THE RECONCILIATION

It is deeply interesting and instructive to notice how the attitude of the ten brethren changes. They appear at the beginning so confident in themselves, and so prompt in dealing with a situation as it emerges. They know exactly what to do, when the business before them is that of dealing with a difficult younger brother, and they have a ready scheme to meet the questions of their father as to what has become of his favourite son. But life grows larger and full of strange issues which they are not able to measure or control. They stand bewildered before the novelty of the famine. Yet that is only a physical condition, and their bewilderment merely proves that they have something to learn. But from that time their estate becomes always more complex and more difficult.

1. A Power that Baffles and Bewilders.

It is as though they were in the grasp of some greater force, which was bearing them on, whether they will or not, to an end which they cannot foresee. They are like men who are borne down by a cataract which they cannot stem. They are forced to look back into their past and to recall to memory the old sin which they had long forgotten: they are brought face to face with a stern justice in things, which controls their actions and even their thoughts. One event after another befalls them with which they feel themselves powerless to deal. They do not know how to answer suspicion or to meet the accusation of being spies; they do not know what to do about the money which has been restored to them. Bewilderment pursues them, so that they cannot find their way. Yet, bit by bit, they learn how to deal with each situation as it rises. From life they learn humility and a new sense of loyalty and truth and sincerity and honour towards their brother. And at the end they find in the strange force which has baffled and bewildered them the figure of their wronged brother. And he assures them of his unchanged affection and of his entire confidence in them. He gives them therewith more than food and shelter and safety, for he gives them back confidence in themselves, and reconciles them anew with life.

Men have often seen in that attitude of Joseph a type of Jesus Christ; and, though the analogy has been carried into those details which are a perpetual snare to the student of types, the parallel is on broad lines very close. Men are still troubled and perplexed, as the brethren were. They have for a time gone their own way, taking things as they came, without much thought as to whether there is any definite end to human life; and therefore they have not hesitated to admit into their lives certain baser elements. They have escaped from some perplexities by lies; they have obtained pleasures for which they hungered by disloyalty to honour. There are, accordingly, some things in their lives which it is not pleasant to recall; but men enter into the common conspiracy of silence, which agrees to shroud such matters by ignoring them. They resolve to do as the world does, which is to live as though these things were not there. Somehow or other, — nobody presumes to say how, — that which is crooked will become straight, if only nobody calls it crooked or thinks of it as crooked. Somehow or other matters will right themselves.

2. A Power, that makes for Righteousness.

In the experience of many men, life, suddenly as it might seem and unaccountably, begins to persist in showing that it has moral issues and in bringing them home. Some force has been loosened by their action, which seems now to act of its own accord. Matters do not right themselves, but rather persist in showing themselves all wrong. Uneasiness, which often passes into dull remorse, begins to weigh heavily on the heart. It can be dispelled by close attention to other interests or by excitement, but it comes back. It can be kept as much as possible at arm's-length: but, even when it is not acutely felt, it remains as a cloud over the spirit, a damper to real joy, a weight on all forward looking hopes. Or the shortness of life begins to thrust itself on the attention. That also men can keep by active eagerness at arm's-length; but sometimes the arms are too weary and the anxiety too great for them to succeed in keeping anything off. It begins to creep in when it will. Joy and sorrow alike help to call for it: joy, because it is so short-lived and so uncertain; sorrow, because it has such tremendous power to make all men sincere. And so the thought of it, the mastering thought of it, takes slow possession of the heart.

Men discover then, as the ten brethren did, that they are in the hands of some power which is older and stronger than themselves, which is drawing them on, however much against their will, which is impelling them to an end that they cannot welcome because they cannot foresee it. Life discovers how it is not a haphazard thing, but a unity. It reveals how every deed and thought go out from men's careless lives to become a tissue of consequences from which they cannot break free. Life makes ever clearer how it has its great issues appointed by One who through it fulfils His tremendous and unchangeable purpose: and men are and often betray how they are like creatures that are trapped and cannot escape.

3. A Power that makes for Mercy.

But, when men deal with that strange life sincerely and with singleness of purpose, they are brought to meet Him "who is able to open the book." They find how God has not troubled them in vain, but has called them to see the large and liberal purpose that is through all the tangle of human life. And Christ transforms life; for the constraining power against which they have fought so long becomes the wise and great and holy will of the Father. To accept it frankly, to fling aside all evasions, to be done with false refuges, is to be reconciled with life, and to find how the tangle simplifies itself slowly and steadily. "In His will is our peace," and in submission to it our strength. So often men fight against it, even as little children, fretful and sleepy, fight against the sleep which would make all their fretfulness impossible. But when they cast off insincerity and false choices and deal truly with themselves, the forgiveness of God will avail to make life new, because it avails to make anew the men who meet it.

Joseph forgave his brethren: and that seems to many a very natural and simple thing to do in the circumstances. But along with his forgiveness he also said a singularly great and far-reaching thing, for he told them of his conviction that through all their past and his past had run an overruling purpose of good, and that God, without their knowledge and apart from their intention, had used their hard-heartedness and cruelty toward their brother in order to prepare a home for all Israel in Egypt. How did he come to utter that in such a connection and, from a slight matter like his forgiveness, to draw so vast a conclusion? Is it not because, when one touches forgiveness at all, whether in giving or in receiving it, one is in contact with something which in its own nature is of the highest and gives rise to endless thoughts? In forgiveness, spirit deals with spirit directly. In forgiveness, men are dealing not first with things nor even with the consequences of acts, not with laws, but with God. There God breaks in, as it were, on life; and we become conscious of how even the evil we have done, with all its terrible and apparently irretrievable consequences, is not outside His control. He can master it, since He can give new hope to us who have committed it. Forgiveness is a miracle, it is indeed the miracle of grace; and as such it is apt to lift us up to a wider view of what it implies to be in God's hands. He can govern even evil; He governed even evil, when we gave Him in our lives little else, to fulfil something of His ends. Is not that what the life, humbled, repentant, weak, awake to a sense of what it has done, craves to know? And in the assurance of forgiveness it finds what it needs. God has governed the past, even when we forgot Him. He made something out of the poor service which we offered Him. Men, who see His face in forgiveness and the wonder of His power and mercy, can set their faces humbly forward. For God, who could control them even in their rebellion, can out of their repentant lives build up something which will become a part of His almighty purpose for good.