God has, in his holy providence, made great use of his people in prison. Jeremiah, Daniel, Paul, Silas, and Peter, were all honoured by him in such a place. Luther, while a captive in Wartburg Castle, translated a large portion of Scripture, and promoted the spiritual emancipation of millions in Christendom. Bunyan in his prison, where blinded persecutors had immured him, wrote a book, second to no human production in its knowledge of the heart and its delineations of truth. And so of many more. Joseph’s name is to be added to this list. Having been basely accused of a foul crime which he refused to commit, he was cast into prison, and pined there for years, the victim of malignity,—or apparently forgotten. Now this seemed the completion and the cope-stone of the machinations of Joseph’s brethren. When he was immured in that dungeon at On, in Memphis, in Thebes, or some other of the royal cities of ancient Egypt, it might appear as if all hope concerning him were gone: his aspirations, whatever they were, now seemed to be blighted for ever. It was with him, to mortal eye, as it was with Jesus when he was crucified, dead, and buried,—when a stone was rolled to the door of the sepulchre,—when the entrance was sealed with a seal, and a guard of Roman soldiers set, as if they could baffle Omnipotence, and make all escape hopeless.
In truth, however, the imprisonment of Joseph was meant and used by God as a step to his exaltation. If he was for a season like one entombed, he had a resurrection at last by the mighty power of Him who sees the end from the beginning. It was like the planting of an acorn soon to become an oak, or like the bubbling up of a little stream from the depths of the earth soon to become a mighty river, while all around exclaimed,—
“The gloomy mantle of the night,
Which on my sinking spirit steals,
Will vanish at the morning light
Which God, my East, my Sun, reveals.”
His God was with Joseph, then, as his sun and shield, even in the prison-house of Pharaoh, and friends were soon raised up to the Hebrew lad; he was even advanced to a degree of honour akin to royalty itself. There was no Bible then to embody the mind of God to man, such as it is now our most blessed privilege to enjoy; and in the absence of such a book, knowledge was sometimes mysteriously imparted by dreams. We are not able to explain how that took place; but He who made the mind can impress it as he wills, and he often impressed it by dreams, by visions, or by voices. For his companions in prison, Joseph had the chief butler and the chief baker of Pharaoh’s household; and as they dreamed dreams which he was enabled to interpret, that, in the providence of God, led to his liberation. The chief butler was restored to his former place in the royal household, as Joseph had foretold; and though he forgot for a time his companion in prison, yet when the king in his turn was troubled by certain dreams, the butler remembered Joseph, pointed him out to Pharaoh, and the captive slave was summoned into the monarch’s presence.
There for the present we leave him, and observe that Joseph is now on the high road to dignity and honour. By one of those sudden transitions far from being uncommon in the East, where impulse often takes the place of principle, or where what appears to be caprice does the work of system, the prison door is shut behind Joseph, and that of the palace is opened: he is soon to become the grand vizier of an Oriental potentate. His brethren had sought to bury him out of sight; for, to their mind, selling him into Egypt was equivalent to that doom. They had no design but to get rid of a troublesome or an offensive brother; but as God had restrained the remainder of their wrath, and in his providence prevented the perpetration of fratricide, so he had further purposes to serve by that remarkable youth; and Jehovah accordingly hid him in the hollow of his hand; he was with Joseph when he went out, and when he came in.
From this time forward, then, all went well with Joseph. He had refused to yield to temptation to sin. By the help of God, he was steadfast and immovable; he became, as we shall see, the recognized benefactor of millions. And what was the secret of all this? The Bible explains it, in one brief clause: “The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man” (Gen. xxxix. 2). That is the basis of all true prosperity. With that, we need not fear the face of man. “The Lord will provide,” may then become our assured confidence. In youth and in age, in sorrow and in joy, in temptation and in safety, in life and at death, all will be well, all will prosper, if “the Lord be with us.” Some, indeed, try to prosper without the Lord’s guidance. They attempt by fraud what they can accomplish only by the Lord’s blessing upon honesty. Deception is systematized, and iniquity is drawn “as with a cart rope.” But all is like a building upon the sand, or worse,—upon a sea-wave, unless the Lord be with us. The whole is found at last to be a mockery, like the mirage of the desert.
But what were Joseph’s prison thoughts? Perhaps hope deferred made the heart sick. Perhaps he sometimes desponded, and because the chief butler long forgot his promise, the prisoner might fear that God had also forgotten to be gracious. As year passed after year, till about thirteen had rolled away, who will wonder though his heart sometimes failed! But after all the Lord is not slack concerning his promise. A thousand years are with him as one day. Joseph was liberated precisely at the moment best for him and for all Egypt; and it is ever so with those who wait upon the Lord.
Now, in connection with these events, it may be observed that we often hear of representative men—these are men who represent some great interest, or who are the champions of some great cause. One man, for example, is the representative of great learning; and we cannot hear him named without thinking of great scholarship, or all varied lore. Another man represents the cause of the people—not as a demagogue does, for selfish or for turbulent ends, but for man’s social improvement or social elevation—for man’s happiness, in short, in time and for ever. Knox, for example, or Chalmers—what intelligent Christian, with the open Bible for his standard, can hear these names without feeling that these were representative men? Or a third man represents the martial spirit. We cannot hear his name without thinking of wars, and battles, and victory, and fame—that poor shadow which men pursue, and blindly speak of as glory. Or a fourth man is the representative of science; his name almost means science itself. And yet another may be the representative of ferocity unmatched—of blood-thirstiness which only a Feejee cannibal could surpass.
Now we find the same thing in the Bible,—it is there in singular prominence and vigour. Abraham was one representative man; David was another; Isaiah, and Paul, and John, were others; and we need not scruple to place Joseph among the rest. He was the representative of a class upon whom Jehovah smiles while mortals frown—whom the Most High exalts, while his creatures persecute, imprison, or destroy them—whom he crowns with prosperity, while men would plunge them in misery here, and doom them to endless endurance hereafter. By Joseph’s case we are taught that there is a God that judgeth in the earth, and encouraged to commit ourselves in well-doing to him, assured that, though villany may seem to prosper, there is a curse in it—though God’s people be cast down, they cannot be destroyed: His right hand will lift them up.
