own doom and made an instrument for good. For true living we need a higher standard than the favour of men. This beautiful story of Joseph never leaves out of account the source both of his strength and of his grace of character. The real favour he found in the sight of men owed its origin to the favour of God.

So linked were these in the sweet and sunny early life of Joseph that we cannot but think of the boyhood of Jesus, as "He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." And when Joseph too, like Jesus, had to choose between the favour of men and the favour of God, he chose the hard way, the way of the cross, rather than give up his Heavenly Friend. Even there in the prison he found the way of serving, and the Lord was with him. These three hidden forces explain the life and character of Joseph, a delight in service, unflinching probity, and faith in a living and loving God-and the last of these is the greatest, being the very source and fount of the others.

Even if the good man does not find favour in the sight of men through his untoward lot, he is not bankrupt of hope and strength. He has a life hid in God. He has the peace of a good conscience, and the approving smile of his Heavenly Father.

Though all the world condemn, it is enough that He commends. Like our Lord, however misunderstood on earth he be, it is enough to be understood in heaven. Though human favour be withdrawn, it is enough to have found favour in the eyes of the Lord. He loses nothing who loses not God.

XVI

THE SANCTUARY OF LIFE

But Pharaoh said, Ye are idle, ye are idle; therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord.-EXODUS v. 17.

THE Children of Israel were becoming mere beasts of burden, sullen, soulless, despairing. It is the lot of the slave. Men become what they are treated, and what they are supposed to be. If you want a child to grow up gentle and noble, you must deal with him as if he were; you must trust him to be that. To treat a dependent human being as a dog is to make him a dog-he may be a very affectionate and faithful dog, but a dog nevertheless. The curse of slavery, even in its lightest forms, has been that the higher possibilities of human nature have been excluded; and in its vilest form men have become brutes. The Israelites in their days of bondage were losing all that made them distinctive, losing all the moral and spiritual traces of their ancestry. Their taskmasters were grinding the soul out of them. They were treated as an inferior race, and so were becoming inferior. Being beasts of burden, they

were not supposed to need any provision for the higher instincts of their nature, the consolations of religion, the strength of worship, the hope of their own peculiar faith. True patriots like Moses and Aaron must have felt how intolerable the state of affairs had become. Added to their faith in God and His loving purpose with Israel, there would be the passion of wounded love at the wrongs and insults heaped on their brethren.

They spoke to Pharaoh in the name of religion, which is also the name of humanity. They asked for alleviation of the hard lot of the oppressed. They asked that respect should be paid to their religious needs. Moses saw, as a wise statesman if nothing else, that his people would lose everything worth having unless their religion could be saved to them. He knew that it was only that which kept them from the low level to which all other slaves sunk. He felt that life needed a sanctuary to make it true life. He asked from Pharaoh some relaxation of the tight bonds which held them to their sordid existence. "Let us go three days' journey into the desert, we pray thee, and sacrifice unto the Lord our God." The king of Egypt said unto them, Why do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their works? Get you unto your burdens. As a punishment for

presuming to think that slaves had souls like their masters he added to the burdens, and commanded, Let there more work be laid upon the men that they may labour therein. And when the cry of the oppressed came to the king, he declared it was all an excuse to get off work, "Ye are idle, ye are idle, therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice unto the Lord."

It is the natural philosophy of the slave-driver. It would mean three days less work done, and would be a dangerous if not also a useless pampering of the workers. The talk of religion is only an excuse for idleness, and shirking their tasks. From such a point of view it was natural to find a godless disregard for human life, or at least a disregard for the highest functions of manhood. We find the same reasoning, not only in the slave-driver Egyptian or otherwise, but in all who hold the slave-driver's philosophy. The root of it is that the material is everything and the spiritual is nothing; and Pharaoh's reasoning comes perhaps natural to as many men in our day as ever before. Our age is so severely and intensely practical, that many have little patience with anything which is not suffused with the same spirit. The rapid advance of natural science has done much to give us this standpoint. The