career has been signalized by remarkable success. He is called a Child of Fortune — a Favorite of Fortune.
The ideas these terms convey are quite illusory, and calculated to have a most prejudicial effect on the minds especially of the young — of those who have the work and battle of life before them. Not more impious, and less pernicious, was the idea go STUDIES OF CHARACTER.
expressed in the speech of a Norseman — one of that brave, indomitable, self-reliant, battle-fighting, sea-subduing adventurous race, to whose blood flowing in our veins Britons owe their enterprise, the energy which has won brilliant victories in fight, and planted prosperous colonies in all quarters of the globe. Bringing to the work of life an indomitable energy, compelling the winds that blew around, and the waves that thundered on his stormy shores, to waft him on to fortune, the old pagan — a skilful seaman, a dauntless soldier, one who had cultivated with equal success the arts of peace and war, is reported to have said, “I believe neither in idols nor in demons: I put all my trust in my strength of body and of soul!” What a contrast to his bold atheism, and also to their confidence who trust in the blind throws of Fortune, the language of the pious Psalmist: ‘‘ God is my strength and power, and He maketh my way perfect. He teacheth my hands to war, so that a bow of steel is broken by mine arms. Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation, and thy gentleness hath made me great! The Lord liveth, and blessed be my rock; and exalted be the God of the rock of my salvation”? Equally enlightened and devout were the sentiments of Joseph. <A Divine Providence is gratefully acknowledged in the very names of his children. He calls his first-born Manasseh, saying, ‘“For God hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house;” and enshrining the same acknowledgment in the name of his second, he calls him Ephraim, ‘“For God,” he said, “‘hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.”
JOSEPH THE SUCCESSFUL MAN. gl
These cases, that of David and this of Joseph, present, it may be admitted, such remarkable changes of fortune as to constrain the dullest to acknowledge Him who setteth up one, and pulleth down another. But on the other hand such cases are, it may be said, so rare, that they can furnish no proper stimulus to exertion. By no means. It is not uncommon for men to rise from obscurity to fame and fortune, if, denying themselves and exerting their energies to the utmost, they seize the opportunities Providence presents, and our great English dramatist describes, saying —
‘¢ There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune!”
For example, what circumstances apparently more desperate some twenty years ago than his who now rules France, and holds the destinies of Europe in his hands? Then, an exile, a homeless wanderer, he was indulging in visions of conquest which excited only the pity of women and the scorn of sensible men. Yet improbable as once it seemed, his dream has come to pass — come true as his who, in brethren on their knees at his feet, saw the sheaves of a boyish dream bending to his. History proves what men, for their encouragement, would do well to remember, that there is no trade nor position, however humble, from which, God favoring them, some have not climbed the ladder at the heels, though not perhaps to the height, of Joseph.
For example, John Bunyan was originally a tinker; Faraday, the celebrated chemist, a book-binder; the inventor of the steam-engine, a blackiy smith; John Foster, whose writings will live with our tongue, a weaver; Cook, the distinguished navigator, a day laborer; Carey, the first of missionaries, a cobbler; Hugh Miller, a mason; while Jeremy Taylor, Arkwright, the founder of our cotton manufactures, and Tenterden, the great Lord Chief-Justice of England, issued from barbers’ shops. And in less famous spheres our merchants and men of commerce present equally remarkable examples of the success that rewards industry and exertion. How many of them have entered the towns where they laid the foundation, and built up the fabric, of gigantic fortunes, as poor as the lonely wanderer who crossed the fords of Jordan with only a staff in his hand.
The foundations of Joseph’s fortune, the steps by which he rose from slavery, the pit, and the prison, to be the second man in Egypt, were not essentially different from that wisdom, and self-denial, and self-control, and energy of character by which, with sound principles and God’s blessing, many have commanded, and others may still command, a brilliant success. This I willshow. I would mean. while remark that the world has seldom seen such a rapid and great change of fortune. Not incredible, the story is yet so improbable, that we might have scrupled to receive it on any but Divine authority. He would bea bold novelist who would venture to weave some of its incidents into the pages of a romance.
