tual
rather than material, pertaining to the final triumph of truth and
righteousness?--that the unity of God, which he taught to Isaac and
perhaps to Ishmael, was to be upheld by his race alone among prevailing
idolatries, until the Saviour should come to reveal a new dispensation
and finally draw all men unto him? Did Abraham fully realize what a
magnificent nation the Israelites should become,--not merely the rulers
of western Asia under David and Solomon, but that even after their final
dispersion they should furnish ministers to kings, scholars to
universities, and dictators to legislative halls,--an unconquerable
race, powerful even after the vicissitudes and humiliations of four
thousand years? Did he realize fully that from his descendants should
arise the religious teachers of mankind,--not only the prophets and
sages of the Old Testament, but the apostles and martyrs of the
New,--planting in every land the seeds of the everlasting gospel, which
should finally uproot all Brahminical self-expiations, all Buddhistic
reveries, all the speculations of Greek philosophers, all the countless
forms of idolatry, polytheism, pantheism, and pharisaism on this earth,
until every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father?

Yet such were the boons granted to Abraham, as the reward of faith and
obedience to the One true God,--the vital principle without which
religion dies into superstition, with which his descendants were
inspired not only to nationality and civil coherence, but to the highest
and noblest teachings the world has received from any people, and by
which his name is forever linked with the spiritual progress and
happiness of mankind.

JOSEPH.

ISRAEL IN EGYPT.

No one in his senses would dream of adding anything to the story of
Joseph, as narrated in Genesis, whether it came from the pen of Moses or
from some subsequent writer. It is a masterpiece of historical
composition, unequalled in any literature sacred or profane, in ancient
or modern times, for its simplicity, its pathos, its dramatic power, and
its sustained interest. Nor shall I attempt to paraphrase or re-tell it,
save by way of annotation and illustration of subjects connected with
it, having reference to the subsequent development of the Jewish nation
and character.

Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, was born at Haran in Mesopotamia,
probably during the XVIII. Century B.