The story of Joseph is one which will go home to all healthy hearts. Every child can understand, every child can feel with it. It is a story for all men and all times. Even if it had not been true, and not real fact, but a romance of man’s invention, it would have been loved and admired by men; far more then, when we know that it is true, that it actually did so happen; that is part and parcel of the Holy Scriptures.

We all, surely, know the story—How Joseph’s brethren envy him and sell him for a slave into Egypt—how there for a while he prospers—how his master’s wife tempts him—how he is thrown into prison on her slander—how there again he prospers—how he explains the dreams of Pharaoh’s servants—how he lies long forgotten in the prison—how at last Pharaoh sends for him to interpret a dream for him, and how he rises to power and great glory—how his brothers come down to Egypt to buy corn, and how they find him lord of all the land—how subtilly he tries them to see if they have repented of their old sin—how his heart yearns over them in spite of all their wickedness to him—how at last he reveals himself, and forgives them utterly, and sends for his poor old father Jacob down into Egypt. Whosoever does not delight in that story, simply as a story, whenever he hears it read, cannot have a wholesome human heart in him.

But why was this story of Joseph put into Holy Scripture, and at such length, too? It seems, at first sight, to be simply a family history—the story of brothers and their father; it seems, at first sight, to teach us nothing concerning our redemption and salvation; it seems, at first sight, not to reveal anything fresh to us concerning God; it seems, at first sight, not to be needed for the general plan of the Bible history. It tells us, of course, how the Israelites first came into Egypt; and that was necessary for us to know. But the Bible might have told us that in ten verses. Why has it spent upon the story of Joseph and his brethren, not ten verses, but ten chapters?

Now we have a right to ask such questions as these, if we do not ask them out of any carping, fault-finding spirit, trying to pick holes in the Bible, from which God defend us and all Christian men. If we ask such questions in faith and reverence—that is, believing and taking for granted that the Bible is right, and respecting it, as the Book of books, in which our own forefathers and all Christian nations upon earth for many ages have found all things necessary for their salvation—if, I say, we question over the Bible in that child-like, simple, respectful spirit, which is the true spirit of wisdom and understanding, by which our eyes will be truly opened to see the wondrous things of God’s law: then we may not only seek as our Lord bade us, but we shall find, as our Lord prophesied that we should. We shall find some good reason for this story of Joseph being so long, and find that the story of Joseph, like all the rest of the Bible, reveals a new lesson to us concerning God and the character of God.

I said that the story of Joseph looks, at first sight, to be merely a family history. But suppose that that were the very reason why it is in the Bible, because it is a family history. Suppose that families were very sacred things in the eyes of God. That the ties of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were appointed, not by man, but by God. Then would not Joseph’s story be worthy of being in the Bible? Would it not, as I said it would, reveal something fresh to us concerning God and the character of God?

Consider now, my friends: Is it not one great difference—one of the very greatest—between men and beasts, that men live in families, and beasts do not? That men have the sacred family feeling, and beasts have not? They have the beginnings of it, no doubt. The mother, among beasts, feels love to her children, but only for a while. God has implanted in her something of that deepest, holiest, purest of all feelings—a mother’s love. But as soon as her young ones are able to take care of themselves, they are nothing to her—among the lower animals, less than nothing. The fish or the crocodile will take care of her eggs jealously, and as soon as they are hatched, turn round and devour her own young.

The feeling of a father to his child, again, you find is fainter still among beasts. The father, as you all know, not only cares little for his offspring, even if he sometimes helps to feed them at first, but is often jealous of them, hates them, will try to kill them when they grow up.

Husband and wife, again: there is no sacredness between them among dumb animals. A lasting and an unselfish attachment, not merely in youth, but through old age and beyond the grave—what is there like this among the animals, except in the case of certain birds, like the dove and the eagle, who keep the same mate year after year, and have been always looked on with a sort of affection and respect by men for that very reason?

But where, among beasts, do you ever find any trace of those two sacred human feelings—the love of brother to brother, or of child to father? Where do you find the notion that the tie between husband and wife is a sacred thing, to be broken at no temptation, but in man?

These are the feelings which man has alone of all living animals.