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here let children learn duty to their here let us all learn to love

parents
as brethren

as the children of one common parent, let us feek to be reconciled to those with whom we are at variance, and learn to exchange mutual forgivenefs. In the love of Jacob for Jofeph, we fee the image of God's everlasting love; for parental affection in man, is but the faint tranfcript of his fatherly care. Inftead of abating, it increases with age; long abfence and feparation produce no change; Jofeph is ftill as dear to his father as ever. If fuch be love in its image, feen as through a glafs darkly, what must be love in its effence, as it exifts in the Divine Being himself! From the love of parents towards their children we learn what the love of God is. It is the fame in nature, but infinitely more perfect in degree. Yea,

like as a father pitieth his own children, even fo is the Lord merciful to them that fear him. Who then shall separate us from the love of GodIt is eternal and unchangeable like himself. All his works began in love, are carried on in love, and fhall at laft end in love For of him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

SERMON XI.

JACOB BEFORE PHARAOH.

GENESIS, xlvii. 7, 8, 9, 10.

And Jofeph brought in Jacob his father, and fet him before Pharaoh: And Jacob bleffed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh faid unto Jacob, How old art thou? And Jacob faid unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage. And Jacob bleffed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh.

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NEW fcene prefents itself; the fhepherds of Judea at the court of Pharaoh they who had been accuftomed to dwell in tents, and to attend the care of their flocks on the plains

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of their native country, now lodged in the palace of the king of Egypt. Driven from the land of Canaan by a grievous famine, they are come to place themselves under the foftering arm of Jofeph. Pharaoh being informed of their arrival, affigns them the land of Gofhen for the place of their refidence, where they might purfue their favourite employment, unmolested by the prejudices of his Egyptian fubjects, for every fhepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.

Ir must appear rather fingular, that the Egyptians fhould hold in fuch abhorrence the office of a fhepherd, when we confider how highly that employment was generally efteemed by the people of antiquity. The first inhabitants of the earth were fhepherds; eyen kings have been proud, among

their other titles, to be accounted, the thepherds of their people: Nor was it uncommon, in the days of primitive fimplicity, for the fhepherd to be called from his fold, to undertake the weightier care of government. Thus we read of David, that God took him from the fheep-folds, as he was following the ewes great with young, that he might feed Facob his people, and Ifrael his inheritance. The care of the Deity over his people is compared to that of a fhepherd for his flock: One of the Pfalms opens thus; Give ear, O thou Shepherd of Ifrael, thou that leadeft Jofeph like a flock: And our bleffed Saviour represents himself under the fimilitude of a good fhepherd, come to feek and to fave his fheep that were loft.

BUT the Egyptians were a people, eminent above all others, for worldly

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