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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 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 thinking 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,

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, all concur here to render Jacob's meaning 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 perfidions 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.

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 princi pal 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 chil dren 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.

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 But the prediction of importance above all already so near a throne and still nearer to the rest, is that which we have in the tenth his heart, would undoubtedly, could a father's verse, "The sceptre shall not depart from fondness have disposed, succeeded to the Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, royal dignity, or the sanctity of the priest- until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the hood, or the still higher dignity of giving birth gathering of the people be." Now, whatto the promised Messiah, or to all the three. ever difficulties may occur in the solution of But the purposes of Heaven do not always particular words and phrases in this prophesy, keep pace with the destinations of men. it is certain the patriarch has his mind filled They conform not themselves to the conclu- with an object peculiarly great; that he foresion of human reason, or the propensities of sees regal and legislative power conferred the human heart. Not gentle and forgiving on this branch of his family, for a long sucJoseph, but stern, unrelenting, merciless cession of ages, and until the arrival of a Levi, gives birth to a race of priests. And certain distinguished person or event, exlewd, incontinent, incestuous Judah, not pressed by the term Shiloh, who should make chaste, modest, self denied Joseph, becomes a remarkable change in the state of Judah's the father of kings, and the progenitor of family, and of the world in general. And of Shiloh. For what with men is all essential, all the persons and events that have appearall important, is with God only some little ed from the death of Jacob to this hour, to petty circumstance. And what human un-none are the words, with any degree of proderstanding treats as merely a casual, acci-priety, applicable, but to Jacob's Son and

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He has hardly strength left to mention the name of Benjamin. But nature, while death leaves to Jacob any remainder of her empire, continues possessed of a sound memory, a

But she can no more; the voice fails, the limbs contract, the breath departs, the artery beats no more; the heart of Jacob is at length at rest.

Lord, in whom the royal line terminated; in | band of Rachel, before his nerves are forever whose trial and condemnation the posterity unstrung, his eyes forever closed, his tongue of Jacob solemnly renounced all regal and forever silent, dwelling on the name of her judicial authority, and voluntarily submitted beloved offspring, turning the almost exto Cæsar as their sovereign; and to whom, tinguished orbs towards his amiable counteProvidence, by a chain of miracles at first, nance, and straining his darling Joseph in and an uninterrupted interposition, for al- his last embrace. most one thousand eight hundred years, has drawn and united the nations of the earth, according to the letter of the prophesy, "to him shall the gathering of the people be." We pretend not to say, that the dying patri-discerning judgment, and glowing affections. arch had a clear and distinct foreknowledge of the object; or that his words are a full historical description of the period to which they refer. It is sufficient for our purpose, if events which have certainly come to pass, are such as warrant a sober application of them to a prediction so singular, in circumstances so peculiar, and at a period so remote. A very close investigation of the history, character, and local circumstances of the six tribes whose fathers are next named in order, would probably be found to justify what their prophetic parent here foretold concerning them. But, with him, we hasten them by, with him to come at a nobler, dearer object; where parental affection fixes with peculiar delight; which the understanding, the heart, and the prophetic soul unite to establish, to exalt, to enlarge.

The only way to do justice to the prophet, to the prophesy, and to the Spirit which inspired the one to utter the other, is simply to read the words, and then to ponder them in our hearts. "Joseph is a fruitful bough even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him. But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob: from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel. Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee, and by the Almighty who shall bless thee, with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breast, and of the womb. The blessings of thy father have prevailed, above the blessings of my progenitors: unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren."* Is there an appearance of incoherence here, is there a redundancy of expression, is there a mixing of metaphor It is but the more emphatically expressive of the meltings, the overflowings of an affectionate heart, collecting its last remains of vigour, retarding for a moment the stroke of death, returning yet once again but to return no more to ancient feelings and propensities; expiring in the contemplation of the lasting felicity of a dearer self: the lover, the hus

*Gen. xlix. 22-26.

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The death of a parent is an event peculiarly affecting. The source of our own life seems thereby as it were dried up. While our parents live, we think we have a barrier betwixt us and the grave: but that being removed, the bold invader appears advancing upon us with hastier strides. If we look forward, behold no bulwark to defend us; if backward, our very children are warning us of the necessity of our departure; they press upon our heels, they are ready to lay their hands upon our eyes. Death ever so long expected, ever so visibly approaching, nevertheless shocks and surprises when it comes at length.

