Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

therefore he was content with a mere present possession, with plenty of corn and wine and fatness of the earth. In time, no doubt, he and his posterity would feel their need of Beings to worship, of beings to protect them. They would form their gods out of the visible things in which they lived. Earth would become the archetype of Heaven, and therefore all their belief in Heaven would be something to make them more afraid of the earth, less able to till it and subdue it, less able to redeem it from the weeds and the beasts that possessed it. This is the last and highest result of the tribe of hunters, of those who seemed as if they held the earth in fee and had an undisputed right to the property of it. The poor wanderer in the desert, the plain man,—whose ignorance and cowardice, and meanness, were purged away by God's discipline, who lived in a land which was not his own, and died an exile,left a family out of which there grew a nation, which was itself to give birth to a universal church; which was to possess and conquer and civilize a world. If we begin from the invisible, if we confess Him whom we cannot see to be the ground and root of all that we do see, if we unite ourselves to a present King and Father, if we believe that every place we walk in is a dreadful and a joyful place because He is there, that we ourselves are dreadful beings because our bodies are temples in which he has promised to dwell,-a mighty and glorious future lies before us in the blessings of which we shall be sharers along with the distant seed that will then be inheriting the earth; because heaven and earth are made one in Christ; and the spirit and the fire which have come forth from Him will quicken and renew the whole visible universe. Shall we take up this position, or shall we spend our time

ESAU AND JACOB; THE CONTRAST.

117

in considering how much of the fatness of the earth, of its oil and wine, we can appropriate to ourselves,—not caring how much we shut out from ourselves the good things which eye hath not seen or ear heard,—not caring if the earth remains for ever an habitation of unclean beasts and evil spirits?

SERMON VI.

THE DREAMS OF JOSEPH.

(Lincoln's Inn, Third Sunday in Lent, March 23, 1851.)
Lessons for the day, Genesis XXXIX. and XLII.

GENESIS XLII. 8, 9.

And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him.

6

And Joseph remem

bered the dreams which he dreamed of them.

MANY persons, in our day, have come to the conclusion that the Bible contains a number of records respecting the early life of the world, which may be very instructive to us if we only interpret them according to our more advanced knowledge, and do not hold ourselves bound by the scriptural explanations of them. It is not denied that these explanations have a worth of their own. 'They tell us how men looked at the marvels of their own life, and of the world, when those marvels were just beginning to 'be noticed how naturally and readily they referred them to some supernatural source. It is our privilege, we are ' told, to have rid ourselves of the theocratic element out of personal and social life; we see, or may see, all miracles, prophecies, presentiments, brought under ordinary human 'principles and laws; but we are not to be the less

[ocr errors]

THE DREAMS OF JOSEPH.

119

'thankful for the light which history, sacred or profane, " throws upon the condition of those who were still re'cognising the prints of divine footsteps in the earth about them,—or in the more startling experiences of their own ' minds.

I may have many opportunities of considering other applications of this doctrine. I shall speak to-day of one which the history of Joseph brings specially under our notice. He had dreams of his own greatness, the Scripture says, which were fulfilled. He foretold a coming famine in Egypt, and provided against it. He referred his own dreams, and his power of interpreting Pharaoh's, to God. 'A very natural conclusion for him to arrive at,' our philosophers will say. If we take the history of his ' after life as it stands, what were his early dreams but the 'acting out of that law which an eminent teacher of our

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

day has expressed in the words: "Our wishes are a fore

feeling of our capabilities,"-what was there in his 'judgment of the condition of Egypt, and in his arrange'ments with respect to it, which differed from what we 'should call, in our times, a rude political discernment or 'intuition?'

I hope, through God's grace, to consider these questions fairly; I am thankful that they have been started. I believe much is to be learned from them which will help us in our understanding of Scripture, and will increase our love for it.

The formula that our wishes are fore-feelings of our capabilities,' is, I believe, one of much beauty and worth. Many difficult passages in the biographies of great men are explained by it. Perhaps all of us may have learnt from what has occurred to ourselves, that it is not only applicable

to great men. In looking back to the castles of earliest boyhood, we may see that they were not wholly built of air,—that part of the materials of which they were composed were derived from a deep quarry in ourselves,—that in the form of their architecture were shadowed out the tendencies, the professions, the schemes, of after years. Many may smile sadly, when they think, how little the achievements of the man have corresponded to the expectations of the child or of the youth. But they cannot help feeling that those expectations had a certain appropriateness to their characters and their powers; that they might have been fulfilled, not according to the original design, but in some better way. I do not think that such retrospects can be without interest, or need be without profit, to any one. However shifting the scenery of a man's life may have been, however various and contradictory the purposes which he has formed and which he has relinquished,—he will be able in most cases, if he looks for it, to trace some predominant thought or wish which has connected them together; which explains their diversities; which has never quite deserted him at any time. Some dream there has been. —it may have belonged to the day or the night. in may have been part of a Evely consciousness, or of an almost passive impression-which has said: “This or that “thou mayest to. To this or that, thou art destined” As new murvari circumstances av us hither and her as new desires rules are called fr in 1-dis irst numation seems to be lost or banished. But it appears again in another form. The new circumstances. he new cities, look as I dey night hemselves be impartei ir the sake his primary half-urgen we ink I might quint

[ocr errors]
« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »