Joseph the Optimist

The figure which stands next in the group of the Great Gallery is perhaps the most popular of all the Old Testament Portraits. There are few who are not familiar with the story of Joseph. Even those who know little of the Bible — to whom Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are mere names, and the less prominent figures not even so much, can tell you all about Joseph. Why is this? Is it because the story of Joseph is painted in more vivid colours than any of the other narratives? It is not so painted. It is less graphic in its delineation than the portraiture of the Garden of Eden; it is less sublime than the description of the Flood; it is less poetic than the vision of Bethel or the scene of Peniel. Yet neither the Garden

of Eden nor the slopes of Ararat, neither the plain of Bethel nor the heights of Peniel, have yielded so many flowers to fancy as the ground trodden by the feet of Joseph. Or is it because Joseph is a greater character than his predecessors and successors? He is not greater. He never reaches the sacrificial heights of Abraham nor the sacrificial depths of Isaac. Like Moses, he is in Egypt; but he is mot, like Moses, a maker of history. It is difficult to see how his brilliant government contributed anything to the Exodus or influenced in any respect the fortunes of Egypt herself. Neither the personality nor the public position of Joseph accounts for his effect on posterity. How is that effect to be explained?

If I were allowed to express the answer in childlike language, I would say that the cause of the narrative’s attractiveness is that the story has a good end. What I mean is, not only that it culminates in brightness, but that the brightness is found to have been produced by the actual clouds of the narrative. This is, I think, a point in which the Portrait of Joseph is unique amongst Old Testament figures. You will find any number of narratives that wind up with the prosperity of their heroes; but I cannot at present recall another in which the trial is found to be a fart of the prosperity. Noah emerges from the flood into the sunshine; but the flood remains a calamity still. Daniel is saved from the lions; but he is saved by the allaying of their fury. Job gets back his possessions; but he gets them back as a reversal of his adverse circumstances, not as a result of these circumstances. The case of Joseph is very different. His peculiarity is not that he rises to a pinnacle of earthly splendour; most of the Old Testament figures do that. It is that his splendour has come out of his dungeon. We are made to see, to feel, that he would never have been on the pinnacle at all if it had not been for his misfortunes in the

valley, that his sunshine has come from his

suffering, that the avenue of shade has led him

to the palace of light.

I have said that this is a unique experience in the Old Testament; but it is the universal experience in the New. The New Testament is nearer to the view of suffering expressed in the Portrait of Joseph than to any other theory whatever. The doctrine of the Gospel is, not simply that after dark the light comes, but that the garment which at night we call dark is that which in the morning we pronounce luminous. The words of the latest Evangelist are, ‘ Your sorrow shall be turned into joy. It is the transformation of sorrow rather than the abolition of sorrow that is contemplated. The watchword of Christianity is ‘perfect through suffering.’ The glory of Christ is not something which He reaches as a compensation for the cross; it is the lifting up of the cross itself. It has become a simple matter of history that Christ has triumphed by the very steps which were taken to defeat Him. He has not been lifted out of the valley; it is the valley itself that has been exalted. He has not been freed from service; it is service itself that has ceased to be ignominious. He has not been exempted from further stooping; He has been exempted from hindrances to M further stooping. His sorrow has been ‘ turned into joy.’

Now, I say that the nearest analogy which the Old Testament presents to this standpoint is the Portrait of Joseph. Even the Book of Job does not reach the summzt of the hill. That book does not attain the zghest optimism — even in its climax. It shows us a good man rewarded for his patience in trial. That is satisfactory, but it is not purely optimistic; the trial still remains as so much lost time. Ifa man has been interrupted in a race, it does not reinstate him to set him on the road once more. He has lost ground in the interval; his competitors are on before him; the renewal of his original power may never again secure his original object. But if you could tell the man that the interruption came to him when he was on the wrong road, if you could tell him that he tripped just when he was about to take the false turning, a turning which has led his competitors astray, the matter would assume a very different aspect. He

