The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1894-07-11
POOR RELATIONS.
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage Discourses
on Family Pride.
A Situation In Life which Tests Parental
Affoctlon-The Rustic In Palace
Lessons Drawn From the Lives
of Jacob and Joseph.

The subject selected by DIR. Talmage
for his recent sermon through the press
was, "The Rustic in the Palace" the
text being taken from Gen. XIV, 20; 81
will go and see him before l die"
Jacob had long since passed the hun
dred year milestone. In those times
people were distinguished for their
longevity. In the centuries afterward
persons lived to great age. Galen, the
most celebrated physician of his time,
took so little of his own medicine that
he lived to one hundred and forty years
A man of undoubted veracity on the
witness stand in England swore that
he remembered an event one hundred
and fifty years before. Lord Bacon
speaks of countess who had cut three
sets of teeth, and died at one hundred
and forty years. Joseph Creole, of
Pennsylvania, lived one hundred and
forty years. In 1857 book was printed
containing the names of thirty-seven
persons who lived one hundred and
forty years, and the names of eleven
persons who lived one hundred and fifty
years.
Among the grand old people of whom
we have record was Jacob, the shep-
herd Of the text. But he had bad lot
OF boys. They were jealous and am
bilious and every way unprincipled.
Joseph, however, seemed to be an eX-
ception; but he had been gone many
years, and the probability was that he
was dead. AS sometimes now in a
house you will find kept at the table a
vacant chair, plate, Il knife, a fork,
for some deceased member of the fami-
ly, so Jacob kept in his heart n place
for his beloved Joseph. There sits the
old man, the flock of one hundred and
forty years in their fight having
alighted long enough to leave the
marks of their claw on forehead and
cheek and temple. His long beard
SHOWS down over his chest His eyes
are somewhat dim, and he can see far
ther when they are closed than when
they are open, for he can see clear back
into the time when beautiful yachel,
his wife, was living and his children
shook the oriental abode with their
merriment.
The centcnarian is sitting dreaming
over the past when he hears a wagon
rumbling to the front door. lie gets
up and goes to the door to see who has
arrived, and his long absent sons from
Egypt come in and announce to him
that Joseph instead of being dead is
living in an Egyptian palace, with all
the inveStiture Of prime minister, next
to the king in the mightiest empire in
the world! The news was too sudden
and too glad for the old man, and his
cheeks whiten, and he has dazed look,
and his staff falls out of his hand, and
he would have dropped had not the
sons caught him and led him to lounge
and put cold water on his face and
famed him a little.
In that half delirum the old man
mumbles something about his son Jo-
seph. lie says: you don't mean Jo-
seph, do you? My dear son who has
been dead so long. You don't mean
Joseph, do you?' But after they had
fully resuscitated him, and the news
was confirmed, the tears begin their
winding way down the crossroads of
the wrinkles, and the sunken lips of
the old man quiver, and he brings his
bent fingers together as he says: 90
seph is yet alive. Twill go and see him
before die"
1t did not take the old man a great
while to get ready, warrant you. lie
put on the best clothes that the shep-
herds wardrobe could afford. lie got
into the wagon, and though the aged
are cautious and like TO ride slow, the
wagon did not get along fast enough
for this old man; and when the wagon
with the old man met Joseph's chariot
coming down TO meet him, and Joseph
got out of the chariot and got into the
wagon and threw his arms around his
fathers neck, it was an antithesis of
loyalty and rusticity, Of simplicity and
pomp, of filial affection and paternal
love, which leaves us so much in doubt
about whether we had better laugh or
cry, that we do both. So Jacob kept
the resolution of the text will go
and see him before die
What strong and unfailing thing is
attachment! Was it not al
most time for Jacob TO forget Joseph?
The hot suns of many summers had
blazed on the heath; the river Nile
had overAowed and receded, over
flowed and receded again and
again; the seed had been sown
and the harvest reaped; stars rose and
set; years of plenty and years of fam
Inc had passed on; but the love of Jacob
Tor Joseph in my text is overwhelm-
ngly dramatic. o, that is cord that
IS not snapped, though pulled on by
many decades! Though, when the lit
lie child expired, the parents may not
nave been more than twenty-five years
If age, and now they are sepenty-five,
ret the vision of the cradle, and the
childish face, and the first utterances
If the infantile lips fresh to-day, in
pite of the passage Of a half century
Joseph was as fresh in Jacobs memory
Is ever, though, at seventeen years of
lge, the boy had disappeared from the
I'D homestead. found in our family
ecord the story of an infant that had
lied fifty years before and said to my
,arents; "What is this record and what
Ioes it mean?" Their chief answer was
long, deep sigh. 1t was yet to them
very tender sorrow. What does that
IL mean? Why, it means our children
eparted ours yet, and that cord Of at
achment reaching across the Years |