_Affliction chastens._--The famine had in the mean time spread to Palestine. The shadow of the grief for Joseph still lay heavily on the household of the patriarch. Joseph is lost; shall Benjamin, too, perish? It is pleasant to observe that the character of the brothers in the mean time has been changed for the better. There is evidently a lurking sense of guilt and a desire to atone for it in the manner in which Judah pledges himself for the safety of the youngest child. And the same marked change is visible in the conduct of all the brothers on the journey. The stratagem of the cup was cunningly devised to test their feelings. They might have escaped by throwing the blame on Benjamin. Instead of that, they dread nothing so much as that he may have to suffer, and are willing to sacrifice everything to save him. When this new spirit has become thoroughly apparent, the end to which the whole group of Jacob stories pointed all along is reached; the work of moral regeneration is complete. Jacob himself has been purified by affliction, and the brothers and Joseph have been developed by the same hard taskmaster into true men. The scene of recognition which follows, when the great vice-regent orders his attendants from the apartment and embraces those who once attempted his life, with the words, "I am Joseph, your brother: does my father still live?" is touching in the extreme, and the whole ends happily in a blaze of royal pomp, like a true Eastern tale. A word as to the _method_ which should be used in teaching these stories. If the fairy tale holds the moral element in solution, if the fable drills the pupil in distinguishing one moral trait at a time, the biblical stories exhibit a combination of moral qualities, or, more precisely, the interaction of moral causes and effects; and it is important for the teacher to give expression to this difference in the manner in which he handles the stories. Thus, in the fables we have simply one trait, like ingratitude, and its immediate consequences. The snake bites the countryman, and is cast out; there the matter ends. In the story of Joseph we have, first, the partiality of the father, which produces or encourages self-conceit in the son; Joseph's conceit produces envy in the brothers. This envy reacts on all concerned--on Joseph, who in consequence is sold into slavery; on the father, who is plunged into inconsolable grief; on the brothers, who nearly become murderers. The servitude of Joseph destroys his conceit and develops his nobler nature. Industry, fidelity, and sagacity raise him to high power. The sight of the constant affliction of their father on account of Joseph's loss mellows the heart of the brothers, etc. It is this interweaving of moral causes and effects that gives to the stories their peculiar value. They are true moral pictures; and, like the pictures used in ordinary object lessons, they serve to train the power of observation. Trained observation, however, is the indispensable