The ways of the Almighty God are mysterious, and far above human comprehension. God blessed Joseph, and he grew into man’s estate goodly and well-favoured. His master’s wife noticed him and became madly enamoured; losing all self-control, she made criminal advances to him, which he repelled, and entreated her to remember that he was her husband’s trusted servant, and that she should not induce him to commit such wickedness against his master and sin in the sight of God. She still persisted, till at last she used force, and he fled from her presence, leaving a piece of his coat by which she held him. Seeing that he was not to be overcome, she hated him, and, to revenge herself on him, she reversed the story and told it to her husband, who, believing her tale, became very angry with Joseph and prosecuted him. Though the Court wherein he was tried found him innocent, yet the nobleman persuaded the judge to place Joseph in confinement, that his wife’s conduct might not be made public; and, as Joseph had neither friends nor means, he was helpless, and consequently was sent to prison, where he remained many years. In his solitude, the mind of the captive must have often recalled scenes of home, and all the lessons that he had learnt orally—as was the custom in the East—and remembered the great deeds and renown of his ancestors, and the marvellous acts of God towards Noah and Abraham and Isaac, and his own father Jacob, who was surnamed by God Israel. In regarding his miserable condition he must have thought of the visit to Egypt of his great-grandfather, Abraham, who came as a prince, and was treated by the king as his friend; and how the king, when he found he was misinformed by Abraham regarding his wife, made honourable amends, and gave him flocks and herds as presents; and when the famine in Canaan was over, he and his wife and their nephew left Egypt in state (the Egyptian historians call these visitors “Shepherd Kings”); and how when there was another famine in Canaan, in the lifetime of Isaac, there was corn in Egypt, and Isaac would have visited Egypt as did his father, but that he was forbidden by God. Thus time sped till Joseph was thirty years old, when Pharaoh, King of Egypt, was warned in dreams of the approach of the great and memorable famine, which was to last seven long years, during which time the earth would make its sabbath, and produce no food for man or beast. It was then that the unhappy captive was remembered by a fellow-prisoner, whose dream Joseph had interpreted, and which was realised as he predicted; so that, when all the wise men of Egypt could not tell the King the meaning of his dreams, and when the King in his disappointed rage was about to condemn them to death, Joseph was called.