ot only seek as
our Lord bade us, but we shall find, as our Lord prophesied that we
should. We shall find some good reason for this story of Joseph
being so long, and find that the story of Joseph, like all the rest
of the Bible, reveals a new lesson to us concerning God and the
character of God.

I said that the story of Joseph looks, at first sight, to be merely
a family history. But suppose that that were the very reason why it
is in the Bible, because it is a family history. Suppose that
families were very sacred things in the eyes of God. That the ties
of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, were
appointed, not by man, but by God. Then would not Joseph's story be
worthy of being in the Bible? Would it not, as I said it would,
reveal something fresh to us concerning God and the character of
God?

Consider now, my friends: Is it not one great difference--one of
the very greatest--between men and beasts, that men live in
families, and beasts do not? That men have the sacred family
feeling, and beasts have not? They have the beginnings of it, no
doubt. The mother, among beasts, feels love to her children, but
only for a while. God has implanted in her something of that
deepest, holiest, purest of all feelings--a mother's love. But as
soon as her young ones are able to take care of themselves, they are
nothing to her--among the lower animals, less than nothing. The
fish or the crocodile will take care of her eggs jealously, and as
soon as they are hatched, turn round and devour her own young.

The feeling of a FATHER to his child, again, you find is fainter
still among beasts. The father, as you all know, not only cares
little for his offspring, even if he sometimes helps to feed them at
first, but is often jealous of them, hates them, will try to kill
them when they grow up.

Husband and wife, again: there is no sacredness between them among
dumb animals. A lasting and an unselfish attachment, not merely in
youth, but through old age and beyond the grave--what is there like
this among the animals, except in the case of certain birds, like
the dove and the eagle, who keep the same mate year after year, and
have been always looked on with a sort of affection and respect by
men for that very reason?

But where, among beasts, do you ever find any trace of those two
sacred human feelings--the love of brother to brother, or of child
to father? Where do you find the notion that the