THE PATRIARCH OF THE PEACE CAUSE.

Few readers of the "Bond of Brotherhood" and "Herald of Peace" can be unacquainted with an old and most devoted friend of the cause, who subscribed J. P. B. to his articles in both publications. Joshua Pollard Blanchard, of Boston, Mass., was one of the "first three" of the small band of men in America that formed the first Peace Society on that continent. For more than half a century he gave the cause a force of hope, faith and effort, which never abated even in the darkest moment of doubt and trial. At the age of eighty-six, when he could no longer leave his house, he plied his pen in advocacy of the principles he held so dear. When others who had professed them yielded to the great civil war, he stood firm and fast by them, and, in the quiet bravery of an honest heart, laboured in season and out of season to put them forth to the public. He wrote scores of articles for this purpose, but the whole newspaper and periodical press was shut and barred against them. When the long and terrible war was over he gave the last sands of his life to the organization of a new Society, called "The Universal Bond of Peace," composed of persons who had held fast to the peace principle during the conflict. Through the organ of this new Association and the American "Advocate" of Peace, he sent back his loving words of faith and hope in the cause from the verge of the better world. He died on the 3rd of October, and both periodicals contained in their numbers for that month articles from his pen. To ourself personally he was a father in our relations to the peace movement. For twenty-five years we were united by the most intimate fellowship of sympathy. His sunny life and disposition were full of genial radiance at all times, as if the light of Christian faith and love beamed upon and out of him with equal ray, and made him translucent with it through all the length of his long walk. The memory of such men is blessed. He was gathered to his rest and reward truly like a shock of corn fully ripe in its season, leaving and scattering broadcast behind him all the precious seed that ripened to such richness in his life. Thus another of the fathers of the Peace cause has followed the many who have gone before within the last few years. Others are fast approaching the river's brink, and can only pray and hope that new labourers will be raised up to take their places in the wide field in which they have so long toiled.

OLD BURCHELL'S POCKET FOR THE

CHILDREN.

JOSEPH'S RISE, GREATNESS AND GOODNESS.

IF the keepers of Pharoah's state prisons reposed such complete and extraordinary confidence in young Joseph, all the prisoners must have regarded him with admiration, love, and gratitude. What a change in their treatment! We can easily imagine how they looked at him and listened to his kind, gentle words with wonder as he walked in and out of their dark cells. Bad, low and wicked as were their natures, they were brought under such a law and power of kindness as they never experienced before; and doubtless that kindness worked wonders upon their disposition and behaviour. No one witnessed the result with so much surprise and pleasure as the jailer himself. It is quite probable that he began to look upon Joseph as a young man gifted with divine power and wisdom.

How long Joseph had been the entire master of the prison before he received into his keeping two of Pharaoh's body servants, we cannot ascertain. These two men had occupied the nearest or most intimate relation to the king. One was the chief butler, the other, the chief baker; and in those suspicious times, when kings and princes and all sorts of high people were often poisoned by servants, the two men must have held a very high position and title with Pharaoh. They had offended him greatly in some way or other; so that he threw them into prison, and thus disgraced them before all the nobility and people of the realm. They soon began to find in Joseph a kind and sympathetic friend, not because they were noblemen, but because they were distressed, degraded, and perhaps put to the hard work and fare of the lowest criminals. Just notice his deportment to them. One morning, on entering their ward, he observed that they looked very low-spirited and gloomy. His gentle nature was touched at the sight, and he asked in the kindliest accents of that friendly voice: "Wherefore look ye so sadly to-day?" He would have asked the same question, and in the same tone, of the poorest prisoner in the establishment, if looking equally distressed. The two men told him frankly the cause of their trouble. They had been dreaming dreams, which had made a great

impression upon them. Now dreams, for many thousand years, and among all the old nations of the world, were regarded as whispers to the mind from angels or divine spirits. In Bible history we have a

great many cases in which God spoke or appeared to good men in a dream. Jacob saw the angels ascending and descending in a dream. An angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, and directed him to flee from Herod into Egypt with the infant Saviour. In some countries there were diviners, or magicians, or, as we should call them, conjurors, who pretended to interpret dreams and dark sayings. There were hundreds of such pretenders in Egypt; but there were none to be found in the prison for the two dreamers, and they were very much troubled about the matter. But Joseph in a few words reproved them for their belief in such conjurors: "Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me them, I pray you." So they told him their dreams and he interpreted them, and what he said proved true to the letter. King Pharaoh took the butler back into favour and hung the baker. When the fortunate man left the prison for his high place in the palace, Joseph told him a little of his own story, and said, "Think of me when it shall be well with thee, and show kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house."