would then regard his interruption as itself his greatest stroke of good fortune; his fetter would be found to be his wing. Pure optimism is not the belief that all will come right; it ismthe ys belief ‘that /allyiis M right’) vow, that nothing has ever been wrong. It is not simply the contemplation of an ultimate abundance; it is the wreathing with glory of times of scarcity. It is the exaltation of trial itself into the position of a step in the great ladder by which Man ascends to the summit of his nature. Now, this is the optimism which is reached in the story of Joseph. It is an alternation of lights and shadows; but in the shadows, as in the lights, the man equally moves upward. The tragedy and the triumph alike minister to his progress, alike conspire to make him the benefactor of his kind. It is not that he is lifted into the sunlight; his crosses are lifted into the sunlight. He succeeds by reason of his seeming failure. His thorn of yesterday becomes his flower of to-day; his strength is perfected in weakness. The truth is, the Portrait of Joseph is to my mind a philosophical picture — the earliest attempt to delineate a theory of the universe in the form of a narrative. I do not mean that it had not its basis in fact. I mean that here, for the first time, there was an eye to observe the fact. The man who narrated this life is more than a recorder; he is a theorist. He has not only exhibited the materials; he has woven them together. What he has in his mind is really an essay or sermon. If he had entitled it ‘An Inquiry into the Causes of Human Suffering, he could not have more clearly revealed his intention. That intention is to vindicate by experience the ways of God to Man. Instead of vindicating by an argument, he selects a life — a life which shall run from youth to age, and be the normal type of all lives. And I am bound to say that in this delineation he has passed quite beyond his time, beyond his race. He has claimed a larger empire for God than his countrymen claimed for Him. None of his countrymen, so far as I know — not even the author of the Book of Job — recognised suffering as a part of the mosaic; it is always either a penalty or a trial. Here it is a fragment of the building — a necessary fragment, a contribution to that creat temple whose completion is to perfect the praise of God. Joseph himself is made the spokesman of the new evangel. He comes before us as the advocate for optimism. He confronts the facts of his own life, and claims absolute good fortune. He does not say that the joy has exceeded the sorrow. He does not say that on the whole the lights have outweighed the shadows. He denzes the shadows. He refuses to admit the realty of the clouds. He claims his adversaries as his unconscious friends, ‘As for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it for good.’

Let us look at the philosophy of this life of Joseph. Those who are conversant with music tell us that each of Chopin’s Preludes has three parts, which embody a distinct sequence. In the first, the melody is free and unrestrained. In the second, it seems to move through tangled places — to be impeded in its way by the intervention of resisting elements. But in

the third, the melody comes out into the open once more; the tangles vanish, the impediments are removed, and the notes of the first part reappear in a new connection and with a fresh power. Now, this is precisely the music which I find in the life of Joseph. He is one of Chopin’s Preludes. He has his three periods. He has his period of youthful freedom, when his life flies through the open with wings of fire. Then comes a seeming closure. He is no longer in the outer air. He is shut within a tunnel; he is to all appearance debarred from progress, evermore. All at once he makes a discovery. The tunnel has been itself a progress. He has been moving underground all the time he thought himself stranded — has been moving by a shorter way. The dark road has been the quicker road. The notes of the morning are repeated in the afternoon; but they are sung on a higher hill and under a purer sky. Come, and let us traverse these three parts of the Prelude — the notes of the morning, the notes overshadowed, the shadows themselves merging into the symphony! We shall find in it the earliest effort of the Hebrew race to transcend itself, its first deliberate attempt to break away from its own theories, and to seek a humanitarian basis for the action of God.

The drama opens with the picture of a petted boy — a child of his father’s old age. He has two qualities by heredity, and one by education. From his grandfather Abraham he has received the spirit of optimism; and that is good. From his father Jacob he has received the spirit of ambition; and that is also good. But from his mode of education he has received the spirit of selfishness; and that vitiates everything. He is an optimist for his world; but his world unfortunately contains only one person — this little boy himself. He has too wide a horizon, too unobstructed a view. No interest has been allowed to clash with /zs interest. His father’s will has been zs will. Brothers have been discounted; he has been the favoured child. He is eager to preserve his pre-eminence. He feeds the flame of his father’s partiality; he tells everything that can disparage his brothers. And because he ¢hznks of their disparagement, he dreams of their disparagement. The wishes of his night repeat the wishes of his day. He is always seeing 4zs star overtopping the other stars, his sheaf outgrowing the other sheaves. That the streets of London are to be paved with gold is a small thing; but the bells are ringing out that 4e is to be Lord Mayor of the golden city — and that makes its prosperity worth a hymn of praise. Joseph’s world has as yet but one inhabitant — himself.

