The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-02-02
VISITING THE OLD FOLKS.
DR.. Talmage DiscOurses Concerning the
Love of Parents for Children,
And of the Duties and Obligations of the Lat
ter-Strength of Parental Attachment
Examples of Filial Fidelity.
Special to me Indianapolis Journal.


their new places, the pew-holders admitted by
cards While in other churches the finances have
been depressed by the hard times, the pews in
this church have brought higher prices than ever
before. DR.. Harrison A. Tucker pays this year
1910 for his pew, and others in proportion. But
the free system is combined with this rental,
and seats are reserved for thousands of people
who pay nothing. DR.. Talmage read another
along list of new members, making 100 received
at recent meetings of session.
The subject of the sermon was 1.-THE Old
Folks VISIT" and the text Genesis. xiv, %: Il
will go and see him before die" DR.. Talmage
said:
Jacob had long since passed the hundred year
milestone People had in those days wonder
full 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 140 years old. A
trustworthy man 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 14O years old. Jo-
seph Crele, of Pennsylvania, died at lao. In
book published in 1857 are the names of thirty
seven people who lived to be lao years old, and
of eleven who reached 150.
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 bad always been in old Jacobs heart a
place for his departed son, Joseph. There sits
the old man, the flock of 145 years having in
their fight alighted' long enough to leave the
marks of their claws on his forehead and cheeks
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
merriment
While the centenarian sits there brooding over
the past, there is a rumbling of heavy wagons at
the door, and the old man gets up and goes to
the door to see who has come, and his sons, re-
turned 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 investiture of Prime Min
lister 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, and he would have
fallen flat had not his boys caught him and
helped him on lounge, and put some water to
his face, and famed him a little. Coming to-"
he begins to humble some words about Joseph:
What did You say about my Joseph9 You did
not mean my dear son Joseph, did youl He has
been dead many years You did not mean him,
did your But fully resuscitated from the nerv-
Gus shock and assured that the good news was
true, the tears begin their winding way down
the rossroads of the wrinkled face, and the
sunken lips of the Old man culver, and he clasps
his bent fingers together, and says Joseph,
my son, is vet alive; will go and see him before
die" 1t did not take the old man long to get
ready, l warrant you He put on the best
clothes shepherds wardrobe could afford, and
got into wagon, and when that wagon and the
old man met Joseph's chariot coming down to
meet him, it was an antithesis 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 BOTH So Jacob carried out the resolution
of the text: II will 60 and see him before die
If our friends, the reporters. want an appropri-
ate title for this sermon suggest that they call
it ''The Old Folks Visit"
sTRENGT-- OF PARENTAL ATTACHMENT.
What strong and lasting thing is parental at
+acb Woc A.
forgot Joseph9 Many years had come and gone.
The hot suns of many summers had blasted
upon the heath The Nile had again and again
overfown. harvests had been sown and reaped.
stars risen and set, years of plenty years OF
famine. But the intense attachment of the pa
triarch for his ong-absent son is, in the text,
overwhelmingly dramatic. All, that is the cord
that cannot be snapped, though it be pulled on
by whole decades of years. When the child dis
appeared from this life the parents may have
been but twenty five years of age and now they
may be seventy five, but the vision of cradle and
childish face and the first utterances of the
young lips are fresh oday in spite of the pas
sage of half century. Joseph is as fresh in
Jacobs heart on the day when, at seventeen
years of age, he disappeared from the homestead.
Finding in our family record the story Of an in
FAINT who died fifty years before, asked my
parents something about it, but they chiefly
answered by long, deep sigh. 1t a subject
yet Of unbearable tenderness.
All this means that however long our children
are gone away they part of u.s. and the cord
of endearment that reaches across the
years will continue to hold us until it brings us
together in the palace as it did Jacob and Joseph.
That is one thing that helps old people
to die happy. They SO realize it is reuni on with
those from whom they have long been sepa
rated. The question is often asked: will my
children in heaven always be childrenl' You
want to get them back as they were when they
left you, Well, Joseph must have been very
much changed between the time that Jacob lost
him and the time he found him. rudy lad at
seventeen, now a middle aced man his forehead