By the Lord Bishop of Ripon.

"Do not interpretations belong to God?"—Genesis xl. 8.

Joseph had shown from the first a character and qualities which distinguished him from his brethren. They were men with little or no thought beyond their daily work. In the open fields, watching their flocks and enjoying, after their day's task, physical repose, they found enough to satisfy them. He possessed a soul which went out beyond such a level of life; he reached out to something higher. Like the great French preacher, he could not leave his soul amid mere earthly things. In his brethren's eyes he was a dreamer. They were practical, and they had no sympathy with his dreams. He, meanwhile, was full of a wistful wonder, longing to find out the meaning of the strange visions which filled his soul. Life to him must be something more than eating, drinking, and tending sheep. No doubt a touch of egotism and personal ambition mingled with his dreams; this belonged to his youth; this, in time, would pass away. Life, with its stern and remorseless reality, would come to test him and his visions, proving what manner of man he was. Meanwhile, he was better with his dreams of the larger purpose and scope of life than his brethren, who were content with somewhat material gratification.

Time showed that he was no mere dreamer. The day came when the Prince of his people let him go free. The opportunity of large and noble service came to him; and he showed force, readiness of resource, sagacity, and practical vigour. His genius it was which mitigated misfortune and averted disaster. He foresaw and provided for the days of scarceness; he piloted Egypt through the bitter seven years of famine. His dreams were not the idle dreams of an empty mind; they were the visions of an energetic and finely tempered spirit. His gifts stood the strain of practical duty.

They had previously endured the harder test of adversity, neglect, and inaction. There are powers which lose their bloom under the pressure of prosaic duties; there are powers which wither under the shadow of misfortune and obscurity. The trial which comes from neglect is, perhaps, the severer, since it is hard for men to believe in themselves when there is seemingly none else to believe in them. But in the darkness of those neglected days the genius of Joseph remained bright. His insight, his power of vision, was not dimmed in the prison. He entered into the sorrows of other men; he showed a sympathy with their difficulties; he strove to read for them and with them the meaning of their lives.

And the sustaining source of his powers breaks out into view in the words of our text: "Do not interpretations belong to God?"

We can realise the pathos of the question and the tried, yet unbroken, faith which it reveals. Joseph is trying to read the meaning of the dreams of his fellow-prisoners. Life, and the experiences of life, he assures them, are not meaningless. He will not forego his faith in the significance of life. We may not be able to explain all; but there is, nevertheless, a meaning in all. It is as though he said, "I too have known my visions—beautiful visions of life's triumphs and life's joys. They faded with my growing years; and instead of the achievements which I saw in my dreams, there came false accusation, imprisonment, and neglect; but though the golden light of those visions is gone, they were not meaningless. I wait still for the unfolding of their significance. Still I rely upon Him who will make all things plain—for do not interpretations belong unto Him?"

As we listen to the words, we feel how aptly they fit into our own lives.

We, like Joseph, have had our visions. We dreamed of the bright things, the noble achievements, the splendid triumphs which life would bring; but as life unfolded her stern sequences of reality, the golden lines of our dreams vanished, the splendid tints of the morning melted into the light of common day.

Or perhaps our dreams have not gathered round ourselves, but round others—Love, which sets her objects in such golden lights, that she sees visions for them brighter than ambitions can dream for itself.

It may be only the little child, whose prattle half-pleases, half-worries you; but you are delighted to be so worried to win such pleasure. The dear innocence of its winsome ways, its simpleness and quaint airs of sagacity, are perpetual fascinations. In their lives we live; and for them we see visions and dream dreams.

But the vision of delight fades. The promise which the vision gave seems to be denied its fulfilment.

It may be the young man, standing on the threshold of life, bearing himself with quietness of manner, but full of a happy gentleness and thoughtfulness towards others, and gifted with a sweet and rare conscientiousness in little things.

Or, again, it may be the man of maturer years, full of high and chivalrous impulses, ready like a knight of old to gird on his sword, and yearning to fill his life with worthy deeds, and yet blending, with all noble martial ardour, tender and generous thoughts for those who are dear, dearer than life, to his heart.

At this season—teeming with tender and sorrowful memories—visions such as these rush back upon our thoughts. The deep pathos and the sad tragedy of life speak to us out of such memories; for what golden dreams gathered round the heads of those who were so dear; and what sorrow is ours, when with the revolutions of the sun, the visions melt away; and all the hope, the promise, the expectation of achievement are exchanged for sorrow and solitude of heart. Then we too, like Joseph, find that our dreams can fade; we too encounter the gloomy days which succeed the bright morning of our hopes. We are imprisoned with sorrow; the iron enters into our soul; the bars of stern adversity shut out the cheerful sunlight of other days.

