Arrangements for the future are soon made. Joseph assures them that the best of Egypt’s land shall be given them, and insists that they hasten home and bring their aged father and their little ones――every thing they have――down to Egypt, because five more years of famine are to follow. Egyptian wagons――unknown to Jacob’s household――are sent, and the brethren are hastened off. Were they not a happy band? The great agony of fear is past; the surgings of anxiety and solicitude have ceased; the pungent convictions of that dread crime long ago against their younger brother have done their work, and wrought out “the peaceable fruits of righteousness.” This is a wonderful crisis in their life history. Let us hope that most if not all of them found God through these fiery trials and these penitent tears! They are home again. The first thing is to break this strange secret to their father. They make just two points: “Joseph yet alive;” “Joseph Governor over all the land of Egypt.” It was too much――was too good to be believed. The English version has it, “Jacob’s heart fainted.” Better――“Jacob’s heart _remained cold_, for he believed them not.” It stirred no joyous and warm emotions, for he could not believe it. But when they told him all the words of Joseph, and especially when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, then his spirit rose; his heart waxed warm; he said: “_It is enough_; Joseph my son _is_ yet alive; I will go and see him before I die.” Beersheba, the old home of his father Isaac, lay on his route. He stopped there and offered sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac. The night following the Lord met him in vision, saying, “I am thy God and the God of thy father; fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt and will bring thee up again; and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes”――_i. e._ to close them in death.――――How tenderly appreciative of the circumstances and of Jacob’s need was this vision of Beersheba! Such are God’s blessed ways with his children. He can not send them into scenes of special danger or of critical interest, without some special manifestations of his presence. II. We are to notice _the hand of God_ in this history in its twofold bearings: 1. As active in the sufferings and moral trial of the virtuous; 2. As manifested in his overruling control of the wicked to bring forth from their wickedness abounding good. 1. As active in the sufferings and moral trial of the virtuous.――――The most cursory reader of this story will see in it a striking case of the sufferings of innocence. Joseph, envied and hated for no fault of his; coming near to being murdered by his own brothers, and really sold into slavery――a slavery prospectively life-long and in a distant, unknown land; torn away from every thing dear in _home_, at the age of seventeen:――this surely was innocence subjected to the sternest suffering.