He who looks lightly on the love of child to parent, or brother to brother, or husband to wife, and bids each man please himself, each man help himself, and shift for himself, would take away from men the very thing which raises them above the beasts which perish, and lower them again to the likeness of the flesh, that they may of the flesh reap corruption.
They who, under whatever pretence of religion part asunder families; or tell children, like the wicked Pharisees of old, that they may say to their parents, Corban—‘I have given to God the service and help which, as your child, I should have given to you’—shall be called, if not by men, at least by God himself, hypocrites, who draw near to God with their mouths, and honour him with their lips, while their heart is far from him.
I think now we may see that I was right when I said—Perhaps the history of Joseph is in the Bible because it is a family history. For see, it is the history of a man who loved his family, who felt that family life was holy and God-appointed; whom God rewarded with honour and wealth, because he honoured family ties; because he refused his master’s wife; because he rewarded his brothers good for evil; because he was not ashamed of his father, but succoured him in his old age.
It is the history of a man who—more than four hundred years before God gave the ten commandments on Sinai, saying,
Honour thy father and mother,
Thou shalt not commit adultery,
Thou shalt not kill in revenge,
Thou shalt not covet aught of thy neighbours—It is the history, I say, of a man who had those laws of God written in his heart by the Holy Spirit of God; and felt that to break them was to sin against God. It is the history of a man who, sorely tempted and unjustly persecuted, kept himself pure and true; who, while all around him, beginning with his own brothers, were trampling under foot the laws of family, felt that the laws were still there round him, girding him in with everlasting bands, and saying to him, Thou shalt and Thou shalt not; that he was not sent into the world to do just what was pleasant for the moment, to indulge his own passions or his own revenge; but that if he was indeed a man, he must prove himself a man, by obeying Almighty God. It is the history of a man who kept his heart pure and tender, and who thereby gained strange and deep wisdom; that wisdom which comes only to the pure in heart; that wisdom by which truly good men are enabled to see farther, and to be of more use to their fellow-creatures than many a cunning and crooked politician, whose eyes are blinded, because his heart is defiled with sin.
And now, my friends, if we pray—as we are bound to pray—for that great Prince who is just entering on the cares and the duties, as well as the joys and blessings of family life—what better prayer can we offer up for him, than that God would put into his heart that spirit which he put into the heart of Joseph of old—the spirit to see how divine and God-appointed is family life? God grant that that spirit may dwell in him, and possess him more and more day by day. That it may keep him true to his wife, true to his mother, true to his family, true, like Joseph, to all with whom he has to deal. That it may deliver him, as it delivered Joseph, from the snares of wicked women, from selfish politicians, if they ever try to sow distrust and opposition between him and his kindred, and from all those temptations which can only be kept down by the Spirit of God working in men’s hearts, as he worked in the heart of Joseph.
For if that spirit be in the Prince—and I doubt not that that spirit is in him already—then will his fate be that of Joseph; then will he indeed be a blessing to us, and to our children after us; then will he have riches more real, and power more vast, than any which our English laws can give; then will he gain, like Joseph, that moral wisdom, better than all worldly craft, which cometh from above—first pure, then gentle, easy to be entreated, without partiality, and without hypocrisy; then will he be able, like Joseph, to deliver his people in times of perplexity and distress; then will he by his example, as his noble mother has done before him, keep healthy, pure, and strong, our English family life—and as long as that endures, Old England will endure likewise.