no sacrifices offered to keep in mind the promised Saviour. His name was a name unknown and unhonoured, for in every house poor Joseph saw the sun, and stars, men, animals, and plants, worshipped, and their images treasured; whilst he could scarcely walk the streets without seeing the great temples with their huge statues rising in the air to idols, whilst on God, his own God and his father's God, they called not. But Joseph still served the Lord, and many a prayer ascended among those dark idolaters which brought down blessing to the Egyptian dwelling, and the master seeing that the God whom his slave served was with him, and prospered him, and all he did, made him his steward thenceforth, and overseer of all he had; and from that time the blessing of the Lord was on house and field, for the sake of the Hebrew slave.

We must now leave Joseph high in his master's favour, and take up his story at another season of his life, when change and trial came upon him; and then we will try and trace in each of the principal portions of this wonderful story, the type or figure of Jesus; one grand lesson which this narrative is designed to teach.

THE FORGIVING BROTHER.

"Forgive one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."Ephesians iv. 32.

E left Joseph prosperous. The scene is changed
There is a prison in the city where

now.

Joseph dwelt, and within those prison walls he sits a disgraced servant. He has a calm look of trust and peace on his brow, however, for he is not there for sin, but because he would not sin. He had been tempted to do wrong, and he had come out of the temptation clear because he had kept the thought of God continually before his eyes. The moment temptation came he had strength to resist it, and, although it was his mistress who would have led him astray, he boldly refused, saying, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?"

So, now in his prison life, God's love comforted him, and his voice was as plainly heard within those gloomy walls as on the soft hill-side of his beloved Hebron, for God never forsakes his faithful children. Just notice the words, "The Lord was with him," and you will understand the reason of his joy. If God be with us there can be no real sorrow. The very jailer looked with favour on the patient Hebrew youth. His

religion was one of practice and not of profession only, and, seeing that he might trust him, the jailer gave him all the prisoners in charge, and set him in a place of great confidence and authority, and why? because again it says, "The Lord was with him, and that which he did the Lord made it to prosper."

Joseph's prison life was thus a useful and happy one. When the butler and the baker of Pharaoh were cast into prison, and placed beneath his care, he was as kind and tender to them as he would have been to brothers, and seeing them sad one morning, he asked them the cause, and they told him it was on account of a dream which they had each had. The butler told his first, and Joseph telling them that interpretations belonged to God alone, and, taking no credit to himself, explained its meaning, and promised that in three days more he should be restored to his place. He added a request also that he would then think on him in his imprisonment, and show kindness to him in making mention of him to Pharaoh, "for, indeed," he said, "I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also have done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon."

The baker's dream had a less happy meaning, and Joseph faithfully told him that in three days he should be hung on a tree, and the birds of the air should eat his flesh. In three days-it was the birthday of Pharaoh-the butler was restored, and the baker hanged. But the butler forgot his kind prison friend, and Joseph remained a captive.

Two years more passed away, and Pharaoh himself

had a dream which no one around him was able to interpret. It troubled the Egyptian king greatly until the butler, remembering the time of his own distress, and the kind help which Joseph gave him, then told his master of the wonderful Hebrew youth, who could so truly interpret dreams. In a short time Joseph stood before the king, and humbly answered Pharaoh's inquiry, whether he could interpret his dream by the simple words, "It is not in me; God shall give Pharoah an answer of peace." He told him the meaning of what the king had seen, and warned him, how that seven years of coming plenty were to be followed by seven others of great dearth, counselling him to use the abundant provision, which God was about to send, wisely, and to husband it with care, laying up stores of corn in every city and keeping the food there. He advised him too to appoint a man specially for the work and officers under him, that there might be no waste.

Pharaoh, as he looked at the beautiful face of the Hebrew, in the full prime of manly strength and vigour, said to his servants, "Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?" and at once his resolution was taken. Joseph was placed in the important office. Only on the throne was there a greater man than this lately oppressed captive. What a change! As he passed along, drawn in a chariot belonging to the court, a chain on his neck, Pharaoh's ring on his hand, the people crying, "bow the knee," who would have recognised in this great ruler the slave, who, but a few years before had been cast into a dungeon by his angry master?

The seven years of plenty and of famine came, and the faithful steward dispensed the treasures of corn, which by his wise care had been stored up. Strangers journeyed from distant lands to buy, and all wondered at the provision which still remained in Egypt.

At length, one day, ten men appeared before the governor, all brothers, seeming to have travelled far, and as they entered Joseph's presence with their request to be allowed to buy corn, they bowed down even on their faces to the earth.

The dream of the sheaves was not forgotten; Joseph knew his brothers, but they knew not him. There was a little roughness in his tone as he questioned them, not from revenge, or anger, you may be sure; but he wanted to prove if they were sorry, and to get at the truth about their family, which he could only do as a judge, and, not seeing Benjamin among them, he perhaps suspected they had made away with him too. So after accusing them of coming as spies, and receiving their assurance that they were not, he said, to prove whether they were true men or no, he would not let them go except the youngest brother were sent; and he put them all in safe keeping for three days, that they might consider the matter, at the end of which time he went to them again and renewed his request.

Poor fellows! they knew well how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to gain Jacob's consent to part with his youngest child, and they began to talk in their native language, little thinking that Joseph, who only spoke to them by an interpreter, knew all they said. They recalled to each other their sin to their long lost