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.

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.

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 Jacob's last days are by far his best. Seven- and Manasseh. So long as the vital fluid teen years of unruffled tranquillity he passed visits his heart, the memory of his beloved in Egypt, enjoying the most pure and com- Rachel vibrates upon it. The last beams of plete of all human gratifications-that of his expiring eyes seek for her image and rewitnessing the prosperity, and experiencing presentative, her son and grandchildren: and the attachment of a favourite and dutiful even Benjamin seems, for awhile, forgotten. child. But how comes it to pass, that periods Soon that wounded heart shall beat no more, of happiness shrink into so little a measure and those weary eyes shall close in everlastin description, while scenes of wo lengthening peace. 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.

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 But the famine has long been over, and tenderness and love. Though nature was why has not the patriarch thought of return- come to its lowest ebb with our patriarch, ing again to the land of his fathers? Young grace was in full springtide. The eye men love to ramble from place to place; but of the body could not discern the nearest old age is steady and stationary. Removal objects, could not even distinguish the song was attended with increasing difficulty every of Joseph, but the eye of the spirit, the spirit day, from the increase of his age and infirmi- of prophesy that was in him, penetrated ties, and from the number of his family. Be-through the shades of night, and contemplasides, Joseph's presence was become neces-ted, with clearness and accuracy, ages the sary to the government of Egypt; and to part most remote; persons, situations, and events with him again, had been much worse than the most distant. 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 the prosperous consider it well, that they 'be not high-minded, but fear." How dreadful is that misery which issues in despair of

brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite, with my sword, and with my bow;"* deeming him entitled, and not with

* Gen. xlviii, 22.

"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 ouring out:" "they are before the throne of heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?"+

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 existence beyond the grave. Hence the history, to illustrate and expound this address anxiety of men, to provide for their families of the expiring patriarch to his sons. Indeed, and friends that subsistence and comfort, it is a passage of perhaps as much difficulty which they are never to see them enjoy. as any in scripture. The imperfect knowHence the trembling forebodings of pater-ledge we have of the sacred language, the nal 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,

T

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,

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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 unin telligible: and one great, perhaps the principal end of the Lecture, will be obtained, if any are thereby induced to search the scrip tures more carefully, and to compare spiritual things with spiritual more diligently.

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Jacob then, guided by the spirit of prophesy, as lately in preferring Ephraim to Manassch, 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 whore 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.' 19** "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

* Dan. iv. 35.

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*Gen. xlix. 8, 9

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 discerning judgment, and glowing affections. 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 patriarch 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.

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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

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 refined, shall I say? in the hands of that on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of ingenious people, into a work of infinite skill the head of him that was separate from his and expense. For so silly and vainglorious brethren."* Is there an appearance of in- is the human mind, that it strives for the coherence here, is there a redundancy of gratification of pride, in objects the most expression, is there a mixing of metaphor? humiliating and mortifying. We are far It is but the more emphatically expressive of from charging Joseph with acting from a the meltings, the overflowings of an affection-motive so wretched. The journey to Canaan ate 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.

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 pre judices of the people among whom he dwelt. Whatever were his motives, certain it is