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every different journey he undertakes? His | this prince, and with pleasure we repeat it. first was to Padan-aram, when he fled from We see him nobly striving to discharge some the face of an angry brother. Then he was part of the mighty obligation which had been solitary and friendless, but free from care, laid upon him and his whole kingdom, by the free from sorrow. The second, flying from son of the patriarch, by showing all possible unkind relations back again to Canaan, rich kindness to his father's house. "And Pharaoh in children, rich in cattle, but troubled in spake unto Joseph, saying, Thy father and spirit, oppressed with anxiety. And now we thy brethren are come unto thee: the land of see him the third time in motion towards Egypt is before thee, in the best of the land Egypt, richer than ever both in possessions make thy father and brethren to dwell, in the and in prospects, but bending under the pres- land of Goshen let them dwell and if thou sure of age, and its concomitant infirmities, knowest any men of activity among them, worn out with calamity, and almost dead to then make them rulers over my cattle."* joy. The interview between the venerable man himself, and this good prince, is highly interesting and instructive. Old age and virtue are honoured with the kind regard and attention of a king. Royalty is instructed, admonished, and blessed by the wisdom of the sage, by the miseries of the man, by the piety and prayers of the prophet. Who gains by this visit? Pharaoh, to be sure. His kingdom is strengthened by the accession of seventy good subjects, with their skill, industry, and wealth: and "the effectual, fervent prayers" of holy Israel were surely, Pharaoh himself being judge, compensation sufficient for the poor subsistence which a decayed, dying old man received from his bounty.

The family of Jacob, including the addition of what Joseph had gotten in Egypt, now amounted to seventy souls. And the priest of On's daughter, whose alliance was doubtless intended as an honour to Joseph, is honoured and ennobled by being ranked in the family of Jacob, and by having become a mother in Israel.

Scripture describes in its own inimitable manner, the meeting between the father and son. "And he sent Judah, before him unto Joseph, to direct his face unto Goshen; and they came into the land of Goshen. And Joseph made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, to Goshen; and presented himself unto him: and he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive."* This is honest nature, this is the genuine language of the heart.

It is with a mixture of shame and sorrow, that we bring forward the next passage in the history of Joseph. It exhibits him indeed as a most exquisite politician, who thoroughly understood the interests and the passions of mankind; who knew perfectly well how to In Joseph we see filial piety and fraternal take advantage of the occasion; but, over-deaffection happily blended with wisdom, humi- voted to the prince who had advanced him, lity, and discretion. His will was law in employing his exorbitant power, his superior Egypt. To what honours, preferments, and skill and address, in planning and perfecting emoluments, might not the brothers and ne-a system of despotism, by which the whole phews of the governor-general have aspired? property of Egypt, together with the persons But he consults their true happiness, by guard- and liberties of all that mighty empire, were ing them at once from the languor of idle-transferred to the sovereign. We behold ness, and the madness of ambition. Shepherds they were bred, and shepherds let them continue. Violent transitions ill suit the staid and serious periods of human life.

him most ungenerously seizing the opportunity, which the growing distress of a lengthened famine afforded him, to aggrandize one at the expence of millions. He first conveys His behaviour as a subject of Pharaoh is all the money in the land into the royal treaequally amiable and praiseworthy. He never sury. The cattle speedily follow. The inloses sight of the duties of his station, never creasing miseries of another unfavourable becomes arrogant and assuming, in the con- season, determine the wretched proprietors fidence of royal favour. "Without him no to part with their lands for food, and even man lifted up his hand or foot in all the land;"reduce them to the dreadful necessity of ofbut without Pharaoh's consent he will not dispose of a single field to his nearest relations. He is too wise, and too good, to make the mad attempt of some upstart favourites, to overcome national prejudices by dint of power and authority. The Egyptians held the profession of a shepherd in contempt, and he is not silly enough to dream of forcing it into respect.

We have already taken occasion to praise the gratitude, generosity, and attachment of

• Gen. xlvi. 28-30.

fering to sell themselves for slaves, that they might live by their master's bounty. It is true, the prime minister of Pharaoh did not push his advantage to the extremest length. But it must be acknowledged, he carried it much farther than became the friend of misery, and of mankind. With so good a man as this Pharaoh, perhaps absolute power might be lodged with some degree of safety; but who shall answer for other Pharaohs who may arise, with the awful ability of doing

* Gen. xlvii. 5, 6.

