The Spirit of Truth describes, in the chapter of the text, a truly prosperous man. Three several times, in a few verses, is Joseph’s prosperity put prominently forward. Now just think what his life had been, and was, and was yet to be! He had been motherless from an early age; his father’s love made him the object of his brothers’ envy and hatred. He was thrown into a pit to die, and only escaped death to become a slave in a foreign land to a heathen master. Ere long he was made the victim of a foul accusation; he was thrust into prison, and there detained many long years; and when, at last, a hope of deliverance dawned upon him, he was cruelly disappointed by the king’s servant, whom he had kindly tended and reassured in trouble, and another two years of incarceration, of suspense worse than despair, had to be endured! Yet was he _all the while_—mark that!—a prosperous man. The Scripture does not say or mean that _by and by_ he attained to a prosperity, in which all his former adversity was forgotten. It is of the present, not of the future, that prosperity is predicated. Nor may we suppose that there was but a _show_ of adversity, that Joseph was really what we call prosperous all the while, in that he enjoyed many advantages, that he made steady way towards greatness, that his troubles were but as the toils and difficulties which, in a measure, the most successful have to encounter; or the just merits of misdeeds and the correction of faults. Up to the time of his release from prison, all through the years which Scripture says were prosperous, every hope and aim had been frustrated. It was not that he had difficulty in entering upon his work, that he had much to resist and suffer from its pursuit; but that after it was done, the reward of it was denied him: he only climbed the hill, to be rolled back, just as he reached the summit. His child’s life commended him to the love of his father, _therefore_ he was thrust out. He won the good-will of his master, was diligent in his work, which prospered in his hand; was trustworthy and trusted, rose to be overseer of the house, and _then_, when he had good hope of his freedom and of returning to his yearned-for home, without any fault of his, he was degraded, branded with infamy, and cast into prison. Here, again, he deserved prosperity: the very jailor acknowledged it, and honoured and well treated him. The door, too, seemed to be opening for his deliverance, when a fellow-prisoner went forth full of his praise, an eye-witness of his sorrow, to make mention of him to Pharaoh—but alas! the most strange forgetfulness took possession of the butler, and for two years the name of Joseph never crossed his lips, nor thought of him entered his mind. And even when delivered out of prison, and exalted by Pharaoh, he became but a chief _slave_, next the throne in dignity, second to the king in power, but still not free to return to his home, still kept ignorant whether his