In his early loss of a tender mother; in the malignant hatred of his brothers; in his sudden change from the fond caresses of an indulgent father to the blows, and tears, and chains of slavery; in the vindictive persecution of his mistress; in suffering, though innocent, the penalty of guilt; in years of weary and long imprisonment; in the sense of injustice and cruel wrong; in the hope deferred that maketh the heart sick; in the prospect of wasting his youth, and closing his unhappy days, unknown and unpitied, within the bars of a prison — no man was more unfortunate. Yet in whose history was the hand of Providence more visible! What perils — more formidable than these, what temptations, he escaped! His doom is to be slain — fate more horrible, to be starved to death, to pine away of hunger in the bottom of a darksome pit, with no ear to hear his moans, nor hand to lend him help; yet he escapes. He is a slave; yet what slave so fortunate ? — he is sold to a master who appreciates his worth, and bestows on the bondsman a confidence which few freemen enjoy. He is a prisoner; but the frowns of fortune are changed to smiles. He wins the regard of his gaoler, and rises into an office of trust. Strange man, he is never down but ere long he is up again — trising like a life-buoy which, buried under a mountain of water, is soon riding triumphant on the top of the waves. Twice is he rescued from imminent death. Twice he escapes what seems ’ hopeless imprisonment. The very cause that threw him down becomes a ladder by which he climbs to fortune — one dream consigns him to the pit, and another raises him to the palace.
What a revolution in his fate within the brief space of a single day! It had made other men dizzy. He exchanges a captive’s chain for ornaments of gold; the prison garb for courtly vesture; the narrow walls of a gaol for crowded streets through which, amid acclaims that rend the skies, he is borne in a royal chariot — heralds in advance opening the way, and crying, “Bow the knee.” He was Potiphar’s slave; he has become Potiphar’s. lord. He begged favors of a butler; the proudest princes of Egypt now live in his smiles and tremble at his frown. His word is law; his countenance is sunshine; and if we might make the comparison, as God, bestowing all grace through his beloved Son, says to sinners and suppliants, ‘‘Go to Jesus,” Pharaoh, constituting Joseph the channel and minister and dispenser of his royal favors, refers all affairs to him, saying as we are told he said, “Go to Joseph!” And thus in Joseph, once entreating cruel brothers for his life, once toiling through the desert sands, a lonely, weeping, captive boy, but now surrounded with royal state, now married into a princely house, now the Governor of Egypt, now the second man in the kingdom, now honored by the highest, loved by the humblest, and regarded by all, from the monarch on his throne to the peasant that ploughed his fields under the shadow of the pyramids and on the gicen banks of the Nile, as the saviour and benefactor of the land, in this successful man we see, perhaps, the most remarkable illustration of the words of Solomon, “Seest thou a man diligent in business? he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men.”
Let us now trace Joseph’s success to its sources. They were two.
1. It was due to God.
The sun — for a long time acknowledged to be the centre around which all the planets roll — is coming to be regarded as also the main source of those forces which, under different forms, play their different parts in the world. To him, for instance, the wheel on which some dashing stream flings itself, by its impetus and weight turning the grindstones of the mill, or the whirring spindles of the factory, owes its power. It was his heat which raised the waters of the sea into vapor; floating in the realms of air, this vapor was condensed into clouds; and these descended in the rain which, gathered by a thousand rills into stream and river, sets all the wheels in motion. Not less to the sun we owe the wonders achieved by steam, — our rapid flight on the iron rails; the victories it wins on the deep; the gigantic arms it moves in our service, and at our bidding, where fires blaze and tall chimneys smoke. No doubt, the moving force is, in the first instance, steam; but the steam is due to the fires of the furnace; and the fires of the furnace are maintained by the fuel it devours; and the fuel, whether wood of forests or coal from the bowels of earth, originally derived all its heat from the sun — wood and coal being magazines of sunbeams. This holds equally true of animal as of mechanical forces. The tiger leaps, the eagle soars, the elephant treads the forest with imperial foot, the fisherman pulls his oar, and the blacksmith swings his hammer on the sounding forge; all, man and beast, by virtue of a force that descended from the skies. The strength, for example, of man’s arm lies in its muscles; their strength we owe to our food; our food we owe to the earth; and its fruits owe their existence and nutritive properties to that sun whose heat and light clothe the naked soil with verdant pastures and the fields with their golden harvests.
By following a corresponding process, we would be conducted through many an intervening step to God himself, as the great final cause of all things and events. Universal Lord, Maker and Ruler of all, He is in all and over all; so that there is a sense in which, not Joseph’s fortunes only, but all things, are due to Him. The life of angels, He is also the life of insects. The planets are rolled through space by the same hand that shapes every leaf and paints the humblest flower: and as ‘nothing was made without Him that is made,” nothing happens without Him that does happen — whether it be the fall of a kingdoin or of a sparrow.
