Once more, by Joseph's coat of many colours, rent and blood-stained, we are reminded of the marvellous way in which God's providence brings good out of evil, and makes the darkest events in His servants' lives links in a chain of mercies. The beautiful garment given by paternal love, and worn perhaps with some pride, was torn indeed from the persecuted Joseph—first to be replaced by the scanty apparel of a slave, then afterwards by the garb of a criminal in prison; but it was from wearing the dress of humiliation that Joseph was raised to power and honour. It was not the garment made by his father that he put off, in order to assume robes of high office in the court of King Pharaoh. Had Joseph remained in his home at Hebron, unharmed by malice, untouched by persecution, he would never have been the ruler in Egypt, the benefactor of a nation, the friend of a king, the earthly preserver of all Israel's race. It has been said that "evil is good in the making;" so, even from the malice of Joseph's brethren, the grief of his father, and his own anguish when "the iron entered into his soul," God brought forth blessings unnumbered to the man who feared and obeyed Him. We cannot leave the stained vestment of the ancient patriarch without turning our thoughts to Him of whom it is written, that "He was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and His name is called The Word of God." In Joseph we see a remarkable type of our blessed Redeemer, sent by His Father to visit man, as Joseph was sent to his brethren in Shechem. "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." For envy, the chief priests delivered Christ into the hands of the Gentiles; and the betrayer received money for Him whom the children of Israel did value, even as their fathers sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver. But it is in his subsequent exaltation to be a prince and deliverer—it is in his exercise of boundless liberality and free pardoning grace—that Joseph is especially a type of our Lord. "God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance," said the patriarch to his penitent brethren, who owed preservation from famine to him. And it was to those whom He deigned to call brethren that Christ addressed the gracious assurance, "I go to prepare a place for you." To Him the sun, and the moon, and the stars pay homage; to Him all the world shall bow down; in His hands is the bread of life; and His word is still, "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth." Once sinners parted Christ's garments amongst them, and upon His vesture did they cast lots; but the hour is approaching when they shall look upon Him whom they pierced, and behold His glory,— "Whose native vesture bright, Is the unapproached light, The sandal of whose foot the rapid hurricane!" [Illustration] [Illustration] VIII. The Ark of Bulrushes.