timely provision, not for the transient and ineffectual support of a few fleeting years, but for the eternal entertainment and felicity of men, who were devoted to death, and threatened with everlasting misery. Joseph employed the pressure of famine to enslave Egypt, and to subject a whole people to the will of the sovereign: but Jesus, armed with all power for our destruction, employed it only for our deliverance; and instead of sinking and degrading the subjects of his government, such is his love, he raises them all to the dignities, privileges, and possessions of the sons of God. He is the true prophet, "the true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world," "in whom the Spirit of God is; none so discreet and wise as he," Zaphnathpaaneah, the true revealer of secrets, who "is worthy to take the sealed book," which contains the secrets of the eternal mind, and to open its seven seals. The clemency of Joseph to his unkind, unnatural brothers, is a lively and affecting rcpresentation of the patience, gentleness, and mercy of Christ to his brethren after the flesh, in the first instance, and to guilty, ungrateful men in general. "Father, forgive them," said he, as he was expiring on the cross, "they know not what they do." And not many days after that with wicked hands men had crucified and slain him, many thousands of these very men were made to taste of his grace, were admitted into his family, and exalted to a place with him on his throne. But we must not pursue the similitude through every particular; it would protract our discourse to an immoderate length. Finally then, Joseph piously referred every thing that befel him to the provident, wise, and gracious destination of the Almighty: and what saith Jesus? "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." 66 My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." And thus have we finished the history of the patriarch Joseph: the various stages of whose life may be thus calculated. He was born in Haran, in the year of the world two thousand two hundred and fifty-nine, where he lived till six years old. He was then removed with the rest of his father's family into Canaan, where he lived eleven years; at which period he was by his brethren sold U to the Ishmaelites, and carried into Egypt, where he served Potiphar ten years, and remained in prison three: so that he was thirty, when he first stood before Pharaoh, and was raised immediately to the dignity of viceroy. Supposing the seven plenteous years to commence immediately, he was thirty-seven when they ended: and the second year of famine being ended, he being then thirty-nine, Jacob and his family descended into Egypt; and the aged patriarch lived there, cherished by his son, seventeen years, which brings himself forward to his fifty-sixth year. After his father's death he lived fifty-four years more, in all one hundred and ten. So that Joseph lived in Egypt full ninety-three years; a slave and a prisoner thirteen; a prince and ruler eighty; under several successive monarchs: being justly esteemed a necessary minister of state in all reigns. He died before the birth of Moses sixty-four years, and before the departing of the children of Israel out of Egypt, one hundred and forty-four. And with the account of his death and embalming, ends the book of Genesis, containing the most ancient, authentic, interesting, and instruc-, tive history extant; during the space of two thousand three hundred and sixty-nine years: from the deluge, seven hundred and thirteen; and before Christ, one thousand six hundred and thirty-five. These things seem as a tale that is told. But time is hurrying on a period and an establishment of things, under which Adam and his youngest son shall be contemporaries; in which intervening ages shall be swallowed up and lost; and that only remain, which time, and death, and the grave cannot affect, when the cave of Machpelah shall surrender up its precious deposit; when Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and all the faithful shall live again, and reign for ever and ever. "Blessed are they who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." "Blessed are they who shall come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Anel.”* *Heb. rii. 22-24. HISTORY OF MOSES. LECTURE XXXVI. And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman con ceived, and bare a son; and when she saw him that he was a golly child, she hid him three months. And when she could no longer hide him she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein: and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river, and her maidens walked along by the river's side: and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go, and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Go. And the maid went, and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages: and the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son: and she called his name Moses, and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.-EXODUS ii. 1-10. knowledge; and the simplicity and candour of his narration are sufficient vouchers of its truth and faithfulness. Ir the ingenious fictions of ancient bards | force, described the characters and lives of afford an innocent and rational amusement, the patriarchs from Adam to Joseph, is now and be therefore held in high estimation; entering on his own wonderful and interestwhat superior obligation is the world under, ing story. The man who henceforth acts, is to that divine Spirit who has vouchsafed to the same who writes: the events which he is draw into light the most remote antiquity, about to record, come not from the informaand preserve from oblivion the venerable mention of others, but from his own immediate who first cultivated and peopled the earth; and, in the language, not of fiction, but of truth, has delineated the ways of Providence, and unfolded the deep and intricate recesses of the human heart? Were it not for the death of Joseph, and one hundred and thirtySixty-four years had now elapsed from the sacred pages of divine revelation, we should four from the descent of Jacob into Egypt: have been entirely ignorant of what hap- and what surprising changes have taken pened in the world for at least one half of its place! A little band of seventy persons is duration. But borne on the wings of inspi- multiplied into a great nation: the mild and ration, we fly back to the very birth of nature, gracious prince who took pleasure in cherishwe behold the first dawning of light scatter- ing and protecting the father and brethren ing the gloom, and converse with the first of Joseph, is exchanged for a jealous and man whom God created upon the earth. And sanguinary tyrant, determined to depress and how much more pleasant, as well as profit- extirpate their descendants: the country able, is it, to expatiate in the field of real which once gave them support and shelter, history, than to wander and lose ourselves in is now moistened with their tears, and with the idle regions of romance! If we owe much the blood of their infant offspring; and