'mischief; possessing authority unfettered by legal restraint; possessing power not prompted by goodness, not tempered by mercy, not deigning to stoop to the sacred rights of mankind? Do we not see, in the hardships which under the following reign the posterity of Israel endured from Egyptian despotism, the danger of extending regal authority beyond the limits of reason? And thus, in the justice of Providence, the family of Joseph first felt the rod of that tyranny, which, with his own hands, he had established and aggrandized. | Absolute sway can never be deposited with safety in any hands, but in his, who is constantly employing his power for the salvation of men, not their destruction. But we turn from a scene, which it is impossible to contemplate without both regret and resentment; happy to reflect, that we live in a country, where law, not will, is the rule of government; where the strong voice of royal prerogative is drowned and lost, in the sterner, louder proclamation of, "Thus it is writ-disease which death only can cure. But, ten." We hasten from the vast, depopulated regions of state politics, to the pleasanter, fairer fields of private life.

change! How exquisite the happiness which fills every faculty of the soul, and whose measure is eternity! But though Jacob be satisfied to live and to die in Egypt, he feels and expresses the natural desire of all men, that his ashes should rest in death with the venerable dust of his forefathers. Perceiving therefore in himself the decay of nature, and the approach of dissolution, he sent for his beloved son, and bound him by a solemn oatn to carry his dead body to the cave of Machpelah; that he too, in death, might become an additional pledge to his family, that God would in due time make good to them that possession of Canaan which he had promised.

Jacob's last days are by far his best. Seventeen years of unruffled tranquillity he passed in Egypt, enjoying the most pure and complete of all human gratifications-that of witnessing the prosperity, and experiencing the attachment of a favourite and dutiful child. But how comes it to pass, that periods of happiness shrink into so little a measure in description, while scenes of wo lengthen themselves out both to the sufferer, and to the relator? We record our mercies on the sand of the sea-shore, which the washing of every wave smooths again, and the perishing memorial is obliterated and lost. Calamity we engrave upon the rock, which preserves the inscription from age to age.

Having obtained this security, his heart is at rest; and for himself he has no further worldly concern. But the symptoms of approaching dissolution are now upon him, sickness, weakness, and loss of sight. All the authority and wealth of Egypt cannot repel these irresistible invaders. Old age is a

even in old age and death, Jacob's early affections are his constant and remaining ones, Rachel and Joseph, and his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. So long as the vital fluid visits his heart, the memory of his beloved Rachel vibrates upon it. The last beams of his expiring eyes seek for her image and representative, her son and grandchildren: and even Benjamin seems, for awhile, forgotten. Soon that wounded heart shall beat no more, and those weary eyes shall close in everlasting peace.

The sickness of his father being reported to Joseph, he instantly quits every other employment, and, attended by his two sons, hastens to visit him to receive his last dying commands, his dying paternal benediction, and to cherish and soothe his departing spirit with that cordial of cordials, filial tenderness and love. Though nature was come to its lowest ebb with our patriarch, grace was in full springtide. The eye of the body could not discern the nearest objects, could not even distinguish the sons of Joseph, but the eye of the spirit, the spirit of prophesy that was in him, penetrated through the shades of night, and contemplated, with clearness and accuracy, ages the most remote; persons, situations, and events the most distant.

But the famine has long been over, and why has not the patriarch thought of returning again to the land of his fathers? Young men love to ramble from place to place; but old age is steady and stationary. Removal was attended with increasing difficulty every day, from the increase of his age and infirmities, and from the number of his family. Besides, Joseph's presence was become necessary to the government of Egypt; and to part with him again, had been much worse than death. In a word, the whole was of the In this last and tender interview with his Lord, who was now laying the foundation of beloved son, he declares his intention to a fabric of wonders which should astonish the raise the children who had been born to him the next generation, and every future age of in Egypt, to their hereditary rank and hothe world, by the report of them. One hun-nour in Israel; and he bequeaths to Joseph dred and thirty years of wo, and seventeen a particular possession which he had acof comfort and happiness, come both at length quired by conquest in Canaan: "Moreover I to a period. Let the wretched think of this, have given to you one portion above thy and bear their affliction with fortitude; let brethren, which I took out of the hand of the prosperous consider it well, that they the Amorite, with my sword, and with my 'be not high-minded, but fear." How dread-bow;"* deeming him entitled, and not withful is that misery which issues in despair of

*Gen. xlviii. 22.

out much appearance of reason, to the double portion of the first born. For his mother alone was the wife of Jacob's choice. And had the course of reason and justice taken place, he should have had no children but by her. The posterity of Rachel, then, had an undoubted claim of preference, considering that in strict equity the whole would have belonged to them. At the same time he predicted the future fortunes of his grandchildren by Joseph; and, Heaven-instructed, foretells, that the younger should in time obtain the pre-eminence in rank, populousness, and importance over the elder.

And now nothing remained but to declare and publish his last will, or rather the will of God respecting his posterity, for many generations to come. But this would require a much larger space than is now left for it. And we cannot conclude our discourse without having brought Jacob and Joseph somewhat nearer to the times which they foresaw and foretold; and to the glorious and exalted person, from resemblance to whom they derive all their dignity and consequence.

