father was yet alive! Was this what we can call, by any stretch or limitation, “prosperity”? And mark, that all his trouble came upon him, not only _in_, but _for_, his well-doing. In obedience to his father, he went to visit his brethren, and thus afforded the occasion of selling him into bondage; because he did his duty to Potiphar, he was put into circumstances of danger; by refusing to sin against GOD, he incurred the reproach and punishment of sin; by honestly asserting before Pharaoh, “It is not in me, I am nothing but a servant,” he lost the opportunity of obtaining what the king would have been most ready to give him, and afraid to refuse, absolute freedom. My brethren, you and I can hardly bear with trials, and sufferings, and reproaches, and ill-treatment, when we dimly suspect, or are actually conscious, that we have deserved them. How should we murmur, and cry out, and kick, and rebel, if we were thus treated for well-doing! With what words should we answer him who sought to calm and comfort us in such trouble, by assuring us that we did wrong to count it adversity, that it was indeed prosperity! Yet GOD says that Joseph was a prosperous man. It is evident, therefore, that we know not the meaning of prosperity, and must search in His dictionary for the interpretation of it. It is soon found: the first part of the text supplies it—“_The_ LORD _was with him_.” Ah! here is light from heaven. Prosperity does not mean the state of careless independence; being what we will, having what we desire, accomplishing what we propose: it means, the state of dependence, of being kept and ordered by GOD’S providence, treated as He wills, used in accomplishing His purposes. _By right_, we are GOD’S, by creation, and redemption, and sanctification, sent into this world, reconciled and restored after defection, enabled and commissioned to do the will of GOD. We are as much the agents of His purposes as the elements, or any other of His creatures; and it would be just as reasonable, were it possible, for the sun to complain that it is sometimes covered with clouds; the rain, that it has to descend and be absorbed in the earth, or lost in the sea, or scattered in snow; the wind, that it must blow when and where He pleases, as for us to say of any state into which we are brought, of any work to which we are put, or of any calling off from it, “I like not this; I am not prospered. All these things are against me”! We have no right to independence; we ought not to be independent, and if we are, it is either because we have forsaken our appointed service, or because GOD deems us unfit for it, and, therefore, uses us not! A chief part of Joseph’s prosperity, remember, consisted not in the advancement of himself, but in the accomplishment of GOD’S work: “_That which he did_, the LORD made it to prosper.”