amilies;
or tell children, like the wicked Pharisees of old, that they may
say to their parents, Corban--'I have given to God the service and
help which, as your child, I should have given to you'--shall be
called, if not by men, at least by God himself, hypocrites, who draw
near to God with their mouths, and honour him with their lips, while
their heart is far from him.

I think now we may see that I was right when I said--Perhaps the
history of Joseph is in the Bible because it IS a family history.
For see, it is the history of a man who loved his family, who felt
that family life was holy and God-appointed; whom God rewarded with
honour and wealth, because he honoured family ties; because he
refused his master's wife; because he rewarded his brothers good for
evil; because he was not ashamed of his father, but succoured him in
his old age.

It is the history of a man who--more than four hundred years before
God gave the ten commandments on Sinai, saying,

Honour thy father and mother,

Thou shalt not commit adultery,

Thou shalt not kill in revenge,

Thou shalt not covet aught of thy neighbours--It is the history, I
say, of a man who had those laws of God written in his heart by the
Holy Spirit of God; and felt that to break them was to sin against
God. It is the history of a man who, sorely tempted and unjustly
persecuted, kept himself pure and true; who, while all around him,
beginning with his own brothers, were trampling under foot the laws
of family, felt that the laws were still there round him, girding
him in with everlasting bands, and saying to him, Thou shalt and
Thou shalt not; that he was not sent into the world to do just what
was pleasant for the moment, to indulge his own passions or his own
revenge; but that if he was indeed a man, he must prove himself a
man, by obeying Almighty God. It is the history of a man who kept
his heart pure and tender, and who thereby gained strange and deep
wisdom; that wisdom which comes only to the pure in heart; that
wisdom by which truly good men are enabled to see farther, and to be
of more use to their fellow-creatures than many a cunning and
crooked politician, whose eyes are blinded, because his heart is
defiled with sin.

And now, my friends, if we pray--as we are bound to pray--for that
great Prince who is just entering on the cares and the duties, as
well as the joys and blessings of family life--what better prayer
can we offer up for him, than that