These then, remember, are the very family feelings which come out in
the story of Joseph. He honours holy wedlock when he tells his
master's wife, 'How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against
God?' He honours his father, when he is not ashamed of him, wild
shepherd out of the desert though he might be, and an abomination to
the Egyptians, while he himself is now in power and wealth and
glory, as a prince in a civilized country. He honours the tie of
brother to brother, by forgiving and weeping over the very brothers
who have sold him into slavery.
But what has all this to do with God?
Now man, as we know, is an animal with an immortal spirit in him.
He has, as St. Paul so carefully explains to us, a flesh and a
spirit--a flesh like the beasts which perish; a spirit which comes
from God.
Now the Bible teaches us that man did not get these family feelings
from his flesh, from the animal, brute part of him. They are not
carnal, but spiritual. He gets them from his spirit, and they are
inspired into him by the Spirit of God. They come not from the
earth below, but from the heaven above; from the image of God, in
which man alone of all living things was made.
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