Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1894 — PREMIER JOSEPH [ARTICLE]

PREMIER JOSEPH

His Munificent Kindness to Jacob. Che Egyptian Chancellor Did Not Go Back on His Poor Relations—Dr. Taimage’s Sermon. The Rev. Dr. Talmage, w’ho is now nearing the antipodes on his round-the-world journey, selected as the subject- for. bis sermon through the press last Sunday, "The Rustic in the Palace.” the text being taken from Genesis xlv, 28. "I will go and see him before I die.” Jacob had long since passed the aundred-year milestone In those times people were distinguished for ongevity. In the centuries afterward persons lived to great age. Salen, the most celebrated physician ;>f his time, took so little of his own medicine that he lived to 140 years. X man of undoubted veracity on the witness stand in England swore that ae remembered an event 140 years oefore. Lord Bacon speaks of a ’ountess who had cut three sets of ;eeth and died at 140 years. Joseph ”rele. of Pennsylvania, "“lived 140 /ears.

Among the grand old peopie of whom we have record was Jacob.the shepherd of the text. But he had a iad lot of boys. They were jealous ind ambitious and every wav unprincipled. Joseph, hoivever, seemed 70 be an exception, but he had been /one many years, and the probability was that he was dead. The centenarian is sitting dream ng over the past when he hears a wagon rum bling -to the fron t door. Te gets up and goes to the door to ;ee who has arrived, and his long ibsent sons from Egypt come in and mnounce to him that Joseph, in;tead of being dead, is living- in an Egyptian palaeo, with all the irivestture of prime minister, next to the ring in the mightest empire of all lie world. It did not take the old man a great I vhile to get ready. 1 warrant you. Ie put on the best clothes that the ihepherd’s wardrobe could afford. Te got into the wagon, and though .he aged are cautious and like to ride 1 flow the wagon did not get along ast enough for this old man, and when the wagon with the old man net Joseph’s chariot coming down o meet him, and Joseph not out of he chariot and got into the wagon imp threw his arms around his father's neck, it was an antithesis of •oyaity and rusticity, of simplicity uid pomp, of filial affection and paernal love, which leaves us so much n doubt about whether we had beterlaugh or cry that we do both, io Jacob kept the resolution of the .ext, "I will go and see him before 1 lie.”

lam often asked as pastor, and *veFy pastor is askocl the ”qnesrtron, 'Will my children be children in leaven and forever children?” Well, here was no doubt a great change i n Joseph from the time Jacob lost ' lim and the time when Jacob found | iim—between the boy of seventeen ’ears of age and the man in midlife, lis forehead developed with the rreat business of state, but Jacob yas glad to get back- Joseph anyhow, md it did not make much difference ,o the old man whether the boy ooked older or looked younger. O parent, as you think of the daringpanting and white in menibran•ous croup, I wunt yon to know it vill be gloriously bettered in that and where there has never been a leath and where all the inhabitants vill live on in the great future as ong as God! Joseph was Joseph lotwithstanding the palace, and your ihild will be your child notwithstanding all the raining splendors of Everlasting noon. What a thrilling .’isit was that of the qld shepherd to I .he prime minister. Joseph! I see I he old countryman seated in the >alace looking around at the mil’ •ors, and the fountains, and the qarved pillars, and. oh, how he .vishes that Rachel, his wife.' was dive and she could have come there .vith him to see their son in his jreat house! "Oh,” says the old nan within himself, "Ido wish Ra:nel could be hero to see all this!” I visited the farmhouse of the ather of Millard Fillmore when :he son was President of the United States, and the octogena•iau farmer entertained me until 11 o'clock at night, telling me what jreat things he saw at his son's house it Washington, and what Daniel Webster said to him. and how grandy Millard treated his father in the White House. The old man’s'fface t vas illumined with the story until ilmost midnight. He had just been visiting hiS son at the capital. And [ suppose it was something of the ;ame joy that thrilled the heart of jhe old shepherd as he stood in the palace of the prime minister. Joseph,' in the historical scene of the text, did not think any more of lis father than you do of your parents The probability is before they eave your house they half spoil your jhildreii with kindness. (Grandfather ind grandmother are more lenient ind indulgent to your children than they ever were with you. And what wonders of revelation in the bombafine'’ pocket of the one and the sleeve .if the other. Blessed is that home where Christian parents come to visit! Whatever may have been the style of tlje architecture when they rame it is a palace before they leave. If they visit you fifty times the most memorable visits will be the first and the last. Those two pictures will hang in the, hall of your memory while memory lasts, and you will remember just how they looked, and where they sat, and what they said, and at jyhat figure of the carpet and

