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DISCOURSE L.

ROBERT S. CANDLISH, D.D.

DR. CANDLISH was born about the beginning of the present century, of humble and honest parentage, and, having attended to the usual classical and theological curriculum, was licensed as a probationer, and located, about the year 1832, in a small town in the west of Scotland. Preaching occasionally in Glasgow, his superior gifts attracted attention, and he was soon called to that city, where, ever since, he has held a prominent position, and identified his name with all the great church movements of the age. At the period of the disruption in 1843, his people erected a temporary place of worship, and, some ten years ago, a splendid churchedifice was built, at an expense of nearly £10,000. His people (the St. George's Free Church) are numerous and wealthy, and, besides home support, do much for benevolent purposes abroad.

Dr. Candlish is of middle height and slightly formed, and speaks with a broad Scotch dialect. Earnestness is a striking characteristic in his preaching, his energy resembling the impetuosity and fire of Chalmers. His gesticulations are violent and ungraceful. His mind is rather imaginative than profound, and his writings discover a frequent looseness of thought and style, which appear to be the result of haste in their preparation. They are, however, quite popular; and his chief works-an 66 Exposition of Genesis," "Scripture Characters and Miscellanies," "The Christian Sacrifice," "Past Memories and Present Duties"-have passed through several editions, and extended widely his influence.

The following, which is the first of a series of discourses on Scripture Characters, has had the reputation of being the finest specimen of polished eloquence which this distinguished divine has ever put to press. In the title, we substitute the word "doom" for "characteristic."

THE UNIVERSAL DOOM.

"And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.”—Exodus, i 6.

THE successions of generations among the children of men, has been, from Homer downward, likened to that of the leaves among the trees of the forest. The foliage of one summer, withering gradually away and strewing the earth with wrecks, has its place supplied by the exuberance of the following spring. Of the countless myriads of gay blossoms and

green leaves, that but a few months ago were glancing in the beams of the joyous sun, not one remains; but a new race, all full of brightness and promise as before, covers the naked branches, and the woods again burst forth in beauty and song, as if decay had never passed over any of their leafy boughs. So of men: "one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever" (Eccl., i. 4). The same to the new generation that cometh—the same scene of weary labor, endless variety, alternate hope and disappointment, as if no warning of change had ever been given, as if the knell of death had never rung over the generation that is passing away.

But there is one point in which the analogy does not hold: there is one difference between the race of leaves and the race of men. Between the leaves of successive summers an interval of desolation intervenes, and the "bare and wintry woods" emphatically mark the passage from one season to another. But there is no such pause in the succession of the generations of men. Insensibly they melt and shade into one another. An old man dies, and a child is born; daily and hourly there is a death and a birth; and imperceptibly, by slow degrees, the actors in life's busy scene are changed. Hence the full force of this thought, "one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh," is not ordinarily felt.

Let us conceive, however, of such a blank in the succession of generations as winter makes in the succession of leaves. Let us take our stand on some middle ground in the stream of history, where there is, as it were, a break or a void between one series of events and another, where the whole tide of life, in the preceding narrative, is engulfed and swallowed up, and the new stream has not begun to flow. Such a position we have in some of the strides which sacred history makes over many intervening years, from the crisis or catastrophe of one of the world's dramas to the opening of another, as, for instance, in the transition from the going down of Israel into Egypt, in the days of Joseph, to their coming out again, in the time of Moses. Here is a dreary vacancy, as of a leafless winter, coming in between the scene in which Joseph and his cotemporaries bore so conspicuous a part, and another scene in which not one of the former actors remained to bear a share; but "there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." And the historian seems to be aware of the solemnity of this pause, when, dismissing the whole subject of his previous narrative, he records the end of all in the brief, but significant words, "And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation."

The first view of this verse that occurs to us is its striking significancy and force, as a commentary on the history of which it so abruptly and emphatically announces the close. The previous narrative presents to us a busy scene—an animated picture; and here, as if by one single stroke, all is reduced to a blank. But now we saw a crowded

mass of human beings-men of like passions with ourselves-moving and mingling in the eager excitement of personal, domestic, and public interests like our own. They were all earnest in their own pursuits; and the things of their day were to them as momentous as those of our day are to us. They thought, and felt, and acted, and suffered; they were harassed by cares and agitated by passions; and their restless energies, contending with the resistless vicissitudes of fortune, the very earth they trod, seemed instinct with life and the stern struggles and activities of life-when, lo! as by the touch of a magic spell, or the sudden turn of the hidden wheel, the whole thronged and congregated multitude is gone, like the pageant of a dream, and the awful stillness of desolation reigns. It is as if having gazed on ocean, when it bears on its broad bosom a gallant and well-manned fleet, bending gracefully to its rising winds, and triumphantly stemming its swelling waves; you looked out again, and, at the very next glance, beheld the wide waste of waters reposing in dark and horrid peace over the deep-buried wrecks of the recent storm. All the earth, inhabited by the men with whose joys and sorrows we have been sympathizing-Egypt, with its proud pyramids and palaces-Goshen, with its quiet pastoral homes-the rich land of Canaan the tented deserts of Ishmael-all passes in a moment from our view; and there is before us, instead, a place of tombs, one vast city of silent death. "Joseph is dead, and all his brethren, and all that generation."

