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: "I will go
and see him before I die." And if our friends the reporters would like
to have an appropriate title for this sermon, they might call it "The
Old Folks' Visit."
What a strong and unfailing thing is parental attachment! Was it not
almost time for Jacob to forget Joseph? The hot suns of many summers
had blazed on the heath; the river Nile had overflowed and receded,
overflowed and receded again and again; the seed had been sown and the
harvests reaped; stars rose and set; years of plenty and years of
famine had passed on; but the love of Jacob for Joseph in my text is
overwhelmingly dramatic. Oh, that is a cord that is not snapped,
though pulled on by many decades! Though when the little child expired
the parents may not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and
now they are seventy-five, yet the vision of the cradle, and the
childish face, and the first utterances of the infantile lips are
fresh to-day, in spite of the passage of a half century. Joseph was as
fresh in Jacob's memory as ever, though at seventeen years of age the
boy had disappeared from the old homestead. I found in our family
record the story of an infant that had died fifty years before, and I
said to my parents: "What is this record, and what does it mean?"
Their chief answer was a long deep sigh. It was yet to them