at what doorsill they parted with you. giving you the final If the father has large property and he be wise enough to keep it ir his own nanie r .helwill be respected. by the heirs.' But how often is it when the son finds his father in famine, as Joseph found Jacob in famine, the young people make it very hard for the old man. They are so surprised he eats with a knife instead of a fork. They are chagrined at his ancient and antediluvian haoits. They" are provoked because he can not hear as well as be used to. and when he asks it over agahrnnd th e son has to repea tit. he bawds in the old man’s ear. "I hope you heard that!” How long must lie wear the old coat or the old hat before-they get him a new’ one.' How chagrined tney are at his independence of the English grammar! How long he hangs on! Seventy years and not gone yet! Will he ever go? They think it of no use to have a doctor in his last sickness, and go TTp to the drugstore and get a dose of something that makes him -worse, and economize on a coffin, and bea.j the undertaker down to the—lastpoint; giving a note for the reduced amount, which they never pay.--I rejoice to remember that, though my father lived in a plain house the most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of a son who had achieved a fortune. There tke-oetogenarian sat, and the servants waited on him. and there were plenty of horses and plenty of carriages to convey him. and a bower in which to sit on long summer afternoons, dreaming over the past, and there was not a room in the house where he was not welcome and there were musical instruments’ of all sorts to regale him. and when life, had passed the neighbors came out antFexpressed alllionor possible and carried him to the village Macpelah and put him down beside the Rachel with whom he had lived more than half a century. Let the uno-ratefuirworltFsireermt the maiden aunt, but God has :» throne burnished for her arrival, and on one side of that throne in heaven there is a vase containing two jewr els. the one brighter than the Kohinoor of London Tower, and the other larger than any diamond ever found in the districts ot Golconda—the one jewel by the lapidary of the palace cut with the words, "Inas much as ye did it to father:” the other jewel by the lapidary of the palace cut -with the words, "Inasmuch as ye did it to mother.” "Over the Hills to the Pborhouse” is the exquisite ballad of Will Carleton. who found an old woman who had been turned off by her prosperous sons, but 1 thank God I may find in my text. "Over the hill to the palaccUl—_ . As if to disgust us with untilial conduct the bible presents us the story of Micah, who stole the LIOO shekels from his mother, and the story of Absalom, who tried to de throne his father. But all history is beaut iful with stories of filial fidelity. EpaminOndas. the writer, found his chief delight in reciting to his parents hiwwictories. There eas from burning Troy, on his shoulders Anchises, his father. The Athenians punished with death any untilial conduct. There goes beautiful Ruth escorting venerable Naomi across the desert amid the howling of the wolves and the barking of the jackals. John Lawrence, burned at. the stake in Colchester, was cheered in -the flames by his children, who said, "O God, strengthen thy servan.t and keep thy promise!” Oh, what a day that will be when the old folks come from an adjoining mansion in heaven and find you amid the alabaster pillars of the throne room anti—living—with the King! They are coming up the steps now. and the epauleted guard of the palace rushes in and says. "Your father’s coming, your mother’s coming!” And when under the arches of precious stones and on the pavement of porphyry you greet each other the scent* will eclipse the meeting on the Goshen highway, when Joseph and Jacob fell on each other's neck and wept a good while. But, oh. how changed the old folks will be ! Their cheek smoothed into the flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into immortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the sprightliness of a bounding roe. as they shall say to you, "A spirit passed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and dissipated after we left the world, but you have repented, our prayer has been answered, and you are here. And as we used to visit you on earth before we died now we visit you in your new home after our ascension. ” And father will say. "Mother, don’t you see Joseph is yet alive?” and mother will say, : "Yes. Joseph is vet alive.” Then they ' will review their anxieties regarding you. the midnight supplications in your behalf, and they will recite to each other the old scripture passage with which they used to cheer their I staggering faith. "I will be a God tc I thee and thy seed after thee.” Oh. ' the palace, the palace, the palace.' That is what Richard Baxter called “the saints’ everlasting rest. ” That is what John Bunyan called the "Celestial City.” That is Young’s "Night Thoughts” turned into morning exultations. That is Gray’s "Elegy In a Churchyard” turned tc resurrection ppeetaele. That is the "Cotters Saturday Night” ex changed for the cotter’s Sabbath morning. That is the shepherd oi Salisbury plains amid the flocks on the hills of heaven. That is tin famine struck Padanaram turned into the rich pasture fields of Go shen. That is Jacob visiting Josepl at the emerald castle.