fato the illustrious poet of Greece, for his amus-voured guests, made to dwell in the best of ing pictures of early life and manners, how the land, are turned into odious slaves cordeeply are we indebted to the more illustrious demned to the furnace. Such are the alterJewish historian and poet, who has furnished ations which time is continually producing us with so much juster and more exalted ideas in human affairs, such the impotency of man of Deity, more faithful and instructive pic- to secure blessings to his posterity, such the tures of human life; and who has so success- misery of a people subjected to the will of a fully interwoven the history of redemption despotic sovereign. with that of mankind. The sacred book which has afforded us during the year past, so much pleasing instruction, is altogether extraordinary in its kind, whether we consider the beauty of the composition, the importance of the information which it contains, the internal marks of authenticity which it bears, or the noble purposes to which it has been, and may be made subservient. Moses, its inspired author, who has with so much accuracy, elegance, and rosity and gratitude-they exist not: in vain In vain do men dream of national genedo the claims of humanity and justice oppose themselves to the interest, the ambition, or caprice of princes. Joseph had very unwisely contributed to the aggrandizement of the Egyptian monarchs, and his own family is the first to feel the rod of that power which he had helped to raise. Injustice in princes is always bad policy. A nation so certainly favoured of Heaven as Israel was, must have proved the strongest bulwark to Egypt, if treated as friends. Increased from seventy souls, to six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, it was dangerous to irritate them, and difficult, if not impossible to subdue. Too proud to enter into treaty with them as allies, too timid to attempt their extirpation by open force, and too suspicious to confide in their gratitude and attachment, Pharaoh adopts the barbarous policy of undermining their strength by excessive labour; of breaking their spirit by severity, and of preventing their future increase, by putting to death their male children as soon as they were born. Such a state of things was very unfavourable to marrying and giving in marriage. Nevertheless marriages were contracted, and children procreated; for it is absurd as it is wicked, for any earthly power whatever to set itself to counteract the great plans of God and nature. God has said, "increase and multiply;" in vain has Pharaoh said, "abstain." Amram, of the family of Levi, accordingly, in these worst of times, takes to wife Jochebed of the same tribe, indeed his own father's sister, by whom he had three children; Aaron, probably born before the bloody edict for destroying the males was published; Miriam, whose sex was a protection from the rigour of it, and Moses, who came into the world while it was operating with all its horrid effects. Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities relates, that about the time of the birth of Moses, one of the Egyptian seers informed the king that a child was about to arise among the Israelites, who should crush the power of Egypt, and exalt his own nation to great eminence and splendour, if he lived to the years of maturity: for, that he should distinguish himself above all his contemporaries by his wisdom and virtue, and acquire immortal glory by his exploits. He farther alleges, that the king, instigated by his own fears of such an event, and by the cruel counsels of the seer, issued the bloody decree which must be an eternal blot upon his memory. The distress of Jochebed upon finding herself pregnant, is to be conceived, not described. The anxiety and apprehension naturally incident to that delicate situation, must have been aggravated by terrors more dreadful than the pangs of child-birth, or even the loss of life itself. As a wife and a mother in Israel, she was looking and longing for the birth of another man child; but that sweet expectation was as often checked and destroyed by the bitter reflection that she was subject to the king of Egypt; that if she bare a son it was for the sword, or to glut some monster of the river. The Jewish antiquarian informs us, that the anxiety of the parents was greatly alleviated by assurances given to the father in a vision of the night, that the child with whom his wife was then pregnant, should be miraculously preserved, and raised up by Providence to the glorious and important work of delivering the seed of Abraham from their present misery. And indeed, this fact is countenanced and supported by the short hints which scripture has given us of the subject. Among the other instances of victorious faith, recorded in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, that of the parents of Moses is marked with honour and approbation by the Apostle. "By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment."* It is not unreasonable to suppose, that their faith might have some particular promise or intimation from Heaven to rest upon. The time at length came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son, according to the same historian, without the usual pains and consequent weakness of childbearing; by which means no foreign aid being required, concealment was rendered more easy, and the exertions of the mother in behalf of her child, were scarcely, if at all, interrupted. "A goodly child" is the modest language which Moses employs in describing himself: "exceeding fair," or fair to God, that is, divinely fair, is the stronger expression of St. Stephen, in his recapitulation of this period of the Jewish history. From which, without the fond encomiums of profane authors, we may conclude, that Providence had distinguished this illustrious person from his birth, by uncommon strength, size, and beauty. Every child is lovely in the partial eye of maternal affection: what then must Moses, the wonder of the world, have been to his enraptured parents! But the dearer the comfort, the greater the care, and that care increasing every hour. Not only the child, and such a child, was continually in jeopardy, but certain and cruel death was hanging every instant, by a single hair, over the heads of all who were concerned in the concealment; nay, the salvation of a great nation was at stake; nay, the promise and covenant of God was in question. In the conduct of these good Israelites, the parents of Moses, we have a most instructive example respecting many important particulars of our duty. They teach us, that no circumstances of inconveniency, difficulty, or danger, should deter us from following the honest impulses of our nature, or from complying with the manifest dictates of religion: and, at the same time, reprove that would-bewise generation of men among us, who, from I know not what reasons of prudence, or others which they dare not avow, defraud their country, the world, and the church of God, of their due and commanded increase. Their faith in God, employing in its service *Heb. xi. 23. |