them Benjamin, or else to see his face no more.

ן

This is

urged upon Jacob, and the reply it extorts from him is in strict keeping with all that has gone before:-" Wherefore dealt ye so ill with me, as to tell the man whether ye had yet a brother?" Still we see one whom suffering had rendered distrustful-who would lend many his ear, but few his tongue. The famine presses so sore that there is no alternative but to yield up his son. Still he is the same individual. Judah is in haste to be gone he will be surety for the lad—he will bring him again, or bear the blame for ever. But Jacob gives little heed to these vapouring promises of a sanguine adviser, and, as stooping before a necessity which was too strong for him, he prudently sets himself to devise means to disarm the danger; and “if it must be so now," says he, "do this; take of the best fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm and a little honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds-and take double money in your hand; and the money that was brought again in the mouth of your sacks, carry it again in your hand; peradventure it was an oversight."2

I cannot persuade myself that these are not marks of a real character-especially when I consider that this identity is found in incidents spread over a period of a hundred years or more-that they are mere hints, as it were, out of which we are left to construct the man; hints interrupted by a multitude of other matters; the genealogy and adventures of Esau and his Arab tribes; the household affairs of Potiphar; the dreams of Pharaoh; the polity of Egypt;-that the facts thus dispersed and broken are to be brought together by ourselves, and the general induction to be drawn from them by ourselves, nothing being more remote from the mind of Moses than to present us with a portrait of Jacob; nay,

1 Gen. xliii. 6.

2 Gen. xliii. 12.

of that of Isaac, who happens to be less involved in the circumstances of his history, he scarcely gives us a single feature. Surely, with all this before us, it is impossible to entertain the idea for a moment of any studied uniformity. Yet an uniformity there is; casual, therefore, on the part of Moses, who was thinking nothing about it; but complete, because, without thinking about it, he was by some means or other drawing from the life.

And now am I thought to disparage the character of this holy man of old? God forbid! I think that in the incidents I have named his conduct may be excused, if not justified. But were it otherwise, I am not aware that any of the Patriarchs has been set up, or can be set up, as a genuine pattern of Christian morals. They saw the Promise (and the more questionable parts of Jacob's conduct are to be accounted for by his impatience to obtain the Promise, and by his consequently using unlawful means to obtain it), but "they saw it afar off”—“ they beheld it, but not nigh." They lived under a code of laws that were not absolutely good, perhaps not so good as the Levitical; for as this was but a preparation for the more perfect Law of Christ, so possibly was the Patriarchal but a preparation for the more perfect Law of Moses. Indeed, I have already observed, that many scattered hints may be gathered from this latter Law, which show that it was but the Law under which the Patriarchs had lived reconstructed, augmented, and improved; and I apprehend that such a scheme of progressive advancement, first the dawn, then the day, then the perfect day, is analogous to God's dealings in general. But the broad light in which the Fathers of Israel are to be viewed is this, that they were exclusive worshippers of the One True Everlasting God in a world of idolaters that they were living depositaries of the great doctrine of the Unity of the Godhead, when the nations

around were resorting to every green tree-that they were "faithful found among the faithless." The author of Ecclesiasticus brings out this idea very pointedly; for though when speaking of David in ch. xlvii. v. 11, he had said, "The Lord took away his sins;" in ch. xlix. v. 4, he writes, "All except David, and Ezekias, and Josias, were defective; for they forsook the Law of the Most High, even the Kings of Judah failed." And so incalculably important was the preservation of this Great Article of the Creed of man, at a time when it rested in the keeping of so few, that the language of the Almighty in the Law seems ever to have a respect unto it: fury, anger, indignation, jealousy, hatred, being expressions rarely, if ever, attributed to Him, except in reference to idolatry; and, on the other hand, enemies of God, adversaries of God, haters of God, being there chiefly and above all, idolaters. But in this sense God was emphatically the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, none of them, not even the last (for the only passage which savours of the contrary admits, as we have seen, of easy explanation), having ever forfeited their claim to this high and glorious title; however, such title may not be thought to imply that their moral characters and conduct were faultless, and worthy of all acceptation.

IX.

THE marks of coincidence without design, which I have brought forward to prove the truth of the Books of Moses, as successively presenting themselves in the history of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, I shall now follow up by others in the history of Joseph.

By the ill-concealed partiality of his father, and his own incaution in declaring his dreams of future greatness,

Joseph had incurred the hatred of his brethren. They were feeding the flock near Shechem, Jacob desires to satisfy himself of their welfare, and sends Joseph to inquire of them and to bring him word again. Meanwhile they had driven further a-field to Dothan, and Joseph, informed of this by a man whom he found wandering in the country, followed them thither. They beheld him when he was yet afar off; his dress was remarkable', and the eye of the shepherd in the plain country of the East, like that of the mariner now, was no doubt practised and keen. They take their counsel together against him. They conclude, however, not to stain their hands in the blood of their brother, but to cast him into an empty pit, which, in those countries, where the inhabitants were constantly engaged in a fruitless search for water, was a very likely place to be on the spot. There he was to be left to die, or, as Reuben intended, to remain till he could rid him out of their hands. Nothing can be more artless than this story. Nothing can bear more indisputable signs of truth than its details. But the circumstance, on which I now rest, is another that is mentioned. The brothers having achieved their evil purpose, sat down to eat bread-possibly some household present which Jacob had sent them, and Joseph had just conveyed, such as on a somewhat similar occasion, in aftertimes, Jesse sent and David conveyed to his elder brethren in the camp-though on this, as on a thousand touches of truth of the like kind, the reader of Moses is left to make his own speculations. And now "they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels, bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt." Now this, though by no means an obvious incident to have suggested itself, does seem to me a very

natural one to have occurred; and, what is more, is an incident which tallies remarkably well with what we read elsewhere, in a passage, however, having no reference whatever to the one in question. For have we not reason to know, that at this very early period in the history of the world, this first of caravans upon record was charged with a cargo for Egypt singularly adapted to the wants of the Egyptians at that time? Expunge the 2nd and 3rd verses of the 50th chapter of Genesis, and the symptoms of veracity in the narrative which I here detect, or think I detect, would never have been discoverable. But in those verses I am told that "Joseph commanded the Physicians to embalm his father-and the Physicians embalmed Israel-and forty days were fulfilled to him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed, and the Egyptians mourned threescore and ten days." I conclude, therefore, from this, that in these very ancient times it was the practice of the Egyptians (for Joseph was here doing that which was the custom of the country where he lived) to embalm their dead; and we know, from the case of our Lord that an hundred pounds' weight of myrrh and aloes was not more than enough for a single body'. Hence, then, the camel-loads of spices which the Ishmaelites were bringing from Gilead, would naturally enough find an ample market in Egypt. Now, is it easy to come to any other conclusion, when trifles of this kind drop out, fitted one to another like the corresponding parts of a cloven tally, than that both are true ?—that the historian, however he obtained his intelligence, is speaking of particulars which fell within his own knowledge, and is speaking of them faithfully? Surely nothing can be more incidental than the mention of the lading of these camels of the Ishmaelites; it has nothing to do with the main fact, which is merely this, that the party,

1 John xix. 39.