Joseph sold into Egypt, degraded into the condition of a servant, exalted from the dungeon to the right hand of the throne, invested with power, drawing his perishing kindred unto him, and bestowing upon them a possession "in the best land," still prefigures to us, Jesus "humbled and made of no reputation," "betrayed and sold into the hands of men," "lifted up," on the cross, and thence to a throne above the skies: "ascending on high, receiving gifts for men," attracting an elect world unto him, to give them "an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away."

"Their eyes were holden, that they should not know him."*"And it came to pass as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?"+

"And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph: what he saith to you, do." "The Father judgeth no man: but hath committed all judgment unto the Son. That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him." "God did send me

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before you," says Joseph to his brethren, "to preserve life." "I go," says Jesus to his disciples, "to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."* Joseph despatches chariots and wagons to convey the feeble and infirm part of his father's family to the land of Goshen; and supplies them with all necessary and comfortable provision by the way. It being expedient for Christ to go out of the world, he promises, and he sends the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, to show his people things to come, "to lead them into all truth," saying of him, "He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you." "Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive, thou hast received gifts for men: yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them." "He that descended, is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some, apostles: and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors, and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."}

Is your heart, O Christian, like Jacob's, ready to faint, through unbelief, or through an excess of joy? Let your spirit, with his, revive as you ponder "the exceeding great and precious promises" of the gospel in your soul, as you consult the sacred record, as your evidence brightens up, as the first fruits of the Spirit are given and tasted. From Canaan there is a going out, from Goshen a going out, as an entering in; but from the Canaan that is above, there is no more "going out:" "they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple, and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat; for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”||

"He which testifieth these things, saith, Surely, I come quickly; Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."¶

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HISTORY OF JACOB AND JOSEPH.

LECTURE XXXIV.

And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.GENESIS xlix. 1. 33.

Ir is the wise ordinance of nature, that men should wish and endeavour to live as long as they can. A life even of pain and misery extinguishes not the love of life. Nay, the mind by a sort of pleasing delusion, creates to itself an imaginary immortality, and strives to extend its mortal interest and

and warned by that Spirit who had been his comforter in all his tribulations, he summons his children to his presence, and, with a mixture of paternal severity and tenderness, anxiety and confidence, administers his last dying counsels to them.

It belongs to another province than that of history, to illustrate and expound this address of the expiring patriarch to his sons. Indeed, it is a passage of perhaps as much difficulty as any in scripture. The imperfect knowledge we have of the sacred language, the abundant use made of metaphorical and figurative expression, allusion to historical facts, which are either not recorded at all, or rather hinted than related, together with the natural ambiguity and obscurity of prophesy,

existence beyond the grave. Hence the anxiety of men, to provide for their families and friends that subsistence and comfort, which they are never to see them enjoy. Hence the trembling forebodings of paternal solicitude about his surviving offspring. Hence the hope that glistens in the dying eye, the blessing and the prayer that quaver on the faltering tongue, and the last gush of joy that visits the scarcely palpitating heart. At every period of existence, we are think-all concur here to render Jacob's meaning ing of some future period of existence; and we fondly carry the feelings of the present hour into the distant scenes of life; as if we could be susceptible of pleasure and pain after we have ceased from feeling. The child connects, in idea, the amusements of his inexperienced age with the attainments of maturer years; the dying father continues to live in his offspring; and, till we are indeed gone, we dream and dream of being longer here.

We have attended the progress of the patriarch Jacob through the various stages of a life unusually long if we reckon woes for years, and compare it with the present standard of longevity; but short if we consider the antediluvian scale; short, if we consider to what a span the history of it shrinks; short, if we compare it with eternity. The sun has shone upon his head at length, but not till it is covered with gray hairs. He has found his Joseph again, and even embraced his sons; but not till the hands are reduced to do the office of the eyes. He walks down the steep of life in tranquillity, but his limbs tremble under him. His favourite son is wise and good, exalted to deserved honours; but his advancement has its foundation in the unexampled villany of nine of his brothers. He is now arrived at that point to which the sorrows and joys of life equally tend, in which all events of whatever complexion must finally issue. Feeling in himself the approach of dissolution, approach of

in many places hard to be understood, if not totally inexplicable. Instead therefore of spending your time, and abusing your patience, by dry unprofitable criticism on points which we frankly acknowledge we do not comprehend, we shall endeavour to look through the passage just as it stands in the common translation, into the dying patriarch's heart, and observe how the affections of the man blend themselves with the sagacity and penetration of the prophet.

