his master's bed, what was his answer?

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Behold," said he to the unprincipled woman, who would have seduced him from his duty," my master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand; there is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" From a sense of duty to his master he was incapable of recompensing the confidence reposed in him with so irreparable and cruel an injury. But his sense of duty to his master was founded on the only perfect security of moral obligation, a sense of his duty to God.

II. " He, who loves God, will love his brother also i." Such was the humane disposition of Joseph; as it will appear from the line of conduct which he observed in his different social relations. We will proceed now therefore to such particulars as

1 John iv. 21.

bear upon this part of the subject: and having thus far seen him performing his duty to God, by piety, by faith, by resignation, by gratitude, and by obedience, we will take for a further criterion of his character, the manner in which he did his duty to man.

1. And here our attention must first be directed to the filial affection of Joseph; for little reason should we have for expecting to find his character exemplary in other respects, if he appeared negligent of the first moral law both of nature and of revelation, and guilty of irreverence towards the authors of his being.

The inspired writer of Genesis informs us that "Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age;❞ not because he was his youngest son, for that he was not, Benjamin being younger than he: but probably because, after a long season of barrenness, he was born of Rachel, the most beloved consort of Jacob; and because, at the period referred to, he was arrived at an age when

he was capable of affording more comfort to the declining years of his father, than could be given by his younger brother Benjamin. And this interpretation appears to be countenanced by the narrative of the Jewish historian Josephus, who assigns as a cause for the partiality shown by Jacob for the first-born of Rachel, that "his father loved him above the rest of his sons, both because of the beauty of his body, and the virtues of his mind, for he excelled the rest in prudence."

But whatever was the cause of Jacob's preference of Joseph, and however that preference may have been distinguished, it was amply repaid by the filial affection and reverence shown him by this favoured son. Notwithstanding he had been separated from his father more than twenty years, and was raised to a station second only in dignity and power to that of Pharaoh king of Egypt, on the arrival of his brethren to buy corn, his first object appears to have been to procure information concerning this beloved and only surviving parent. For this cause " he made himself

strange unto them and spake roughly unto them;" nor suffered them to depart home, until he had taken measures to secure their return. On their return, the first question with which he saluted them, a question which indicated the tenderest and most amiable anxiety, was, "Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake? is he still alive?" When he discovered himself to his brethren, he was impelled to the discovery by the lively sense he had conceived of his father's affliction and distress; and accordingly his apprehension for his father's safety betrays itself in language, which after the previous conversation with his brethren could not have been dictated but by the warmest attachment; “I am Joseph. Doth my father yet live?" Agreeably to this, his first measure is to secure his father's removal from a land of scarcity to one of plenty, where he himself also might be able to minister to his wants and to contribute to his comforts. "Haste ye; and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph; God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not: and thou shalt dwell

in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast and there will I nourish thee." He dwells on the dignity which he is enjoying in a strange land, because he thinks it will be a subject of exultation and delight to his aged parent. "Ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen: and ye shall haste, and bring down my father hither." He sends him provisions and carriages for his journey and not content with intrusting the charge of welcoming him to another, he goes himself to receive him: "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 there he placed him, and nourished him in the best of the land during the remaining

days of the years of his pilgrimage," until he "brought down his grey hairs," not "with sorrow," but with comfort, " to the grave." Nor can I forbear noticing those interesting particulars, which illustrate the