Joseph, having given way to a burst of sorrow over the lifeless clay of his honoured father, sets about the speedy execution of his solemn trust, in discharge of the oath which he had taken. The highest respect we can pay the dead, is to fulfil their living desires. He accordingly gives commandment to have the body embalmed according to the manner of the Egyptians. This practice, which had its origin in necessity, degenerated in process of time into the grossest ostentation, and the most absurd vanity.During the inundations of the Nile, it was necessary to employ art to preserve dead bodies from putrefaction, till the waters subsided. But what was at first merely a temporary expedient against the inconveniency of heat, moisture, and corruption, at a season when sepulture was impossible, by degrees

refined, shall I say? in the hands of that ingenious people, into a work of infinite skill and expense. For so silly and vainglorious is the human mind, that it strives for the gratification of pride, in objects the most humiliating and mortifying. We are far from charging Joseph with acting from a motive so wretched. The journey to Canaan was long; it was needful to use the common methods, to keep the corpse from becoming offensive; perhaps he deemed it decent and wise to conform, in a matter not directly sinful, to the practice, and to yield to the prejudices of the people among whom he dwelt. Whatever were his motives, certain it is,

that in embalming persons of distinction, a considerable time was employed, and large sums expended. Threescore and ten days at least were necessary; forty in filling the body with aromatic drugs and spices, and thirty in hardening and drying it with salt and nitre. Some Jewish writers, fond of magnifying in every thing their extraction, give out, that Jacob, by express order of Pharaoh, was embalmed after the manner of the princes of Egypt, as a farther mark of gratitude and respect to Joseph; and that this explains the account we have in scripture, of the general mourning of the Egyptians for him, during the seventy days of the embalming.

At the end of that period, Joseph makes application to the king for liberty to go to Canaan, to bury his dead father. And here we have another not unamusing picture of the ancient manners of an Egyptian court. Joseph the saviour of Egypt, the second man in the kingdom, might not go into the royal presence in a mourning habit. At such pains has the world been, and such pains it still takes, to keep truth from the eyes and the ears of kings. Unhappy wretches! How can they be wise and good? Every creature with whom they are connected is in a conspiracy to keep them from the knowledge of themselves. The poor man called a monarch must not see a memorial of death, because death brings him to the level of other men. Pity it is, so well conditioned a prince as Pharaoh should want any help to wisdom. Studious of the honour and comfort of so good and faithful a servant, he grants an immediate assent to his request, and permits him to employ the whole pomp of Egypt, if it might testify respect to the memory of the honest patriarch. Mark, my friends, how short the transition, how sudden the change. It is but a few short years since the wagons of Pharaoh were sent, with much form, to carry Jacob into Egypt; and now the same pomp is employed to convey his breathless clay back to Canaan again. Alas, alas! the ceremonies of a coronation, and of a funeral differ only in a few trifling circumstances. Jacob is embalmed by the physicians; but behold he is preserved by a more precious perfume than all the spices of Egypt-the pious tears of a dutiful and affectionate child; and his memory preserved on this never dying record, sends forth a fragrance which time cannot waste, nor use diminish.

The account is now at length closed, and the balance struck. And how does it stand? A life of one hundred and forty-seven years in all; of which not above a ninth part passed in any tolerable degree of peace and comfort, and that portion of it at a period when the heart has scarcely any taste of pleasure at all. The early, the susceptible part of his life was filled with a succession

of distresses of the most disastrous and overwhelming nature; he was stricken, smitten there where the heart most sensibly feels. But let us turn the page, and examine the articles which make for him. An early declared, and continually supported favour and preference of Heaven in his behalf-Early, constant, habitual impressions of piety-The covenant promise and presence of the Almighty-The testimony of a conscience void of offence-The aggrandizement, and the virtues of his beloved son-Seventeen years of uninterrupted quiet, with daily growing prospects of prosperity to his family; and the consolation of expiring at last in the arms of Joseph-O, the balance is greatly in his favour! Who shall dare to say God has dealt hardly with him? We shall make Jacob himself judge of the case now, and defy him to say, "All these things are against me.' The patriarch makes a greater figure in death than ever he had done in his life. The house of Israel, the seed of Abraham is now beginning to make a considerable appearance in the world. Egyptians forego their prejudices to do honour to the remains of the old shepherd of Beer-sheba; and the nations of Canaan are awakened to attention and respect, to a family which they hated or despised.

