Page:The Story of Joseph and His Brethren.djvu/72

Rh, mark him as a type of the Lord our Saviour. But, in the spiritual sense, the lamentation of Rachel means the lamentation of the church over the destruction of innocence within her own borders. The slaughter of all the infants in Bethlehem, except the infant Saviour, represented that all true innocence had been destroyed in the church, and that no innocence was left but that which was incarnated in the Saviour, who was thus preserved, that He might be the Restorer and Author of innocence among men.

The naming of Joseph, too, points to his representative character. His name means adding or increase. In the natural or historical sense it refers, indeed, to his mother's confident hope that God, who, in answer to her prayers, at last had given her a son, would add another to complete her happiness. Yet, in the spiritual sense, the name, when applied to Jesus, signifies the "increase of His government, and peace, of which there shall be no end," and consequently the continual addition of members to His church, as children born of the church as a mother. It is for this reason