to have been gifted with an habitual amiableness and kindness of deportment, inquired what had so much disturbed them. They told their dreams; and God enabled him to interpret them. The butler should be restored, he said, to office, and the baker hanged; and so it came to pass.

And now Joseph thought that there might be a possibility of his doing something for his own deliverance; and he very naturally attempted it. He besought the chief butler to make mention of him to Pharaoh, and procure his release; a service which, perhaps, he would be able to render him. God, however, had taken charge of Joseph himself, and we are ever better in his hands than in our own or in man's. The chief butler was a selfish, ungrateful person; he did not "remember Joseph, but forgat him '." He lay in prison therefore two full years longer.

But "shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you," saith our Lord, "he will avenge them speedily"." He did not forget his servant. But He knew the fit time and the best way; and when that time was come, and Joseph might be set at liberty, most to his own honour and advantage, as well as most to the furtherance of God's purpose of mercy to his family, then this same unworthy person was led to act for him, though without any purpose of doing him good, and perhaps simply and solely to serve his own interest.

Pharaoh also had remarkable dreams which troubled him, and though he called his wise men together, they could hit upon no plausible interpretation of them. This brought the butler to recollect himself; Joseph might perhaps interpret these dreams as readily as he had expounded his, so he had perhaps an opportunity of ingratiating himself with the king, by introducing Joseph to his notice, and he would by no means let it slip. "I do remember my faults this day," he says,

1 See Gen. xl.

2 Luke xviii. 7, 8.

3 Gen. xli. 9.

and then tells the whole story of his having been imprisoned, and of the dream of himself and the chief baker, and how Joseph had interpreted both, and the event had confirmed his word. On this Joseph was called. The king's dreams were told and expounded. The correctness of the interpretation was not questioned; and it appeared from it that God had made to Pharaoh a revelation of vast public importance, which it befitted him to act upon immediately with vigour and prudence, if he might but be wisely counselled. There were to be seven years of extraordinary plenty throughout all Egypt; to be followed by seven years of famine as extraordinary. Joseph advised that the superabundance of the plentiful years should be laid up in store to provide against the dearth, and Pharaoh appointed Joseph himself to see to the execution of his own plan. The king's counsellors concurred with zeal; Joseph's advancement met with general approbation, God so ordering it; the plenty came as foretold, and the famine. followed it: and, no doubt, Joseph's credit and honour must have continually increased, together with his power and influence in the country, as his predictions continued to be verified, and his character and talents for business became better known.

Thus far had the Lord led Joseph onward, by a way that he knew not, unto greatness. We hear nothing all the while of his brethren; but if they thought of Joseph at all, they would no doubt be quite satisfied by this time, that they had frustrated, by their policy, what his dreams betokened. But God was bringing it to pass. The famine was in the land of Canaan also; and the family of Jacob had become much distressed. The old man, therefore, having heard that there was corn in Egypt, sent his ten eldest sons down to buy, keeping Benjamin the youngest at home. It was Joseph's office to superintend the sale of the corn; and accordingly his brethren were brought into his presence, and, as was the custom of the times in addressing the great, they bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth. Not having seen him

since he was a boy of seventeen years of age, it is not at all wonderful that they should not know him, in a strange place, and in a strange dress, at eight or nine and thirty; and so they had not the least suspicion that they were speaking to their brother. But he knew them at once; for most of them were grown men when they sold him, and would not be so much altered as he was; and then, the recollection of his dreams came into his mind immediately; he did not however reveal himself as yet.

I shall pass over the account given of his dealings with them, and of the course he took to make them bring down his brother Benjamin. His intense desire was to see him and his beloved father; but he wished also to be at peace with them all, and to be able to think well of them, if that were possible. What he did, therefore, before he made himself known, was for the purpose of proving them, and discovering whether, they were come to any just sense of their wickedness and any due repentance; or, if that were not the case, he would endeavour to bring them to it. And in this it may suffice to say at present, he, in a great measure at least, succeeded by prudent management. He sent nine of them home with food, keeping Simeon in bondage as a hostage, with a promise to release him if the others should return, and bring their youngest brother with them. They did return, the continuance of the famine constraining them so to do.

At this second visit they all prostrated themselves most humbly before Joseph again, still in ignorance of his person and then at last he showed them who he

was.

The troubles and terrors they had been cast into by his previous behaviour, had before brought the remembrance of their sin to their consciences; and they had acknowledged it to one another in Joseph's presence, not being aware that he understood their language. But now they saw at once what had become of his dreams, and what also had been the issue of their own devices. "I am Joseph," he says; "doth my father yet

live? I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt." No wonder that they were troubled at his presence, and could not answer him; or that every word should have cut them to the heart. He, however, had been happier even in the prison under false accusation, than they had been at large, and in prosperity. He had learnt holier lessons, and had tasted far more abundantly than they, that the Lord is gracious. The peace and grace of God had both kept and purified him; and all bitterness, and wrath, and illwill, had passed away from him: he therefore could comfort them, though they could not excuse themselves. His words bring us to the general reflections fitting to be made in the first place upon the whole transaction. "I am Joseph, your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. Now therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years in which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God." His meaning is not to palliate their sin, though he would not think of what he himself had suffered by it; but to give glory to God who bringeth good out of evil, and to encourage them to expect to be sharers in that benefit, through a penitent casting of themselves on God's grace. And accordingly he proceeds, "God hath made me a father unto Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not." They did, therefore, as Joseph bade them; for the fame of their arrival having been heard in Pharaoh's house, it pleased him well, and all his servants. And he furnished them with

4 Gen. xlv. 3, 4.

provisions for their journey, and with waggons to convey them; and though on their return with such strange tidings their father's heart fainted, and he could not at once believe them, yet when he saw the waggons sent to carry him, his spirit revived, "and Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive. I will go and see him before I die "."

6

I will not proceed further with the narrative at present, and, as I said at first, I do not mean now to make any observations on the conduct of the human agents. But I would recur to that which I set out with: "The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice "." I have put the history so far before you for the illustration of the doctrine of Divine Providence, that, through God's blessing on the consideration of it, ye may learn how good a thing it is that your fortunes are in God's hands, and not in your own: that so you may obtain both direction and consolation in your passage through the changes and chances of this mortal life to that state which is unchangeable and eternal.

Consider, then, what God brought to pass in the events of this history, and out of what He brought it; what base materials, if I may so speak, and yet what an excellent work! Joseph's brethren, in selling him to the Ishmaelites, acted with extreme malice and wickedness, and they intended that he should live and die a destitute, forgotten slave. Those traffickers thought only of their gains; Potiphar of nothing but the convenience of his household; and his profligate wife only of the gratification of her revenge, when that of another evil passion had been denied her. With the exception of Joseph's policy to stay his brethren, scarcely any thing was done in order to the end which it actually served, and a great deal for ends quite contrary. Those who served themselves by Joseph's means, had no purpose of being useful to him in return, however justly it might have been looked for. When "his feet were hurt with fetters," who could have thought that this

5 Gen. xlv. 8-28.

6 Ps. xcvii.1.