ce in them. Three times
a year they went to Jerusalem to celebrate their great feasts. One of
these feasts was called the Pasch, or Passover, and it was during the
celebration of that feast that Our Lord was put to death; so that there
were many persons from all parts of the nation present at the sad
execution. I must now tell you why they celebrated the Pasch. We
generally celebrate a feast to commemorate--to remind us of--some great
event; and the Jews celebrated this feast to remind them of their
deliverance from the slavery of the Egyptians, in which their ancestors
had been suffering for about two hundred years. At the end of that time
God sent Moses to deliver them. You should know, then, who Moses was and
what he did to deliver his people, and you should know also something of
the history of his people--the Israelites--and how they came to be in
Egypt.

At the time I am now going to speak of the old patriarch Jacob,
Abraham's grandson, had eleven sons--for Benjamin, the twelfth son, was
born afterwards--and the youngest was called Joseph. Joseph was the
favorite of his father, and his brothers were jealous of him. The
brothers were shepherds, and used to take their flocks to feed at a
great distance from home, and did not return for a long time. One day
the father sent Joseph to his brothers to see if all were well. They
hated Joseph because his father loved him best; and when they saw him
coming they agreed never to let him return to his father. (Gen. 37).
They intended to kill him. While they were debating about how they
should put him to death--he was then only sixteen years old--some
merchants passed on their way to Egypt; so, instead of killing him, they
sold him as a slave to the merchants. Then they took Joseph's coat and
dipped it in the blood of a kid, and sent it to their poor old father,
saying they had found it, and making him believe that some wild beast on
the way had eaten Joseph. When the merchants arrived in Egypt, Potiphar,
one of the king's officers, bought Joseph, and brought him as a slave to
his own house. While there, Joseph was falsely accused of a great crime,
and cast into prison. While Joseph was in prison the king had a dream.
(Gen. 41). He saw in the dream seven fat cows coming up out of a river,
followed by seven lean cows; and the lean cows ate up the fat cows. He
saw also seven fat ears of corn and seven lean ears of corn; and the
seven lean ears ate up the seven fat ears. The king