The footprints of a man are not more visible on the surface of new-fallen snow than are the proofs of a Divine power and presence throughout all the kingdom of Nature: nor is there need to quote Scripture to prove, and adduce crimes to illustrate, our depravity, and how the “carnal mind is enmity against God,” so long as we have philosophers, so — called, who refer everything to mere material agencies; and excluding all recognition of a Supreme Intelligence, recall these words of an Apostle: “The world by wisdom knew not God.”
What are the Laws of Nature, for the sake of which God is thrust from his imperial throne; disowned and dishonored by the creatures of his hand? Law presupposes a law-maker — a mind to foresee the end, and the appointment of means adequate to bring it about — to secure its accomplishment. And just as the laws of our country, to borrow a figure from society, are the expressions of the will of Parliament, what are the laws of nature, properly defined, and traced to their native source, but the expression and outgoing of the will of God? That will, like ours, works through the instrumentality of means; and ‘it is curious,” says the Duke of Argyll, in a profound and subtle book which he has published, called ‘The Reign of Law,’ ‘‘how the language of the grand seers of the Old Testament corresponds with this idea. They uniformly ascribe all the operations of nature — the greatest and the smallest — to the working of Divine power. But they never revolt — as so many do in these weaker days — from the idea of this power working by wisdom and knowledge in the use of means: nor in this point of view do they ever separate between the work of creation and the work which is going on daily in the existing world. Exactly the same language is applied to the rarest exertions of power and to the gentlest and most constant of all natural operations. Thus the saying that ‘the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath He established the heavens,’ is coupled in the same breath with this other saying: ‘ By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.’” The Bible furnishes many other illustrations of this important remark of our noble author, one of which may be quoted for the beauty of its poetry, and for its correct and scientific theory of rain : — ‘‘ Seek Him,” says the prophet Amos, “‘ that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth the waters gs STUDIES OF CHARACTER.
of the sea and poureth them out on the face of the earth; the Lord is his name.”
But, while there is thus a sense in which all things may be attributed to God and a sense even in which “He made the wicked for the day of evil,” Joseph’s history furnishes examples of a special providence — if not of miraculous, of very marvellous as well as manifest interpositions of God. ‘ Who knoweth,” said Mordecai to Esther, when urging that noble woman to risk life and all for the sake of her people, “who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” The special providence which seemed, though probable, still problematical to Mordecai in Esther’s fortunes, no man can doubt, held the helm of Joseph’s. Though somewhat like the course of a boat, now riding upon the top of the waves and now lost in the trough of the sea, or like that of a traveller crossing a imountain region, who now stands on sunny heights and anon descends into the sombre depths of valleys, Joseph’s course, with many ups and downs, goes right to its mark — from the point where he starts to the goal he reaches. How manifest is it in his case, that a Divine eye — none else could — saw the end from the beginning? But what a special providence did all the vicissitudes of his chequered life — those things men call accidents — like successive waves, bear him on and up to the position where he accomplished his singular destiny; saving his family, and through them the hope of the Messiah? What hand but one Divine could have forged the chain which linked long years together; the sheepfolds of Hebron with the proud palaces oi
Egypt; the dreams of the boy with the deeds of the man? To take up but its principal links: he dreams, and becomes in consequence the object of his brothers’ hatred; through their hatred he is sold into slavery; through slavery he enters the house of Potiphar; through events that happen in that house, he is consigned to a prison; in the prison he meets one of Pharaoh’s servants; in consequence of interpreting the servant’s dream he is summoned to interpret his master’s; and ¢hat, the last link of a chain which has its first far away in his father’s tent, is fastened to the throne of Egypt.
“Surely,” said the patriarch, ‘‘God is in this place!” As surely God was in that plan. Perhaps, in most instances, He only interfered with the ordinary laws of nature to the extent of controlling them with a divine hand — as when He restrained Joseph for years from inquiring after his father, when a courier mounted on a dromedary would have brought him tidings of the old man in a very few days. That fact can only be explained by a special providence. And without a constant, divine superintendence, a superintendence that wrought out its ends by many instrumentalities, even by dreams, and crimes, and the cruelest, vilest passions that rage in human bosoms, how often had Joseph’s fortunes been completely wrecked? No hand but God’s could have steered his bark through the storms, shoals, reefs, and quicksands of his romantic and eventful life; and well therefore might he acknowledge God in his remarkable success, saying to his brothers, ‘‘ As for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, t save much people alive.”
