The Story of Joseph

They said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh. — Genesis 37° IQ.

The balances of man are all untrue;

His weight and eyes deceitful; he may write

The story of a pebble or a rock,

The annals of a beetle or a worm;

But the great story of his own vast being,

The hills and valleys of his life, he cannot:

A life made up of but a few short years,

And yet containing in its troubled round

Tempests, and tides, and changes, failures, conquests,

In daily flux and reflux without end.

—Horatius Bonar.

WHEN a Story of providence begins, we never know what the end willbe. In seven chapters will be retold the story whose beginning we have here — a boy coming across the fields garrying a basket. God wanted the family of Israel down in Egypt for a few hundred years. WhyP Was not Canaan promised to them as their own lander Why not keep them there? Several reasons may be given.

Canaan was filled with warlike tribes. While there was only a handful of the Israelites, these tribes let them alone. But they were now to grow rapidly, and as soon as they began to be a multitude, war would be waged against them and they

would have been exterminated. God’s 3 plan, therefore, was to take them away toa place where they could live securely, and grow into a nation, and then to bring them back able to conquer the hordes of Canaan.

There was another reason for getting them away from Canaan. They must grow up separate from the world. They were to be God’s people. They were to receive God’s law and God’s word. From them were to come teachers, singers, prophets. By and by the Messiah, the world’s Redeemer, was to be born of this nation. They must be a holy people, with unmixed blood. If they grew up among the Canaanites this could not be. These tribes would mingle with them. They must be taken to some place where there would be no temptation to inter-marriages and social commingling. The Egyptians were proud and exclusive. They would have no asso-Clations with any foreigners. In Goshen, then, while under the favor and protection of the king, they were effectually shut up by themselves. They were compelled to erow up together, and separate from all other people. There was yet another reason for their removal from Canaan foratime. Canaan was a country of rude and barbaric peoples, without learning, without culture, without the arts and sciences. Egypt was the seat of the world’s highest civilization. It had its great libraries, its colleges, its arts and letters, its culture. By dwelling in Egypt the Israelites would become educated. They would be trained and would learn the arts necessary to fit them for self-government and for being the conservators of the revealed law of God and the teachers of the world. We cannot estimate what the Hebrew nation has been to the world, especially through its laws and its religion. If the people had grown up in Canaan they could never have had the influence they attained.

It was God’s plan, therefore, that the family of Jacob should be taken away from Canaan to Egypt. This boy coming across the fields with a basket is to play a most important part in all this great movement.

He did not know it. We hardly ever know when we are being used of God in doing important things. Joseph had been sent on an errand. He was seventeen — bright, beautiful, innocent, happy. His mother was dead. He had only one own brother — Benjamin, four or five years old. He had ten half-brothers, and with these he was unpopular.

One reason for this unpopularity was that he was his father’s favorite. Doubtless he was better than his brothers. Then he was Rachel’s son — and Jacob loved Rachel most tenderly. Jacob loved Joseph best of his sons and did not hide the fact. Indeed he seems to have taken pains to show it. He gave him a coat which advertised to all that he was his favorite.

Favoritism in a family is most unwise. It is wrong in itself. The dull child, not the bright one, the weak, faulty child, not the strong, perfect one, really needs the

most praise and encouragement, the most help and favor. Then favoritism usually spoils the child, cultivating pride, self-conceit. Not many of us can stand petting, pampering, and flattery. It is unjust to the others, too, to choose one for special preference and distinction. Once more, favoritism naturally draws upon the favorite the,

hatred and envy of the others.

There was a timid knock at a mother’s bedroom door, early one morning. ‘‘Is that you, pet?” asked the mother from within. ‘‘No; it isn’t pet; it’s only me,” was the pained answer. But the sorrowful tone cured the mother. There was no more a ‘‘pet” in that household. There should not be a ‘‘pet”’ in any home.

‘‘Behold, this dreamer cometh.” Joseph had had some dreams. His brothers’ sheaves bowed down to his sheaf. The sun, moon, and stars made obeisance to him. With boyish simplicity he told his dreams, and his brothers never forgave him. The dreams were divine intimations of the boy’s future — they came true by and by. All we need to notice at present, however, is that the dreams and the boy’s telling of them made the brothers hate Joseph the more. The merest hints of his present or possible superiority over them made their envy the more bitter.:

Sixty miles away these brothers were pasturing their flocks. The old father would know how they fared. So he sent Joseph to carry messages and a basket of good things to them, and to bring back word again. It was a long, lonely journey for a boy of his years, but at last he was near the end of his journey. Far off the brothers saw him coming. They knew him by his coat of bright colors. ‘‘ Behold, this dreamer cometh,” they said, one to another. ‘‘ Come now, and let us slay him, and cast him into one of the pits; and we will say, ‘Some evil beast hath devoured him.’” Here we must pause and take a lesson on the fearful danger of allowing envious thoughts to stay even an hour in our heart.

Envy grew to murder in these men — brothers, too. We see here the wisdom of St. Paul’s counsel, not to let the sun go down upon our wrath. We should instantly crush the merest beginnings of envy. The hour of evening prayer, when we bow at God’s feet, should always be a time for getting right all that may have gone wrong in us during the day. Then every feeling of bitterness against any person should be cast out of our heart. It should be a time for forgetting all injury, and unkindness, all hurt done us by anyone.

‘«‘ Life is too short for hate;
We mingle here but one brief day,
Too brief for what we meant to say,
When it is all too late.

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