THE CHIEF BUTLER AND THE CHIEF BAKER.
The prison episode in Joseph's history seems typical in a peculiar way of the present dispensation. Thus the Son of the Father had been rejected by his own brethren (Israel), sold for a few pieces of silver, put to death (“in a figure"), had risen from the dead and passed over to the Gentiles, to become the Savior of the world and the Revealer of secrets. He is, however, for a long time despised and ill-treated by these Gentiles; and He is found amongst the captive and afflicted, whom His presence and words necessarily separate into the two classes of saved and lost—the butler and baker being separated like the penitent and impenitent thieves on Calvary. When that work is done, Joseph shaves and changes his raiment (i.e., conforms to a new order of things and alters his outward characteristics), ascending from the dungeon to the throne, to inaugurate a new millennial era,'“ until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” But the millennial time is still future: the prison scene is now going on; and it is of this nature—
Here were two men in the same place of bondage, equally condemned, and, so far as we know, equally guilty—or innocent—just alike in all outward appearance. Christ (Joseph) comes amongst theta and pronounces one saved and the other lost.
This seems strange, and, to the crude mind a hard saying; but in truth it is a process that in nature and art is going on every day and all day long. Persons and things that superficially appear much the same are being continually separated as widely as the poles, by some test judicial, philosophic, or chemical. Two jewels are shown to an expert: they appear exactly the same until he touches them with nitric acid, and then one of them is accepted—it might be for a king's regalia—and the other, with a black smear of condemnation on it now, is adjudged as worse than worthless; for it is an elaborated fraud. I have watched the coins in the mint traveling down the grooves of those exquisitely delicate weighing machines. No human being can see any difference between one and another till they come to the slots, but the machine, with infallible accuracy, slides one of them down the main slot to go forth on its useful and honorable career, with the royal image and subscription on its golden face; and slides another down the light-weight slot condemned, to be cast into the furnace. The two coins that look so entirely alike have been submitted to the test of the great universal law of gravitation. That vast and inexorable law cannot err: it vindicates one and condemns the other.
But while there may be no apparent difference between the position or actions of the two men; there is yet a marked difference in their reception of Joseph's overtures. The butler readily opens his heart to him; but of the other one we read, “When the chief baker saw” He held back till encouraged by some external circumstances: he “saw,” he walked by sight. And there is a much more instructive difference in the elements with which they are seen connected. The butler is brought before a vine, triple branched, living and fruitful. Pharaoh's cup (the symbol of God's judgment) is in his hand; he takes the grapes and presses them into the cup, and then gives the cap into Pharaoh's hands. That is, the man takes his place in the presence of Christ, the true Vine, and, accepting God's judgment, offers the blood of Christ, according to the measure of that judgment, which God accepts; and the man is forgiven and exalted.
But the baker covers himself with baskets filled with human works; and how fair, sweet, elaborate, and symmetrical Beaver they may be, they are not accepted by Pharaoh: the fowls of the air devour them—and him. The “basket is full of holes” too:? “Work without hope draws nectar (or ambrosia either) in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live." There were “three days” in each case: death and resurrection delivers one and condemns the other.
Bakemeats are not enough. Though men should pile them, ornate and fragrant, to high heaven, the evil spirits shall waste them, and the baskets are full of holes. The confectionery of human religion is like Cain's sacrifice, his own design and labor—lifeless and bloodless. There was the uppermost basket full of them—the very altitude of spirituality— “prepared for Pharaoh” too: but Pharaoh would have none of them. Bakemeats are not enough.
But that which God has provided is enough—the vine and the blood of the grape; Christ and His work—enough for God and man, enough for time and eternity. Should he not be grateful, that chief butler? And so Joseph says, “Think on me when it shall be well with thee.” Is there anything typical in that?
“Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him!” Is there anything typical in that?