Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, April 1905

by Various

SAM JONES.

Rev. Sam P. Jones, the great evangelist and Southern lecturer, who possesses a style of oratory unique and powerful, and a wonderful magnetism.

IDA BENFEY,
Who makes a short tour in the South each season, and who is always welcomed for her high art.

THE STORY OF JOSEPH.

By Ida Benfey.

“Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” and just now I find myself almost completely absorbed by the Story of Joseph, which Tolstoi calls the greatest short story ever written. And he adds, significantly, that it would make no difference in telling it to the people of China what the customs were—that the human interest in the story is so powerful it sweeps all minor details to one side.

Joseph is not at all a perfect man. He hasn’t the kind of faults that David possessed, that show clearly to the person that isn’t even looking for them; but he has what seem to be more terrible faults because they are gilded over with success. And I can think of no character in history more magnanimous than was Joseph, for when his father was dead and his brethren came to him and were afraid that he would be avenging, he wept at their doubting him, and then said these significant words: “Fear not: for am I in the place of God?” It seems to me that these are the words that best show the high ideal that ruled Joseph. As far as I can see it is the same spirit which was in Luther, only in another form—that is, that each one of us must settle all our doubts with God alone. Human help is unavailing here. Such a high ideal as this of Joseph fills me with awe and reverent admiration, and when I realize that he was at the head of, and the former and the creator of the most stupendous trust that the world has ever known, I find myself bewildered in trying to reconcile such different elements in one man,—Joseph’s tenderness and magnanimity to his brethren, and Joseph’s creating a trust which forced the Egyptians to sell their land to him and finally their bodies as slaves to ward off starvation. Think of one man combining such opposite qualities. Is it because the golden rule that Christ gave us had not yet come into the world? Of course Joseph did what John D. Rockefeller is trying to do, and has in no small degree accomplished, though perhaps we do not see the slave-chains that he has put upon us. But John D. Rockefeller hasn’t, as far as we know, the godlike nature that Joseph had. He and Joseph are alike in each possessing the inhuman quality of being able to crush out the life of their fellowmen.

I wonder if Joseph created this trust and carried it out merely because he was a man of business, or because he enjoyed the game he was at, as does Russell Sage. Until I began to study this story, I never knew what the parable of the wise and foolish virgins meant, but it seems plain to me now. Joseph was like the wise virgin. The thirteen years which he spent as a slave and in prison he gave entirely to living each moment to the glory of God. He wasted no time in bearing hatred towards his brethren, or thinking how much better he was than the position he occupied, or wishing God wouldn’t forget him quite so long, but would try and be a little more attentive to him personally. No, he simply did each act in the best and sunniest way, and the day when Pharaoh sent hastily for him and they brought him hurriedly out of the prison, he stopped and shaved himself and changed his raiment. Why? Because he was a gentleman and he had been in the habit of daily shaving and of daily caring for his body in the best possible way. And when we read that he came in to Pharaoh we know exactly how he walked, with the calm quietness that belongs to a person that has sufficient self-respect to last through the night and lap over into the next morning.

Gibbon, in his “History of Rome,” says that the hatred between the religions began about the fourth century; that people before that had been willing that people should worship as they thought best, the idea being that all were striving for the same noble end. I wonder if there was something of this beautiful spirit in Egypt. It has made a tremendous impression upon me that Moses, a Hebrew, in telling the story says that the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews because it is an abomination for Egyptians to eat with Hebrews. One would have thought that Moses would have put the Hebrew first, naturally caring most for his own. And I keep wondering whether he put them in the inferior position of making them second because of that same exquisite courtesy which Lincoln exercised when he always mentioned the North first, as though they were the more guilty in everything connected with the War; or was it because the Egyptians were the most powerful nation, and, as a matter of fact, should be mentioned first? This, however, is but a side issue to the wonderful fact that though the Egyptians would not eat with the Hebrews, yet Pharaoh and Potiphar immediately saw, and Pharaoh publicly announced, that the Spirit of God was in Joseph. Why, I hardly know anyone who is an enthusiastic church worker that feels that the spirit of God is really and surely in a church worker of another denomination.