Now, what is wrong here? He needs to get his mind widened, you say. Not at all; he needs to get his mind narrowed. He has too many gates open in /z/e, and therefore he has too few gates open in sympathy. The infirmity of this boy Joseph is just his want of encumbrances. He has never met with a shut door, never encountered an opposing wall, never had to ask for anything twice. There has not been cultivated in him the spirit of prayer — the spirit of need; and therefore there has not been cultivated in him the spirit of.

sympathy. All inward widening is produced by outward narrowing. How shall I pass from the life of the egotist to the life of the humanitarian? Only through my own strait gate. The wing by which I fly to your trouble is the wing which is wounded; the hand by which I help you is the hand which is maimed. In vain shall I enter your desert till I have tasted the waters of Marah. Not by fearless running shall I overtake and lift your burden, but by halting on my own thigh. The education in sympathy is the experience of personal bruises; of every true comforter we can say, ‘By his stripes we are healed,’

And so, Joseph must have the second part of the Prelude — the period of enclosure. It comes; and, lo, the gates which were all open are all shut! The boy had run in the free air of heaven.; the youth is cribbed, cabined, and confined. The hours of morning had owned no master; the noonday is one perpetual, one enforced service. His prospect in life is seemingly blotted out. He is stolen from home.

He is proclaimed to be dead. He is sold asa slave to a band of Ishmaelites. He is transferred by them to an Egyptian soldier. He is suspected innocently of grave offences. He is immured ina dungeon. Time and space seem to have ended for him. In his own land he is already numbered among the dead; in this foreign land he is wznumbered either among dead or living — he isa cypher. He might be painted at this moment with his foot resting upon his own grave.

And, all the time, beneath that grave there is a gold-mine. Never in all his life has Joseph been so near to glory — moral and physical glory. For the first time in his existence he puts out his hand to help another; and accidentally it touches the gold-mine. Having no longer a dream of his own to interpret, he begins to interpret the dreams of his fellow-prisoners. He reveals his poetic genius as he never has revealed it before, just because he is not listening to his own singing; and he reveals it to some purpose. Little did he imagine when he entered that dungeon that he was to have such an audience! One of his fellow-prisoners is, in three days, to be in touch with royalty — in touch with a royal personage who wants, beyond all things, an interpreter of dreams. Joseph might have ranged the plains of his native Mesopotamia in wild freedom for a hundred years and never have found such a chance of promotion as came to him within the precincts of that gloomy and stifling dungeon.

Then comes the third part of the Prelude. We are in a new scene — the court of Pharaoh; Joseph stands beside the throne. The boy of the desert, the youth of the dungeon, has become the adviser of royalty. Yet, strangely do the notes of the first part blend with those of the third! Mesopotamia has come over into Egypt! The enemies of his boyhood are there — those brothers whom he had wronged, and who had wronged him! His aged father is there — that father who had believed him to be dead! The old patriarchal life is there, like a song of home in a strange land! But they are all changed — they are all more worth having. The father has given up his unjust partiality; Joseph no longer xeeds his special care. The brothers have given up their jealousy; the Prime Minister of Egypt is beyond their jealousy. /oseph has given up his selfishness; his dreams are now humanitarian. The relieving of the pain of others led him at first to a gold-mine, and, ever since, it has become a joy for its own sake. And, remember, all this reunion, all this better union, has come from a dark cloud. What is it that has joined the hands of Joseph and his brethren? It is famine. They have fled to Egypt for corn; they have heard of the great economist who administers there. They dream not it is their brother. They are flying in panic from to-day, and they meet their yesterday. They are driven by fear, and they fall into the arms of hope. They come to beg of a stranger, and they find themselves féted by a brother.

There is only one feature of this Portrait which has been alleged to be an artistic blemish — a blemish in its picture of optimism. It has been said, Why did Joseph let his father believe him to be dead for so many years? We are asked, Could you imagine a high-souled young man, living within a reasonable distance from the place of his birth, and aware that his father was still residing in his old home — yet keeping his existence for years concealed from that father, and allowing the paternal heart to count him among the dead! I heard one of the most eloquent of preachers the other day, in strong detraction from the character of Joseph, put this side of the case with great force and with great ability. ‘What do you think of that!’ I said afterwards to one of the audience. ‘Oh, was the reply, ‘he ought to remember that it was the fault of the dramatist”

I must confess that I do not regard this answer as satisfactory. What we want to know is, why such an otherwise admirable Picture should apparently contain such a flaw. It is beside the question to discuss whether that flaw lay in the life or in its delineator. In either case the problem to be solved is on the

canvas. The seeming blemish is now part of the’ Picture, and there lies the sting.) (the Picture is, otherwise, beautiful. It describes the development of a life from selfishness to unselfishness. If it has recorded an act of heartlessness at the climax, it has failed in portraying its own plan. But has it? What if this so-called act of heartlessness is in reality an act of deart? What if the seeming blemish is a colour of new beauty? What if the apparent flaw is an added flower? Iam convinced that it is. This act of Joseph is no neglect either on his part or on the part of the dramatist. It is a designed silence — a pause in the music which is meant to give effect to the music. It is no sign of crudeness either in the man or in his biographer; it is the mark of ripe development, of autumn fulness.