2. Under God, his success was due to himself.
There is a passage in Palgrave’s ‘Central Arabia,’ on reading which I thought, ‘“‘So Pharaoh and Joseph may have been seen.” Palgrave tells how the street was filled with a great throng of people. There is a commotion in the crowd. Opening, it shows an armed band advancing. They form.a circle that has its centre occupied by those whose dress, with the respectful distance observed by their followers, announce their superior rank. It is the monarch. His step is measured, his demeanor grave and somewhat haughty. His robe is a Cashmere shawl. He wears a rich turban on his head, and at his girdle a gold-mounted sword. He moved, a cloud of perfumes; and as he walked along his eye never rested, but flung eager glances, rapid and brilliant, on the surrounding crowd. By his side walked one also wearing a sword, but mounted with silver, not with gold; and also richly dressed, though in somewhat less costly materials. This man’s face was more remarkable than his attire. It wore a courtly expression, and beamed with unusual intelligence. Of these two, the first was Telal, the king; the second Zaniel, his treasurer, his prime minister, his sole minister. In this man I saw Joseph at the right hand of Pharaoh. Their offices were alike. They resembled each other in this also, that both had risen to the highest from the humblest position in life. Joseph had been a slave; a prisoner; falsely accused and cruelly wronged. Zaniel had been an orphan, a ragged boy. His early years were passed in beggary; nor was it by a mere wave of fortune that he was flung into his high position. He had climbed to it. He owed it to his admirable dispositions, remarkable talents, unwearied industry, skill in business, and extraordinary force of character. In this also the resemblance between the two was remarkable. For it was, under God, to his high moral and rare mental qualities, and not in any degree to chance or fortune, that the young Hebrew slave reached power and dignity, becoming governor of the kingdom which he had entered as a slave.
Not simply to the wind, however auspicious, does the seaman owe his progress. Without it, indeed, his ship would but rise and fall in the swell of the deep; but without the skill to catch and use the breeze, and compel it, even when adverse, by dexterous trimming of the yards, and setting of the sails, and handling of the helm, to force him on and over the waves, what service were the wind to him? So was it in Joseph’s, and so it is in all cases of success. God gives the opportunities; but success turns on the use we make of them; on the promptitude with which we seize the openings of providence; on the weight of character we bring into the field: on the resolution and energy we throw into our business.
This is an important practical truth. And to illustrate it let me now show how Joseph possessed and employed those powers and properties which, if Providence, so to speak, affords a man the ordinary chances of life, will win and command success.
First of all, and to begin with that which gives the best foundation for prosperity in this worla, and the only assurance of salvation in the next, Joseph was a man of sterling piety and the most virtuous principles. Early instructed by a devout father, he never forgot the lessons of home and the God of his youth. So, those who robbed him of his coat did not rob him of his character; nor, though reduced to slavery, could his mistress, by her frowns or favors, induce him to become the slave of sin. The young, when. the only thing they should fear is guilt, are often afraid to stand up for truth and virtue. Pattern to them, he was not: neither concealing his regard for God, nor his horror of sin. By his piety and virtue he won the confidence of his heathen masters. They saw that the Lord was with him; and acknowledged the blessing of having, though he was but a bondsman, a pious servant beneath their roof.
Again, to the unsullied innocence of virtuous youth, Joseph united the wisdom and sagacity of age. An exception to the proverb that you cannot put an old head on young shoulders, with what
cool skill and consummate foresight did he choose
the steps necessary, and most likely, to attain his object! Thus by dexterous statesmanship he saved Egypt from the horrors of famine; he added to the power of the crown without enslaving the people; he carried Pharaoh and the country safely through a tremendous crisis. And see how the sagacity which characterized his acts as a statesman appeared in the steps he took, and took with so much success, to awaken the consciences of his brethren; and, bringing them to a sense of their sin, lay them true penitents at the feet of that God whose laws they had so grossly violated, and of a brother they had so cruelly wronged?
