JOSEPH AND THE CHIEF BUTLER

The plot of Joseph's life as a slave moves largely along the line of what he had to bear from other men and of how he faced it. The writer does not describe his hero's feelings, nor does he dwell on the painful conditions of the prison or the slave-yard. He brings Joseph into contact with different women and men who deal, according to their different natures, with the slave-boy, and then, often leaving the reader to supply the motives, always leaving him to supply the attendant emotions, he tells simply how Joseph acted.

1. The Sin of Ingratitude.

The chief butler, who had promised to befriend his benefactor, had no sooner escaped from the fear of death than he forgot all about him. Ingratitude is a bitter thing to meet for the first time. It is true that Joseph had not freed the butler, but had merely interpreted the man's dream. It was Pharaoh who had freed him. But Joseph had given him heart and hope when the man was discovering how lonely a favoured courtier can be in his day of adversity. And, when his day of prosperity returned, he forgot his solitary friend. That wag in its own degree somewhat harder to bear than any of Joseph's previous trials, because the butler owed him something. When his brothers had resented his claim of superiority over them, a man with some humour might recognise that the situation was difficult. Potiphar's wife had proved that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," and might imagine that she had some reason for resentment against the indifferent foreigner, whom she had so greatly honoured with her regard. But this man had talked largely of gratitude, had volunteered a promise of help and had forgotten.

Perhaps there was a certain advantage to Joseph's character in the fact that he did not succeed at once through the good offices of the chief butler. He had tried for the first time his power of the interpretation of dreams, and had carefully said that, in doing it, he was but the intermediary between God and man, for "the interpretation belongeth to God." If his first work of the kind had brought him to signal honour, it might have made him forget that fact. A man who discovers his power as a preacher runs a great risk. He believes that he is no more than the spokesman of a higher truth which is entrusted to him. But he finds that he can interest men a good deal and even move them a little; he finds* success. Then comes the risk that he should aim at the success, and for its sake palter a little with his convictions. He can make the truth more telling by heightening the colours here and by toning them down there. When men win success soon, they believe that they have got it, instead of the work which they have done having deserved it. They think less of the worth of the work and more of themselves.

It was a steadying thing for Joseph to be left in prison. That is not said by way of excuse for the buder. Nothing can excuse him. God can use even the wrath of man as a means of discipline for other men's souls, but He does not thereby make man's wrath a holy thing.

2. The Deepening of Joseph's Character.

But Joseph heard of the chief butler's elevation: he saw his own interpretation of the dream come true: he saw what he had done in the matter passed by. He was left to the weary routine of policing the prisoners, as though he had never interpreted a dream in his life. And it flung him back on the recognition of the power which was in him, as something which was not given for his own advancement but for God's ends. It made him think of it anew as a strange dowry from Heaven, whatever might be its outcome for himself. He was left to realise the sustaining idea that he was serving a higher purpose and a divine will. He was compelled to recognise how that was something which no man could take away from him, and which depended on no man's recognition. He learned that he could do without the outward recognition, and keep the strong sense that he was an instrument in God's hands for a wondrous end.

That calm sense awes and steadies a man, lending him character and dignity. And so, when Pharaoh, having dreamed a dream which none of his court interpreters can expound, learns that there is a gifted lad in the slave-yard of Potiphar and sends for him, Joseph bears himself like no slave, but as God's freeman. He stands before Pharaoh as one who knows how beyond Pharaoh is God, and who knows also that a man who has tried to realise all that is implied in being God's instrument, has no occasion to vex himself overmuch about his treatment in the court of kings.

At that time the reading of dreams was a business which men could learn as they learned any other business, and to which they applied complicated rules. Pharaoh had his professional seers who combined with their other work the special task of reading dreams, and who qualified themselves for it. When Joseph came before them with the record of a successful interpretation of the butler's dream, it was natural that they should see in him only a cleverer man than themselves, who had sources of information that were hidden from them. Evidently Joseph shared their opinion as to the power to read dreams, and probably he believed that they had that power. He did not differ from the common opinions of the time in which he lived; he merely believed that his God could reveal Himself and His will through that means. But he referred all his power to God. As he had insisted to the butler, so he insisted to Pharaoh, that the interpretation was from the Almighty, and that he was no more than the instrument in God's hands. And he bore himself as one who was no more, yet who was that. Is not this the attitude which a man, no matter what may be his view as to the method by which God reveals His will to men, ought to take in the matter? Through taking it he is on. the way to learn a worthier thought of the means by which God comes to men.

It is remarkable to recognise that these were the stories about their heroes which young Jews learned as children, and which sank down into their very constitution and make of mind. Here was the ideal which the Jewish faith set up for men. This fine courage and indomitable pluck, this holding on to manly honour in spite of all opposition and temptation, this power of self-control in not suffering other men's ingratitude and inhumanity to sour the wholesome soul, this gracious, humane compassion which went on doing helpful things for other men, and above all this deep well of principle and faith in God feeding the inward life and flowing out in the quiet power to conquer circumstance — these were the high qualities which they associated with the men who had made Israel. Israel endured and remained Israel, so long as it could breed men of such a temper.

When one has thought of all this, it is not difficult to understand why the narrator left the brothers to follow Joseph into Egypt They went back to their father, with their younger brother's coat dabbled in blood and a glib lie on their lips. He went down into Egypt, disinherited and a slave. But the future of Israel and its religion went with him. He would some day provide them all with a home and sufficient food in the famine; but that was the least part of his gift. He and he alone could provide them with any vision of hope and duty, with any knowledge of God and truth. There was nothing for the world which could come out of the ten, as they then were. Everything could come out of the one man who, disinherited, lonely, poor, a slave, held fast by his integrity, because he held fast by his God. The hope of the world was there.

3. The Incalculable Element in Religion.

Joseph is an incalculable and invincible force, because he is a religious man. A religious man is always one about whom it is impossible at any time to say how far he will go and how much he will bear. A man who holds by this world, who is governed by its sanctions and upheld by its support, is a calculable force. It is possible to reckon how much he will bear and where he will break down. He lives by what all men may see, and his power is according to the pressure which circumstances put upon him. But a man who has his reserve forces in the things which are not of this world, is apt to rise above circumstances and to mould life to serve an end which life itself does not supply and cannot control.

Israel was to go down into Egypt and become subject to conditions which it would never have chosen and could not control. The untoward circumstances, first of surrounding heathenism, afterwards of bondage, were God's will for them: and they were to submit and to learn how to live above them. If they had faith, the bondage could become a new thing. It was not merely tolerable, because they were able to live beyond it; it had a meaning and a promise. Men could expect something out of this bitter experience. Gibbon says somewhere that all which religious men seem to need, in order to explain the difficulties of God's moral government of the world, is to call the afflictions of one set of men divine chastisements on the wicked, the troubles of another set of men the trials and discipline of their faith. The historian implied the sneering suggestion of how men in religious matters often play with words. Perhaps, as he wrote, he underrated the power of the human soul to transcend untoward outward conditions. What men call things determines and reveals what they think about them. What men think about them determines as surely the attitude which they adopt toward such things, and the influence which they permit these to have over their life. And that really determines everything, for it decides what men become through their surroundings.

Because Joseph believed that in what seemed to wreck his life God would uphold him, because he could lift up his heart to Him who is over all, the outcome of his captivity was not to crush him, but to make him more independent on outward events, more dependent on spiritual powers. Therefore he gave his people more than corn and a shelter. He gave his people a new spiritual uplift.