Sermon Preached in Holy Trinity Cathedral by Dean Trivett on March 27
Text:—"And Pharoh said unto his servants, em we find such a one as this dri whom the spirit of God is." Gen. 41, ORE than any other single figure in the bible, Joseph is a type of Christ.
No doubt for this reason the compilers of our Lectionary justify the arrangement whereby he is the subject of the Old Testament lessons on two Sundays out of the fifty-two in the Church Year.
He is depicted as a truly remarkable character. He is one of the few men in the Old Testament who stands before us in an altogether favourable li; ight. He seems to have inherited all the good traits of his father, grandfather, and great grand-nip father, and to have conquered their failings.
A brief review of his life will suggest very valuable considerations to us. Here again may I remind you that the writer of the Book of Genesis does not present us with a continuous narrative, but rather he gives us the story in a series of, vivid pen pictures.
The story of Joseph unfolds before us like the plot of a modern play. And as it moves from scene io scene, we are held in the grip of ihe drama, We see a boy of genius, hated by his brothers because he was more gifted than they—end knew it. We fallow the vicissitudes of his fortunes. He goes from the favourites place in his father's household, into. slavery in Egypt. He wins the trust of his master—and loses it unjustly through a woman's cruel love. He is thrust into prison, and seems forgotten in the dungeons of Pharoh.—We have a few vivid pictures of his life in that underworld. And then comes the climax of the story, when by the hand of God he is brought out of prison, ünd lifted up to be next to Pharoh on the throne, and becomes the virtual ruler of Egypt.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.