Again, many people fail of success in their profession and pursuits by neglecting the opportunities which Providence presents. They are not prompt to seize them and turn them to the most advantage. But see how Joseph pushed in, wherever he saw an opening. He has Pharaoh’s butler for a fellow-prisoner. Something may come out of that. In this man, menial as he was, and as to the credit of Joseph’s foresight it fell out, he may one day, to use a common expression in its literal as well as figurative sense, have ‘“‘a friend at court.” So, though it offered but what is called a chance, he does not allow the opportunity to escape. He bespeaks the good offices of the butler; teaching us, in our intercourse with mankind, never to make an enemy if we can avoid it, and, when it is possible, always to make a friend.
Again, observe how, sure token of his rising one day to be the master of others, Joseph had acquired the mastery over himself. To the aid of piety he brought that strength of mind and resolution of purpose, for lack of which, perhaps, men equally pious have yielded to temptations he stoutly resisted; have shamefully fallen where he stood; have lost the battle where he won a splendid victory. A grand thing, next to Divine grace the grandest thing, to cultivate, is decision of character. To that, in combination with the grace of God, Joseph owed it, I believe, that he came unscathed from the fiery furnace into which he was thown in the house of Potiphar. On that resolute breast of his, temptations broke, like sea waves on a rocky headland. Nor do his strength of purpose
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and the power he had acquired over himself appear.
less remarkable in other passages of his life. It is difficult for us with unfaltering tongue to read the affecting scenes that passed between him and his brothers ere he dropped the mask. What his strength of mind, who could go through them without a trace of emotion! He is racked with anxiety about his aged father; his bosom swells to the bursting at the sight of brothers to whom he yearns to disclose himself, that he may lock them -in fond embraces. Yet he preserves a calm, and if not cold, an unimpassioned bearing — like a moun- .tain whose head is crowned with snows, and whose sides are mantled with green forests, and vineyards, and groves of olives, while the fires of a volcano are raging within its bosom. Lastly, there remains one feature of Joseph’s character deserving of special notice. Along with
an iron will, and an energy no task could daunt,
no labor weary, no burden crush, he had a gentle, tender, loving heart. Unselfish, he was ready to sympathize with others. One day, for instance, when they seemed more than usually depressed, how kindly does he ask his fellow prisoners, “Wherefore look ye so sadly to-day?” Then what a tender heart his, who, enduring wrong in Potiphar’s house with the silent heroism of a martyr, throws himself in yonder palace into the arms of his brethren, and weeps over them like a woman? I have no doubt whatever that to the generous, kindly, loving disposition which Joseph possessed, and all should cultivate, he owed not a little of his remarkable success. It won the regards and goodous Nia
will of others — kind affections often doing men such service as the arms which a creeping plant throws around a pole does it, when, springing from the ground, it rises by help of the very object it embraces.
Such was Joseph. Just because he was such, God opening up his way and blessing him, he was a successful man.
There was once a sailor, the only survivor of a shipwreck, who had a singular fate. Caught in the arms of a mountain billow as it went rolling to break in spray and snowy foam on an Orcadian headland, he was not dashed to pieces, but flung right into the mouth of a vast sea-cave, where the wave left him ‘“‘safe and sound.” His fortune, if possible, was stranger still. On recovering from the shock, and groping about, he found a barrel of provisions the same wave had swept in. With this, and water trickling from the roof to quench his thirst, he sustained life, till, hearing a human cry mingling with the clang of sea-birds,a brave cragse man of these isles was swung over the precipice, and rescued him from his rocky prison. A wonderful providence! But it was no such wave of fortune that cast Joseph into the high post he filled.
An example for men to imitate, he owed nothing to fortune, but, under God, everything to himself — to his piety, his pure and high morality, his extraordinary self-control, the patience with which he bore, the faith with which he waited, the perseverance with which he pursued his objects, an iron will and an indomitable energy. These are properties which by prayer and pains the young should seek to acquire, and the oldest should assiduously cultivate. To these, more than to genius, or to great talents, or to any of those things which are called good fortune, the greatest of men have ascribed their success. I could produce a hundred testimonies to that effect, but none better than the one with which I now close this paper. In a letter to his son, Sir Fowell Buxton, a great and eminently Christian man, says : — ‘‘ You are now at that period of life in which you must make a turn to the right or to the left. You must now give proof of principle, determination, and strength of mind; or you must sink into idleness, and acquire the habits and character of an ineffective young man. Iam sure that a young man may be very much what he pleases. In my own case it was so. Much of my happiness and all my prosperity in life have resulted from the change I made at your age.” Elsewhere he says: “‘ The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men, between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy, invincible determination — a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory!”