In such hours, when life, which seemed at one time so full of glorious meanings, droops into darkness and seems to grow cold and insignificant, our stay must be that of Joseph. Our trust must be in the living God. The vision seems to have lost its meaning. Life has become, to our sorrow-stricken hearts, flat, stale profitless, and meaningless; but it is not so. There is One who can fulfil our best dreams and give back to us their lost meanings. "Do not interpretations belong to God?"

Our trust must be in Him, and in none else. True, there is often to be met with in life the easy chatterer who will take upon himself to explain everything for us. All things are easy to the man who has never faced mental anguish or heart-sorrow. He will not hesitate to interpret our dreams for us, but his pretensions are vain. The dream and the meaning of the dream are for us alone. Men may soothe us in our grief. Their kindness and their attempted sympathy may be welcome to us, as the faded bunch of flowers from a child's hot hand may be sweet and acceptable; but to read the meaning of the vision, and to explain it aright, to disclose its fulfilment, showing to us that nothing is vain and no vision wholly meaningless—to do all this belongs to God; for do not interpretations belong to Him? He alone can sustain our trust in the trials of life. He alone can give us back the visions which so soon vanished from our sight.

The power to realise this constitutes the difference between the secular and the spiritual disposition. In the view of one poet, man is but a compound of dust and tears. Life is but sorrow mingled with earthliness; but better and higher than Swinburne's thought is Wordsworth's teaching. The older poet has the nobler view. He will not let life sink down to a mere secular meaning; it is more than grief and earth. There is that in us which transcends the earth and can triumph over tears:

Into the world we came, but not as mere dust, to be mingled with tears. There was a breath of the Almighty which breathed upon us:

The divine spark is ours. It kindles a light and a fire. It calls forth visions past all imagining. Our young men, by a Divine Spirit's help, may see visions, and our old men dream dreams. And these visions are not mere idle fancies, creations of our folly or of our ambition. True, there are foolish visions and empty dreams; but all visions are not foolish, nor are all dreams empty. Far more empty is the soul that has no visions, to whom no bright and noble outlook upon life's possibilities can ever come. This is what Shakespeare recognises. Theseus is the man of action. He has dealt with the hard prosaic work-a-day world. To him the visions of the poet or dramatist are alike empty imaginings. The grandest and the most foolish are alike only beautiful bubbles which will vanish with all their rich colourings into empty air. The work of the poor players, who labour in their foolish fashion to give him pleasure, is no worse and no better than that of the most finished actors. To him all ideas or visions are unpractical and unreal. He is a man of action, loving deeds and despising dreams.

There is a sort of virtue in this; but how secular it all is, how low and insignificant life becomes, if no noble ideas and no heavenly visions environ it! How vain its achievements, if there be no promised land and no divine fire to give light in the night season! And so Shakespeare lets us see that, while idle dreams are vain enough, yet that for a man to be wholly without them, and to be destitute of ideas and visions, is to be poor indeed.

The true idea of life lifts us above the secular plane and places us where the heavenly vision is possible, and where the Shekinah light of God's presence is ever visible—though seen now as cloud, and now as flame.

But for the full meaning of all the visions and experiences of life, we must wait. The vision is from God; the experience is from God; from Him will come the explanation. "Do not interpretations belong to God?" The vision was given us yesterday—we must wait for its interpretation; the meaning comes to-morrow.

It is in the spirit of this principle that our Lord spoke, "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." So at another time He spoke: "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons." There is a sweet interpreting "afterwards" of life's bitter experience. "No chastening seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Our faith carries us forward to that interpreting hereafter, when once we realise that interpretations belong to God.

Herein we are not different from Christ our Master. He had the vision of the world conquered, but the vision faded; and in its place came Gethsemane and Calvary, the loneliness and the cross. And yet afterwards came the interpretation. The vision, though it faded for a time, did not die out unfulfilled. The kingdoms of the world are becoming the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ.

So it is the order of life that first should come the glory of the vision; then the fading of its colours, the grey day and the postponed realisation; and then afterwards the glorious interpretation. Not now is the interpretation. Now is the sadness, now the sense of disappointment, now the temptation to think that all brightness is gone, and all hope lost; but hereafter the love which gave the vision and the love which took it away will make all plain—no whit of the beauty and the beatitude which the vision promised will be lost. The vision is for an appointed time. Till then, rest in the Lord; wait patiently for Him. The gem hidden in the earth will yet sparkle in heaven's light. The meaning of all will be made plain, hereafter, in God's own light and in God's own way; for interpretations belong to God.