Hurrah for Joseph

Posted by Joe on October 30, 2009 at 16:47

In Reply to: Hurrah for Joseph posted by Mac on October 30, 2009 at 09:20:

: In a couple of John Masefield's poems he uses the phrase "Hurrah for Joseph", apparently in the context of things being in disarray or all over the place. Anyone know how that saying came about?

The source and exerpt below detail what Masefield was saying, he wrote several plays of a religious theme.

The American missionary, Volume 63ý - Page 493
American Missionary Association, Congregational Home Missionary Society - 1909 SYMMETRICAL BENEVO-
LENCE

Under the above title, which seems to us to emphasize an important and neglected aspect of Christian giving, Rev. J. W. Lynch, D.D., in a leaflet published by the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, makes some telling points. We can only take space to reproduce a few sentences as a sort of synopsis of Dr. Lynch's ideas.

The pastor is sometimes tempted to lead his people along the lines of least resistance. He permits and even encourages them to go where the pastures are green and the waters still. He forgets his Lord's injunction that the field is the world. It sometimes happens that a single object of benevolence becomes popular and easy in a community. It is adop'ed and made the pet of the church. It is Joseph. Joseph is given a coat of many colors ;ird becomes the spoiled child of the family. Sometimes Joseph is the Orphanage, sometimes Foreign Missions, sometimes Home Missions, sometimes one thing or another. Joseph is Hven preeminence. Everybody is expected to throw up his hat and hurrah for Joseph. * * * *

Why, then, should we proclaim and practice the principle of symmetrical benevolence ?