The butler, without doubt, promised Joseph all he asked, and more too, as he left the prison for his old place by the king; but he soon forgot all he had said and all the kindness he had received from the young Hebrew turnkey. But there was One greater than Pharoah who did not forget him. For two whole years after the ungrateful butler left the prison, Joseph remained there, with his heart as full of faith and hope in God, as if his goodness and purity of life and thought had raised him to the most honourable position in the world. His voice, eye and hand were as gentle and kind to the poorest prisoners as if the butler had repaid him in full for all he had done for him. He had not undertaken to love and serve God, and keep himself unspotted from sinful thoughts and acts, merely for pay in comforts, riches or honour. No; he would live all his days and die in the prison before he would do a wrong thing, even if it would make him Pharaoh's prime minister. Week after week, month after month, and even year after year passed away, and there he was, going about hopeful, noble and gentle, through the wards of the jail. There was now no longer any prospect of his deliverance through the butler's remembrance of him. What a long trial to his faith and hope! But faith and hope

lived and breathed within him cheerily through all the dreary space. And the day at last came when they realized a thousand times more than they had ever prayed or looked for.

It is now Pharaoh himself that dreams two most extraordinary dreams the same night, with perhaps not an hour's space between them. The first was about a shabby lot of lean, bony cows that ate up each a fat, plump beast feeding near, and was not a whit the fatter for the meal. The second was the same sort of thing in the end. Seven miserable blasted ears of corn ate up seven of the plumpest size without being a bit better for it. Two such dreams the same night troubled the king exceedingly. So in the morning he sent for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men, and told them his dreams, "but there were none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh." This made him all the more perplexed and anxious. Now for the first time the butler remembered Joseph, and told the king how the young Hebrew had interpreted a dream for him in prison. "Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him hastily out of the dungeon; and he shaved himself and changed his raiment, and came in unto Pharaoh." What a picture we have in his appearance fresh from the dungeon! and yet a picture that has never been painted on canvas. It ought to be. I have often wondered why some of the many painters of Joseph have never shown him to us just as he was when they brought him hastily into the royal palace by a back-door, in his prison clothes, and with hair of perhaps five years' steady growth on his head and face. What a presence was that for him to stand in! There was this great and proud monarch on his throne, surrounded by the highest grandees of the realm in their magnificent robes. There were the priests and magicians, who were to Pharaoh what the Archbishop of Canterbury and all the other English Bishops would be around the throne of Queen Victoria. What a look of scorn, hatred and contempt these priests and magicians darted upon Joseph as he approached the sovereign to do what they could not! But not so looked the king upon the young man, but kindly and hopefully, for he had never looked upon such a face before. See how he addresses him:

"And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it; and I have heard say of thee that thou canst understand a dream to interpret it."

See how the faces of the magicians, priests and conjurors blacken with wrath as the king sets the young Hebrew above them all in the art and

knowledge they profess! See how pure his face is of a simple flush of pride or self-confidence as he puts away from himself every pretension of ability, and, before the king and nobles of that idolatrous realm, ascribes the knowledge and power to a higher source." And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace." Then the monarch rehearsed all the particulars of his two dreams. And when he ended the story, Joseph again and again testified, that not only the interpretation, but the counsel he was giving came from God alone. And what a fearful meaning to those dreams! How the whole court must have trembled with awe and alarm! Just think of it for a moment. The seven lean, starveling beasts, and the seven blasted ears of corn were to be seven years of famine, which should devour seven years of plenty and all that would be grown in them. For seven years there was to be no rain in the mountains of Abyssinia, and the river Nile was not to overflow its banks, nor even flow on its bed. In all that space nothing that man or beast could eat was to grow in all Egypt, and the famine was to be in other countries also. You have all heard of the Irish Famine, which lasted only a year, and how much terrible suffering there was on that island. But only one crop failed to make all this distress. Wheat, oats and barley grew in Ireland that year as well as ever, and grass was green and rich, and cattle and sheep more abundant. But think of a country, with several millions of people in it, which for seven long years was not to grow a bushel of wheat, or pound of rice, or anything else they could eat. How Pharaoh and his nobles must have trembled before such an announcement! But he believed Joseph; he believed it came from Joseph's God, and the counsel too. How wise was the counsel to lay up carefully in store everything that could be saved during the seven years of plenty against the long famine that was to follow. And who should carry out this counsel except the man through whom God had given it to Pharoah? Not one; not even the most envious and wicked of the magicians could have doubted for a moment as to who was to take charge of this mighty work. See how the Bible tells the story :

"And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants. And Pharaoh said unto his servants, Can we find such an one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is? And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Forasmuch as God has showed thee all this, there is none so discreet and wise as thou art. Thou shalt be over my house, and