him: "Haste ye," he said, "and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt. Come down unto me; tarry”—that is, delay-"not, thou, and thy children, and thy children's children, and thy flocks and thy herds, and all that thou hast: and there will I nourish thee, for yet there are five years of famine." And "he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept, and he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them, and after that his brethren talked with him."

Pharaoh must have thought a great deal of Joseph, for on hearing that these men were his brothers, he told them to go back for their father. He and Joseph sent changes of raiment, that they might have good clothes to appear in, wagons for them to ride in, "ten asses laden with the good things of Egypt, and ten she-asses laden with corn, and bread, and meat, for his father" to eat on the journey. But his last words to his brothers were, "See that ye fall not out by the way." How they must have felt such an entreaty after all Joseph's kindness to them!

ISRAEL'S JOURNEY.

WHEN they got back, and said, "Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt, Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them But when "he'saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob

not."

their father revived," and he said, "It is enough, Joseph my son is yet alive: I will go and see him before I die." On his journey God spake unto him in the visions of the night, and told him to fear not to go down into Egypt, for He would there make of him a great nation. So they went, a goodly company of seventy persons in all, "his sons, and his sons' sons, his daughters, and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt."

When Joseph heard that he was coming, he went off in his chariot to meet him, and "he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a good while. And Israel said unto Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive.” Joseph then arranged with Pharaoh, that his brothers should follow their old occupation of shepherds, and should live in the land of Goshen, and Pharaoh said, "If thou knowest any men of activity among them, then make them rulers over my cattle."

So after all his sorrows Jacob had a happy and comfortable old age, loved and cherished by his children and grandchildren. He lived seventeen years in Egypt.

And then his last illness came. Joseph took his own two sons Manasseh and Ephraim to him, his eyes being very dim. Jacob inquired who they were. Joseph answered, They are my sons, whom God hath given me." Jacob answered, "I had not thought to see thy face, and, lo, God hath shewed me also thy seed." He put his hands upon their heads, and said, "God, before whom my fathers

Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads, and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth."

After he had blessed Joseph and his other sons, he said, "I am to be gathered unto my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah." Then "he gathered up his feet into the bed" and died. Joseph fell upon his father's face and kissed him, and made great lamentation over him.

He ordered his father's body to be embalmed. It was filled with spices, and then wrapped in cloths soaked with aromatic oils; even every finger was wrapped in a separate covering, and the body was put into a wooden coffin, which was placed either in a hole in the rock, such as the cave of Machpelah, or else a place was built on purpose to contain it, like the pyramids of Egypt. Bodies so treated were kept for thousands of years; mies, and you may see a great many of them in the British Museum in London. Embalming is a custom not much followed in Christian countries. We do not care so much to preserve the dead bodies of those we love, because we know that they shall rise again at the last day; that our bodies are "sown

they are called mum

in corruption, but shall rise in incorruption, are sown in dishonour, but will be raised in glory."

Joseph buried his father in the cave of Machpelah, and he made a mourning for his father that lasted seven days. It is the custom now in the East, to bury people on the day of their death. But their relations sit on the ground for a week or more, tearing their hair and their clothes, and making the air resound with their shrieks and groans. This we never do now, for we sorrow not as those who have no hope" of meeting again those we have loved and lost.

66

Joseph returned to Egypt, and then his brothers were frightened, lest now that their father was gone, he might punish them for their past cruelty to him. They sent him a messenger, saying, “Thy father did command, before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee, now the trespass of thy brethren and their sin, for they did unto thee evil: and now we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him, and his brethren also went and fell down before his face, and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not; for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye not, I will nourish you and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them."

Joseph lived till he was a hundred and ten years

old, and had his great-grandchildren, we are told, brought up upon his knees. We may be sure that he often told the little ones to love each other as brethren, and that he dreaded any signs of envy and jealousy amongst them.

THE DEATH OF JOSEPH.

AND when the time came that he was about to die, Joseph seems to have known that when he was gone, Egypt would no longer be the place for his family to live in. He said, "I die, and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which He sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." And Joseph made them take an oath that his bones should be carried to his old home. So he died, and they embalmed him, and he was put into a coffin in Egypt.

Both the embalming and the placing the body in a coffin was then considered to be a great honour. Customs have changed very little in the East. At this day, a traveller describes a funeral that he met in Egypt, the body dressed in grave-clothes, and merely covered with a shawl. A number of hired mourners walked along with it, who were paid a few pence for singing in the most melancholy way, appearing to pull out their hair and beat their bodies, and tearing bits of blue cloth into small strips. There surely would have been no need to hire mourners, when Joseph was gathered to his fathers. How