But, while the world is conferring empty, unavailing respect on the insensible dust, the immortal spirit has winged its flight to those bright regions, where the faithful repose in perfect and everlasting peace; where the smile of God obliterates all recollection of the favour of princes, and buries in eternal oblivion the pains and sorrows of a few transitory years. If saints in glory have any recollection of what passed upon earth, as undoubtedly they have, what satisfaction must it afford the glorified patriarch to call to remembrance the various stages of his pilgrimage state, the dark and dreary paths through which Providence led him, and which he once feared were leading him to destruction and death, now that he finds them all certainly and directly tending to his Father's house above? If saints in glory have any knowledge of what passes upon earth, as perhaps they may, what must it have been to Jacob from the lofty height of a throne above the skies, to mark the order and course of Providence, in bringing to pass upon his family the things which were seen in prophetic vision, darkly, and at a distance, and spoken in much weakness and obscurity? What must it be to see the Gentile nations gathered together to Shiloh; to see the glory with the sceptre departed from Judah, but a crown, whose lustre shall never fade, put upon the head of Messiah the Prince? If saints in glory have any intercourse with their fellow partakers in bliss, what must it have been to Jacob, after treading in the

The next Lecture will conclude the history of Joseph, and the book of Genesis, and bring down that of the world to its two thousand three hundred and ninth year, one thousand six hundred and ninety-five years before Christ.

footsteps of Abraham and Isaac his fathers, | naan, was a token and pledge to his family, to overtake and be joined to them in that that in due time they should return thither, world, where men are as the angels of God and enjoy lasting possession; the resurrecin heaven; and to see his faithful children, tion and ascension of Christ's glorious body, his Joseph in particular, gathered unto him, gives full security to all his spiritual seed, every one in his own order, their day of trial that "those who sleep in Jesus, God will also over, and their warfare accomplished? bring with him;"-"Christ the head first, What must it have been to all the ransomed afterwards they that are Christ's at his comof the Lord, to see their common Saviour re- ing." The possession, of which Jacob's burial turning on high, leading captivity captive, was the pledge, was itself partial and transitriumphing over principalities and powers? tory, was long ago forfeited, and has long If there be joy in heaven over one sinner ago expired; but the succession ensured by that repenteth, what must have been the joy the ascension of Christ, is "to an inheritance of that day, when an elect world, in the per- incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not son of their divine Head, took possession of away." Egyptian art might keep together a throne eternal in the heavens? the dust of Jacob for awhile; but the power of God, through the grace that is in Christ, guards every fragment and shred of it even until now, and "will raise it up again at the last day." The afflicted man Jacob saw the end of all his troubles in the friendly tomb; Jacob, the believer, the saint in bliss, sees no end to his joy, but a still beginning, neverending eternity. 66 'Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." To me to live let it be Christ, and then to die it shall be gain. Let us be followers of them "who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.' "Be faithful unto death, and ye shall receive a crown of life." "The hour cometh, when all who are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall live." "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God, and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years."*

Jacob, like his forefathers, died, and was buried, and saw corruption; but he whom God raised up died indeed, and was buried, but saw no corruption. Jacob could observe, be offended with, and reprove the faults of his children, but Christ has power to forgive sins, and to change a sinful nature. The day which Jacob saw afar off, is that which arose under Jesus in all its meridian splendour, and continues to shine unto this day. The body of Jacob, by the skill of physicians, was for awhile saved from putrefaction; the body of Christ, by the almighty power of God, was preserved, so that not a bone of it was broken on the cross, not a particle of it lost and left in the grave. The corpse of the patriarch, deposited in the cave of Machpelah, in Ca-1

* Rev. xx. 6.

HISTORY OF JOSEPH.

LECTURE XXXV.

And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land, unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt-GENESIS 1. 24-26.

THE events of a short and uncertain life | the attention and pursuit of man? What is upon earth, derive all their importance from reputation? A breath of empty air; honour, the relation which they bear to a future and a bubble; riches, a bird eternally on the wing; eternal state of existence. Remove the pros- youth, beauty, health, fading flowers of the pects of immortality, and what is left worthy spring; the splendour of kings, childish pa

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