Gen. xxxvii. 33. He mourned for him in sackcloth and ashes many days. Year after year elapsed, but still "he wept for Joseph." The God whom he loved and served "blessed Joseph for his sake," and blessed him also. "He told his wanderings; he put his tears in his bottle." He communed with him in his devotions. He guided him in his difficulties. He doubtless spake often with him, but, He sent no tidings of Joseph, until the day that, fifteen years afterwards, "he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him. And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die." O God, "thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known!" Psa. lxxvii. 19. Give us grace to commit our souls unto thee in well-doing in the day of thy darkest providence, seeing that thou hast in thy word declared that "light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart,” Psa. xcvii. 11, that they that sow in tears shall reap in joy," and that “he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him," Psa. cxxvi. 5, 6.

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So" Israel came unto Egypt; and Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham." A most remarkable succession of miracles was manifested in the accomplishment of this purpose of the Almighty. The heaven above and the earth beneath, the hearts of kings and the destinies of nations, are all made to obey new and unwonted impulses; the rain of heaven is withholden, the land of Canaan is as the desert of Sinai, the Nile of Egypt shrinks and dries up between its banks at the period of inundation, and the son of the shepherd of Canaan rules over Egypt that a posterity may

be preserved in the earth to that race in whom all the "families thereof were to be blessed, of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came." Surely those to whom the truth is precious cannot regard without interest a country, the peculiarities of whose natural situation were from so early a period made to subserve this great purpose of our God, by keeping alive and perpetuating the family wherefrom, by His determinate counsel and foreknowledge, that Saviour should afterwards be born who should be "the Light of the world," and to whom all the ends thereof should look and be saved.

The sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, and their cattle, and their goods which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Gen. xlvi. 5, 6. With the entire consent of Pharaoh, Joseph's brethren dwelt in the land of Goshen, which is said, on the authority of Jerome, to be in the portion of Egypt which was afterwards called by the Greeks the Delta, on account of its resemblance in form to that letter of their alphabet, Δ. Its triangular shape is occasioned by the many branches or mouths into which the Nile once divided itself before falling into the Mediterranean sea. It was that part of the Delta which is traversed by the Eastern or Pelusiac branch of the Nile which has generally been supposed to have been the land of Goshen. The failure of the inundation for the two years preceding the entrance of the children of Israel into Egypt, and the knowledge which Joseph possessed that there were yet five years wherein (through the failure of that phenomenon) there should be neither earing nor harvest, would render it a most desirable residence for them during this distressing period. The

depressed level of the Delta, as compared with the higher portions of the valley of the Nile, would give it the utmost advantage of the inundations, which never entirely disappear at their season in that extraordinary country, and without which Egypt would soon be as the deserts that surround it. On the other hand, when the years of famine should have passed away, this would still be the district of all others the best adapted to the occupations and to the prosperity of a tribe of shepherds. The Delta was abundantly watered by the innumerable mouths through which the Nile poured itself into the Mediterranean. The water of this noble river is also proverbially wholesome, and the loam which its inundations deposit proverbially fertile; so that it abounds in rich pasturage during nine months of the year. While in the three months of inundation the wilderness of Sinai, in which the greater part of their lives had been passed hitherto, and with the fertile places of which they were therefore perfectly familiar, would afford a safe and easily accessible refuge to themselves and their cattle. Thus favourably situated for the prosecution of their worldly occupation, and, above all, thus blessed by Him whose good hand had guided them thither, no wonder that when Israel dwelt in Egypt, in the land of Goshen, they had possessions therein, and grew, and multiplied exceedingly, Gen. xlvii. 27.

Joseph still continued his faithful and devoted services to his God in heaven, and to the king, his master upon earth. All the money, that is, all the silver and the gold (for coined money was unknown in ancient Egypt) of Egypt and of Canaan he had gathered up, and deposited in Pharaoh's

treasure cities. But still the famine increased, and still the garners of Joseph were unexhausted, Gen. xlvii. 14, 15. The cattle of Egypt are next added by him to the possessions of Pharaoh. Another year passes, and there is neither earing nor harvest, and again the land of Egypt is suppliant at Joseph's feet for the bread by which the lives of its inhabitants are to be sustained. "And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh's," Gen. xlvii. 20. The land and its inhabitants being thus absolutely at his disposal, the wisdom of God directed him to that equitable adjustment of the claims of the monarch on the one hand, and of his subjects on the other, which consolidated the government of Egypt upon a firm and settled basis, and thus repaid to the Egyptians sevenfold into their own bosoms the benefits they had conferred on the people whom God had chosen. The fifth of the entire produce of the land belonged to the state; on the condition of the payment of this impost, the land, and probably the cattle also, were returned to their original possessors. This clear definition of the respective rights of the sovereign and of the subject continued to be the law of Egypt long after the death of Joseph, and most probably until the final dissolution of the monarchy, ver. 26. The social compact (so to speak) between the ruler and the ruled, was to be renewed; and the same God, whose mighty operation had produced this extraordinary anomaly, had also removed from Pharaoh and his subjects the will and the power to oppose its adjustment; placing the destinies of both in the hands of one whom He had eminently endowed with wisdom. In this probably consisted the

secret of the orderly and prosperous condition of Egypt in after ages; and of those mild and equitable laws which, 1500 years later, excited the admiration and astonishment of the Greeks, who at once recognized in them the immediate cause of that prosperity.

Thus did God begin to fulfil in Joseph the promise that He had made to Abraham his forefather; "Thou shalt be a blessing and I will bless them that bless thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed," Gen. xii. 2, 3. It was, however, but the beginning; for a greater than Joseph is here. Truly the God of his father did help him, and the Almighty did bless him with blessings of the heaven above, and blessings of the deep that lieth under. Blessings greater than those of his progenitors, were on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brethren, Gen. xlix. 25, 26. Yet, nevertheless, Joseph was only the means in God's hands whereby He kept alive on the earth the chosen race whence that Saviour was to be born who should be the fulfilment of His promise, and the source of every blessing which He has to bestow upon mankind. Egypt on this, as on other occasions, was the casket wherein this precious treasure was deposited.

The inspired narrative relates, that Joseph married an Egyptian, Asenath, or As-neith, the daughter of Potipherah, the priest of On; a city which was afterwards called Heliopolis by the Greeks, Gen. xli. 45. We are also informed that in name, in dress, in language, and in manners, (doubtless, so far only as was consistent with the service of the God to whom he was so eminently devoted,) he appeared as an Egyptian, Gen. xlii. 23.