Following the order of nature, he addresses himself first to Reuben, and fondly recollects the first emotions which filled his heart on becoming a father. He speaks to him as raised up and destined of Providence to birthright honours and privileges, but as having degraded and dishonoured himself by a base unnatural crime, and therefore rejected of God. And thereby men are instructed, that no superiority of birth, of fortune, of abilities, can counterbalance the weight of atrocious wickedness. In this censure, the shame, sorrow, resentment and regret of a dying father seem to mingle their force.

The two next sons of Jacob had associated together for the perpetration of an unheardof piece of cruelty, impiety and deceit. Jacob had sharply reproved them at the time it was committed, and now gives his dying testimony against their barbarous and perfidious conduct, in terms of just indignation and abhorrence, and prophetically threatens them with division and dispersion. But this,

which was, and intended to be a severe punishment to themselves, turned out in the accomplishment of the prediction, as the punishments of Heaven often are, an unspeakable honour and benefit to their posterity. Levi in particular, "divided in Jacob, and scattered in Israel," was thereby rendered only more illustrious and important, being dignified as the priests and ministers of the most high God, in the presence of all their brethren. The crime of Reuben affected his descendants to the latest posterity. For they never regained their original advantage of birth; never furnished judge or general, priest, prophet, or prince to Israel; but the offence of Levi was expiated in his own person, and reached not in its effects to his off spring. The moral consequences of guilt ought in justice to extend to the guilty themselves alone; but the civil effects may and often do involve the innocent; and that without any imputation of justice. The son ought not to suffer death for the murder which his father has committed; but he may forfeit forever his hereditary honours by his father's treason.

By what apparent title was Judah, the fourth son of Jacob, raised to a supremacy over his brethren? Neither his moral character, nor intellectual abilities, neither natural pre-eminence nor parental partiality seem to confer upon him this high distinction. It must therefore simply be resolved into the will of Him who "doth according to his will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou."* It was of Providence, who raiseth up one, and bringeth another down. But how came Jacob acquainted with this? The son on whom he conferred the double portion of primogeniture; the son whom he early dressed out in a coat of many colours; the son of his Rachel; the son of his old age; the son already so near a throne and still nearer to his heart, would undoubtedly, could a father's fondness have disposed, succeeded to the royal dignity, or the sanctity of the priesthood, or the still higher dignity of giving birth to the promised Messiah, or to all the three. But the purposes of Heaven do not always keep pace with the destinations of men. They conform not themselves to the conclusion of human reason, or the propensities of the human heart. Not gentle and forgiving Joseph, but stern, unrelenting, merciless Levi, gives birth to a race of priests. And lewd, incontinent, incestuous Judah, not chaste, modest, self denied Joseph, becomes the father of kings, and the progenitor of Shiloh. For what with men is all essential, all important, is with God only some little petty circumstance. And what human understanding treats as merely a casual, acci

* Dan. iv. 35.

dental circumstance, Providence exalts into the mighty hinge on which the fate of empires and of worlds depends. Men bend before a throne and despise virtue; God pours respect upon goodness, and tramples upon a throne.

I must now express a wish, which I ought to have done earlier in my discourse, namely, that those who attend the Lecture of this evening, had with attention previously perused the whole of this forty-ninth chapter of Genesis. As without at least a general knowledge of it, much of what has been said, and still may be said, will possibly be unintelligible: and one great, perhaps the principal end of the Lecture, will be obtained, if any are thereby induced to search the scriptures more carefully, and to compare spiritual things with spiritual more diligently."

Jacob then, guided by the spirit of prophesy, as lately in preferring Ephraim to Manasseh, and not following his own spirit, which would gladly have given the preference to Joseph, as his father's partiality would have set Esau before himself, assigns the kingdom to his fourth son, with a profusion of images and emblems significant of power, authority, and plenty. "Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies: thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey my son thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion: who shall rouse him up."* "A lion's whelp, a lion, an old lion; garments washed in wine, and clothes in blood of grapes; eyes red with wine, teeth white with milk," is the strong figurative language employed by a prophetic father, to represent the invincible force, the secure dignity and majesty; the rich abundance, allotted of God the disposer of all things, to this prerogative tribe.

But the prediction of importance above all the rest, is that which we have in the tenth verse, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be." Now, whatever difficulties may occur in the solution of particular words and phrases in this prophesy, it is certain the patriarch has his mind filled with an object peculiarly great; that he foresees regal and legislative power conferred on this branch of his family, for a long succession of ages, and until the arrival of a certain distinguished person or event, expressed by the term Shiloh, who should make a remarkable change in the state of Judah's family, and of the world in general. And of all the persons and events that have appeared from the death of Jacob to this hour, to none are the words, with any degree of propriety, applicable, but to Jacob's Son and

*Gen. xlix. 8, 9

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