We may observe, then, in continuing our analysis of the story, that when the brethren were accused of "rewarding evil for good," and the cup was found in Benjamin's sack, they unanimously refused to be considered blameless, and returned once more with their brother to the city to become the bondmen of the prince,. and share the fate and the misery of Benjamin. "And Judah said, Behold we are my lord's servants, both we and he also with whom the cup is found." Manifest as Manifest as was the sincerity of these words, we yet find not that the purpose of the Patriarch was changed. "And he said, The man in whose hands the cup is found, he shall be my servant; and as for you get you in peace unto your father."

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What was the tone and manner in which this determination was pronounced, it is impossible to say. Whether by his actions or his voice Joseph intimated to his brethren the doubts he entertained, and the difficulties he had felt, in reconciling their various declarations with regard to his father we cannot tell; but certain it is, that no sooner had the word "father" been uttered, than Judah once more pressed forward, and in terms of the most unpretending earnestness, and pathetic sincerity, declared his readiness" to abide instead of the lad." 66 Then," says Moses, "Judah

came near unto Joseph," and in a speech of such careless and inimitable beauty, and with arguments so persuasive, and tenderness so touching, urged home his suit upon the reason and the feelings of the Patriarch, that, whatever might have been his previous intentions, whatever his premeditated views, all his resolutions were broken by the resistless impulses of nature, and he could no longer refrain or conceal himself before them all. “And he wept aloud, and said unto his brethren, I am Joseph, doth my father yet live?"

It has been usual to consider this whole artifice to have been designed by Joseph to try the affection of his brethren towards Benjamin. It was undoubtedly his object in their former visit to determine whether they had done actual violence to the only remaining child of Rachel, and therefore he demanded his presence in Egypt. But I cannot be persuaded to think that it was his sole, or even his principal object in the plan which is now under our review, still further to probe the nature of their fraternal feelings towards their youngest brother. For if that was really his purpose, it does not seem consistent with his conduct throughout. For why then did he not discover himself when Judah and his brethren first returned and informed him of their

unanimous resolution to share the bondage of Benjamin. In this all the brothers united to display their sentiments-and Joseph relented not. Surely their interest in Benjamin had now been sufficiently proved, and it seems difficult upon this supposition to say why he still remained unmoved. But it is still more difficult, upon this supposition, to account for his afterwards yielding to the peculiar intercession of Judah. Judah's offer related only to himself as a substitute for Benjamin, and how such an offer was to prove the affection of the rest more than it had hitherto been proved, it is hard to conceive. Nor do. we find any thing in the tenor of Judah's speech which in any way marks their love for Benjamin to have been either particularly sincere or strong. The burthen of Judah's grief lay in his fear that if Benjamin returned not from Egypt, his father's gray hairs would be brought down with sorrow to the grave. His plea for offering himself was, not that he himself so loved Benjamin that he could not bear to see him in bonds, but that he had become surety for the lad unto his father." And the prayer for his own detention instead of Benjamin, was founded, not on his own estimate of the value of Benjamin's life, but on the impossibility of his " going up to his father, if the lad were not with him, lest peradventure he

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should see the evil that should come upon his father," His father seems almost alone present in Judah's thoughts. Every argument is drawn from his father's feelings, every appeal is grounded on his father's grief, and his father's name is in every line, recurring with a frequency of repetition which under any other circumstances would have ruined the eloquence of whose beauty and whose force it now forms the principal part. It is filial, therefore, and not fraternal affection which pervades the whole. It was filial, therefore, and not fraternal affection, by the display of which the feelings of the Patriarch were so irresistibly kindled; and the moment we take this view of the subject, we find the whole conduct of the Patriarch explained. Joseph doubted whether his father still lived, or, if alive, whether he still retained the same lively interest in the children of Rachel which he had once done; and these doubts arose from the difficulty he experienced in reconciling some apparent inconsistencies in the statements of his brethren. When Judah stepped forth to make known their general resolution to share in Benjamin's bonds, undeniable as was the kindness and generosity of the proposition, Joseph still remained undiscovered, because his difficulties were not solved, nor his doubts removed. His father was still not mentioned,

and consequently he was still left in the same darkness as before upon that which he most wished to hear. But when Judah afterwards proceeded to a minute and circumstantial detail of the whole course of their proceedings with their father, and all the grief their father had felt, and all the anguish their father still endured, and all the despair with which the detention of the lad would overwhelm the decaying strength and declining days of their father, the case was then completely altered. In every part of Judah's statement, the existence of his father was taken for granted, in every argument Jacob's unabated love for Joseph and for Benjamin was implied, and in every sentence his sorrow was painted and his death forboded, if Benjamin were retained and all these things were so urged as to defy incredulity. It was impossible to resist the conviction of truth so told, and "Doth my father yet live," seems to have been the last expiring effort of difficulty and doubt. The assertion of his father being " yet alive," now came in such an unquestionable shape, that it would have been criminal any longer to resist the fact. There remained, therefore, but the three following courses of conduct to pursue to release Benjamin out of his sight; or to run the risk of shortening his father's days; or to discover himself at once to his whole family, and send them