What an obituary is here! What a chronicle of mortality! How comprehensive, yet withal how precise and particular—a single intimation swelling out into the most wide, and sweeping, and wholesale generality of announcement. In the first instance, the name is given— "Joseph died"—as if the intention were to enumerate in detail the whole. But the number grows, and accumulates too fast—“ his brethren also died." These, too, might in part be specified-Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah-Issachar, Zebulon, and Benjamin-Dan and Naphtali-Gad and Ashur. But already the family branches out beyond the limits of easy computation. And all around there stands a mighty multitude, which arithmetic is too slow to reckon, and the pen of the ready writer too impatient to register, and the record too small to contain ; and all must, without name or remark, be summed up in the one indiscriminate notice-a notice all the more emphatical on that very account -"Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation."

"And all that generation." How many thousands does this phrase embrace! And of how many thousands is this the sole monument and memorial! How startling a force is there in this awful brevity, this compression and abridgment, the names and histories of millions brought within the compass of so brief a statement of a single fact concerning them that they all die!

And these were men as alive as you are to the bustle of their little

day-as full of schemes and speculations as much wrapt up in their own concerns, and the cares of the times in which they lived. Each one of them could have filled volumes with details of actions and adventures too important in his eyes to be ever forgotten; and yet all that is told of them in this divine record, and told of them as of an uncounted and undistinguished mass, is, that they all died. Or, if any particular individual has been selected for especial notice-if any one, by the leading of Providence, and by his own worth, has gained in this record an undying name—and if he has collected a small circle around him, who dimly and doubtfully stand out in his light and luster, and are not quite lost in the common crowd, still he to whom prominency is given, and they who partly share his exemption from oblivion, are singled out only that they may be the better seen to have their part in the one event which happeneth alike to all; and of each and all the same summary record is to be made " And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation."

Surely it seems as if the Lord intended by this bill of mortality for a whole race, which his own Spirit has framed, to stamp as with a character of utter mockery and insignificance, the most momentous distinctions and interests of time; these all being engulfed and swallowed up in the general doom of death, which ushers in the one distinction of eternity.

I. Look to the announcement as it respects the individual "Joseph died." Carry this intimation back with you into the various changes of his eventful life, invested as these are in your recollection with a peculiar charm by the affectionate associations and the fresh feelings of childhood; and does not the intimation impart to them all a still more touching and tender interest? You see him a child, a boy, a youth at home, the favorite of a widowed father, the first pledge of a love now hallowed by death. You follow him with full sympathy through the petty plots and snares of a divided family, to which his frank and unsuspecting simplicity made him an easy prey; and when you think of him as even then, in boyhood, honored by direct communications from above, and on that very account persecuted and hated by those who naturally should have cherished and watched over him; when you read of his unsuspecting readiness to meet them half-way in their plans against him, and of the desperate malignity of these plans-the cruel deceit practiced on his aged parent, and his own narrow escape, his providential deliveranceare you not touched by the reflection that all this is but to lead to the brief conclusion, "Joseph died ?" You follow him to Egypt. You go with him into Potiphar's house, and rejoice in his advancement there. You share in his disgrace and degradation. Joseph in prison is to you like an old familiar friend. His innocence, his unsullied honor to his deceived master, his unshaken loyalty to his God, endear him to your hearts, and you burn with indignation at the wrongs he suffers. The

dreams which he interpreted, the chief baker's fate, the chief butler's fault, all the particulars, in short, of his exaltation to royal favor-his rank at Pharaoh's court, his power over all Egypt, his policy in provid ing for the years of famine, his treatment of his father and his father's house these circumstances in his history, the history which first won your regard in childhood, and will longest retain its hold over your age -these things give to the earthly career of Joseph an attractiveness and beauty in your fond esteem, equaling, nay, far surpassing, what you have ever found in any of the pictures of romance.

It may not be pleasant to cast over all this stirring picture the sullen gloom of death! Yet, it does invest it all with a sort of softened and twilight charm, like the peaceful shades of evening shed over a busy landscape; and it teaches, at all events, a salutary lesson-to bear in mind, that, prominent as was the station Joseph occupied in his day, famous through all ages as his name has become, great and lasting as were the fruits of his measures, after he was gone, touching not the Israelites alone, but Egypt and all the world, he himself had to go the way of all flesh. His trials, with their many aggravations—his triumphs, with all their glories, were alike brief and transient; and his eventful career ended, as the obscurest and most common-place lifetime must end-for "Joseph died."

Read over again the history of Joseph, with this running title, this continual motto, "And Joseph died." Call before your mind's eye its successive scenes; and as one by one they pass in review before you, and you gaze on the man of so many changes, let a loud voice ever and anon ring in your ears the knell, "And Joseph died," and try how its startling alarums will affect the judgments you form and the emotions you feel! Take each event by itself, isolate it, separate it from all the rest, bring it at once into immediate contact with the event which closes all, and see how it looks by the light, or in the lurid shade of the tomb. Joseph is at home, the idol of a parent. Ah! dote not, thou venerable sire, on thy fair and dutiful child. Remember how soon it may be said of him, and how certainly it must be said of him, that "Joseph died." Joseph is lost, and the aged father is disconsolate. He thinks of his son's bright promise, and of all that he might have been, had he been for a season spared. But grieve not, thou gray-haired patriarch. What though thy child has gone ere he has won life's empty prizes? Ah! think, though he had been left to win them all, how it must have come speedily to the same issue at the last, and it must have been said of him, that "Joseph died." Joseph is in trouble-betrayed, persecuted, distressed, wounded in his tenderest feelings, a stranger among strangers, a prisoner, a slave. But let him not be disquieted above measure, nor mourn over the loss of his prosperity. It will be all one to him, when a few years are gone and the end comes. It is but a little while, and it shall be said of him that "Joseph died." Joseph is

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