. THE YOUNG MAN WHO WAS BORN TO THE PURPLE
V. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CHANGED THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

I

The Young Man Who Was a Favourite Son

Which would you say is the harder to bear, adversity or prosperity? I
am not sure. If I were a betting man I would not know on which horse
to put my money.

The Bible says, "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." The
narrowness and the meagreness of their lives, the lack of access to the
highest interests seems to drive them oftentimes into the coarser forms
of indulgence which are their undoing. The Bible also says, "It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter the Kingdom of God." The millionaire who strives to be
thoroughly Christian in all his attitudes and actions, in the secret
desires which rule his own soul and in the relations he sustains to his
fellow men by reason of his wealth has a hard task. In every great
city you will find the sons of millionaires falling down or flinging
themselves away in thoughtless dissipation where the sons of toil are
standing up and making good.

Here, for example, was a young man who was born on the sunny side of
the street. He was the son of a rich man, and the favourite son. He
was handsome--"It came to pass that Joseph was a goodly person and well
favoured." He was habitually well dressed--"His father gave him a coat
of many colours," which there in the Orient marked him as a young man
of style. He had a vivid imagination and was a good talker. He was a
young man of parts and his story was so interesting to those early
Hebrews that here in the Book of Genesis thirteen full chapters are
given to his personal history.

Let me notice three points in his career--first, his early
unpopularity. You do not have to know Hebrew to understand why he was
not as popular as Santa Claus. He was his father's favourite, which is
a heavy load for any child to bear. He lived in a family where there
were four sets of children. His father had married two wives, Rachel
who was handsome because he loved her, and Leah who was "tender-eyed,"
the Scripture says, because she was the daughter of his employer at
that time and it was good business. There were also children who had
been born to the two housemaids, according to the easy customs of that
far-off time and place. Joseph was the son of Rachel, the favourite
wife, and her favourite son. He wore the signs of this parental
p