Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1907-06-07

home and fatherland in Palestine.
Indeed, real faith in God embraces a
great future, it cannot be content
with the narrow present, or shut up
within the brief today. God Is great
and high, and ever-advancing, and
fellowship with Him makes us par
takers of His great aims, high ideals
and energies. The great and univers-
al men, who change the face OF the
world, inspire and influence all hearts
embody ideals, and make nations, are
always seers, and have their eyes in
the future. Abraham sees 1.-THE day
of Christ" 1t must come because
God is God, and God is the Redeemer.
Moses speaks of prophet like himself
who would take up his work when
he has been compelled to lay it down,
and will push it nearer and nearer to
to the goal Of perfection. So Joseph
saw the expanding family life OF Israel,
the growing, Cooled, God-visited
people, and sings his swan song In
faith and in hope.
For faith in God carries faith in
mans advance, in his sure, if slow,
growth in the perfection OF society
| and the ascendency Of righteousness,
peace, and Joy. God is the Father,
not simply of Joseph, but the Father
of us ALL and he lives and rules; and
therefore in the face Of the evil that
| is in men, the cowardice of Reuben,
the lawleSsness of Simeon, the cruel
ty of Levi, He creates and inspires
| the one good, ,ltrue, and believing soul
of the family, and by him provides
against the destructive famine,
| arouses the consciences of the guilty
brothers, and educates and moulds
their characters and that of their sue
cessors for the great missionary work
which Israel has to discharge. We
| can see all this now. The marvel is
that Joseph saw it then when he was
dying. While the web was being
woven, the golden threads are out OF
sight to most people, but when the
| work is done and the machine has
stopped, we take off the web, and we
see the whole pattern as in the clear
shining of the midday sun. This
rude Hebrew youth is carried into
Egypt, and placed at the spring-head
of the forces OF civilization, Drought
into close contact with its regular and
orderly government, it's advancing
commerce, it's land laws, it's agricul-
ture, it's established and earnest re-
| ligion, is accumulated learning, and
SO he becomes a channel through
which the divinely created intellectu-
al, political, moral and religious
wealth of the Egyptians enters into
the life of Israel and of the world.
Through Joseph first, and next
| through Moses, Israel comes into per-
manent connection with the life and
progress of mankind. Not yet do we
know our unfathomable debts to the
past in any direction, least OF all to
and his house.
And if this is true of Joseph and OF
Israel is it not also true of America?
| If this statement can be made about
the patriarch, what ought we to say
about our own country? Should "a
man die in despair of America be-
cause of the difficulties and evils that
seem to bind her? Ought a man to
reach his end in mood Of despair be-
cause duplicity and chicanery and
covetousness get the mastery for
| little time? No, our past bids US
hold fast our faith in God. The same
| history we can see in our own,-"God
did it," Man meant it for evil, pos
sibIy, but God makes the wrath of
man to praise Him, and the remand
/ er of that wrath He restraints.
Through all the chaos, disorder and
| wrecklessneSS, and diSunity of our an
cestors there is divine purpose and
a divine energy working out for us a
future rich in promise for all the sons
of men. BY the expulsion from their
homes and the settling here of the
robust and energiziDg Puritans: by
| the sweet devoutness and heroic un-
seifshness of William Penn, by the
| trials and the privations Of the Caval-
iers. by the sturdy and upright and
| self-abnegating Washington: by the
Revolution from England and the
chaos that followed it: by our difficult
ties at home and our contensions
abroad: by the extension of cur terri
tory from sea to sea; by the long ago