Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1885-02-02
'fTRE old FOLKS VISIT"
A Good Old Man With Bad
Boys,
AND ONLY ONE eooD ONE,
win the Children Behind the Gates
Of Paradise Be Children
AIways2
SHALL wEKNow EAcHoTHER THERE9
SpseiaI % Ms ReqiEter.

BROOKLYN February Quite a revolu'
ton in the Brooklyn Tabernacle has taken
place in consequence Of the recent public
rental of pews and the audience are to-day,
for the first time, in their new places, the
pew.holders admitted by cards. While in
other churches the finance have been de-
pressed by the hard times, the pews in this
church have brought higher prices than
ever before. Dr.. Harrison A. Tucker pays
this year eight hundred and ten dollars for
his pew, and others in proportion. But the
free principal is combined with this rental
and seats are reserved for thousands Of peo-
pie who pay nothing. DR.. Talmage read
another long list of new members, making
one hundred and thirty received at recent
meetings of the session. --a-
The subject of the sermon was THE Old
Folks Visit" and the text Genesis xiv. 28:
81 will 90 and zee him before die"
Jacob had long since passed the hundred
year milestone. People had in those days
wonderful longevity, but we have had in
later centuries very aged persons. Galen,
the most celebrated of ancient physicians,
took so little of his own medicine that he
lived to be l40 years old. A trustworthy
man on a witness stand in England on oath
declared he remembered $50 years. Lord
Bacon speaks of a countess who had cut
three sets of teeth and was lao years old.
Joseph Crele, of Pennsy lvanis, died at lao.
In a book published in 1851 are the names
of tbirty-seven people who lived to be l4O
wears old and eleven who reached $50.
Among the Grandest
old men that we have any record of is Jacob
the patriarch of the text. But he had
bad lot of BOYS. The most Of them were
cruel, Jealous and unprincipled. His son
Joseph was an exception, but he had not
been heard from for long while and the
probability was that he was dead. But, as
it is the custom in some houses now to keep
a vacant place at the table with plate and
knife and fork and chair for deceased
member of the family, so there had always
been in old Jacobs heart place for his de-
parted son, Joseph. There sits the old man,
the flock of l45 years having in their flight
ahghted long enough to leave the marks OF
their claws on his forehead and cheek and
temples. The long white beard SHOWS down
upon his chest. His eyes, somewhat dim,
can see further when they are shut
than when they are open, for he sees
clear back to the time when Rachel his
beautiful wife, was living, and the children
shook the oriental abode with their merri-
ment.
While the centenarian sits there brooding
over the past, thereis a a rumbling OF heavy
wagons at the door and the old man gets up
and goes to the door to see whV has come.
And his sons, returned from Egypt, rush in
and tell him that his son Joseph; instead of
being dead, is living in the Egyptian palace
and is next to the King, having all the in
vestiture of prime minister in the greatest
empire of the world. The news was too
sudden and too glad for the old man and
he looks dazed and his cheeks get white and
he drops his staff ard he would have fallen
fat had not his boys caught him and helped
him on q lounge and put some water to his
face and famed him little Coming to-
he begins to mnmble some words about
Joseph: What did you say about my
Joseph? You did not mean my
Dear Son Joseph,
did you? He has been dead many years.
You did not mean him, did your Bat
fully resuscitated from the nervous shock,
and assured that the good news is true,
the teaIs begin their winding way down the
crossroads of the wrinkled face and the
sunken lips of the old man quiver, and he
clasps his bent fingers together and says:
Joseph, my son. is yet alive; l will go and
see him, before die" 1t did not take the
old man long to get ready, | warrant you.
He put on the best clothes a shepherd s
wardrobe could afford aud got into "a wagon
and when that wagon and the old man met
Joseph's chariot coming down to meet him
it wss an sntithesis of rusticity and royalty,
simplicity and pomp 'filial affection and
paternal love leaving US so much in doubt
about whether we had better laugh or cry,
that we do boh. So Jacob carried out the
resolution of the text Il will 60 and see
him before l die" If our friends, the re-
porters, want an appropriate title for this
sermon, ! suggest that they call 1t The
Old Folks Visit
What strong and lasting thing is
Parental Attachment.
Was ii not most time that Jacob forgot
Joseph? Many years had come and gone:
| The hot sun Of many summers had blasted
upon the health. The Nile again and again
had overhown. Harvests had been sown
and reaped Stars risen and set Years ol
plenty, years of famine. But the intense
attachment of the patriarch for his long ab
sent son is in the text overwhelmingly drs'
matte. Oh, that is the cord that can not be
snapped, though it be pulled on By whole
decades Of years. When the child disaP
peared from this life the parents may have
been but 25 years of age, now they may be
70, but the vision OF the cradle and childish
face of the frs: utterauceS OF the
young lips are fresh to-day in spite
Of the passsge of hsltcentury. Joseph
is as fresh in Jacobs heart as on the day
when at seventeen years of age he disap
peared from the homestead. Finding il
our family record the story of an intan
who died fifty years before, | asked my par
ents something about it but they chief!
answered by long deep sigh. 1t was {
subject yet Of unbesrable distress.
All this means that however long ou
children are gone away they are part o
US and tie cord of endearment that reached
across the years will continue to hold u
until it brings us together in the palace a
it did Jacob and Joseph. That is one tbinl
that helps old people to die happy. The,
so realize it is reunion with those from whom
they have long
Been Separated.
The question is often asked: "Will M
children in heaven always be children
You want to get them back as they wer
when they left you. Well, Joseph must hAV