For consider, had not Joseph’s life in youth been a thorn to his father — the greatest moral thorn of his father’s old age! Had not the life of this son been the one rock on which Jacob’s ship had been in danger of foundering! Had not his partiality for Joseph been the bane to family union, the barrier to the progress of the kingdom of God! MHad it not threatened to hasten the severance of the twelve tribes of Israel! Had not the fancied death of Joseph been a great Joon to his father! It had brought family peace. It had secured unity around the hearth. It had broken a régime of manifest injustice. Was it not well that the delusion should be preserved! Was it not best that for the present the old man should be allowed still to think that his son was dead! Did not Joseph himself owe this as an atonement to his brethren! Had not he too been unjust, selfish, monopolising, eager to grasp more than his share! How could he better make reparation than by effacing himself, allowing his name to be blotted out from the living members of that circle whose harmony he had done so much to disturb, and whose unity he had helped to destroy!

I hold, then, that this seemingly dark side is a part of the bright mosaic, a contribution to the artist’s conception that all things work together for good. I cannot detect a single feature in the Portrait of Joseph which has not been placed there for the express purpose of advocating the cause of optimism. Even the closing scene of all, the hour of his death, is grandly consistent with the ideal of the Picture. Why is it that the writer to the Hebrews, that great spectator of the Great Gallery, has fixed upon this final hour of Joseph as the typical hour of his life? ‘By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones.’ One would have thought the life was rich enough in incidents to make it unnecessary to draw illustrations from its close. Why not say that the optimistic faith of Joseph appeared in the dreams of his boyhood, or in the courage of his youth, or in the beneficence of his manhood! Why not go back to the sanguineness on the Mesopotamian plains or the fortitude in the Egyptian dungeon! Why select the example from the hour which least distinsuishes one life from another — the period of the dark valley! It is because, to be optimistic in that valley is optimism indeed, because the man who can ‘¢here keep the light in his soul has proved that his faith is supreme. And is there any optimism like that of Joseph’s closing hour! Was it not a bold thing to believe that Israel would come out of Egypt! Was it not a daring thing to dream that this little band would not be absorbed in the Egyptian waves, but would issue forth as an independent river! Was it not a brave thing to hope that this insignificant clan would keep its nationality and its name amid the rush and roar of waters! Nay, is not this still the crowning marvel of Israel! Blended with every land, deprived of local habitation, denuded of temple and sacrifice, denied a voice among the nations, refused a place in the political arena of the world, this people holds fast its hope and will not let it go. And its hope is the faith of the dying Joseph — the faith that Egypt will not absorb it, that culture will not outgrow it, that modern life will not supplant it, that in the days to come it will

vesume its reign.

ORD, teach me the power of life’s seeming arrests! Often have I felt the

srief of Joseph. Often have the bright dreams of youth appeared to fade, and the shadows of the prison-house to close over the growing man. I have cried in the bitterness of my soul, ‘The promise of the morning is broken; I shall never zow find the treasure for which I have sought so long!’ And lo, I have found it zz the prison-house, zz the dungeon, in a panel of the locked door! I had sought it in all likely places — in the fields, in the woods, in the homes of the rich and mighty; and it has come to me in the one spot where its presence seemed impossible. Thou hast answered me as Thou answeredst Job — ‘out of the whirlwind’ I had been looking to all calm places for an answer. I had looked to the gentle dawn; I had gazed on the roseate morning; I had stood in the pensive twilight; I had communed with the still and starry night; I had listened upon my bed when the pulse of life beat low. From none of these did my

answer come. Then the whzrlwind swept by, and I said, ‘ There will be Divine silence zow; I cannot hope for Thy voice any morel’ And behold, it was from the whirlwind that Thy voice came! What earth’s silence could not give, what earth’s calmness could not give, what earth’s zephyrs could not give, was given by the storm! Let me never again fear the shut gate; let me never more dread the interrupted journey! Teach me that my Calvary may be my crown! Tell me that my Patmos may be my promotion! Show me that my Damascus darkness may be my dazzling daylight! Reveal to me that there may be progress through life’s pauses, voices in life’s valley, symmetry in life’s sighs, music in life’s maladies, beauty in life’s burdens, work in life’s wilderness! Then shall I know why this Portrait has been placed in the Great Gallery of deathless souls.