Page:The Story of Joseph and His Brethren.djvu/95

92 his father's household into Egypt, was typical of the event of Jesus being carried down there to escape the vengeance of Herod. As Israel went down to be preserved alive in the famine, so Jesus was carried down to be saved alive from the cruelty of the bloody Herod.

But what was the reason for both being led down into that country? It was because in Scripture every place has a spiritual meaning. And the meaning of Egypt may be known from its character at the time the Scriptures were written. In Egypt science and knowledge flourished more than in any other country. The wise men of other countries travelled into Egypt, to study the wisdom which there had her chief seat; for there the remains of ancient religion and intelligence, and the science of all sciences, the science of the correspondence between natural and spiritual things, which constituted the wisdom of the ancient church, found its last retreat when the church came to its end. The Israelitish church was then in its commencement, for it, of course, commenced with Israel; and it was to initiate that church into as much of the ancient