when your old parents came to visit you. Your little children stand
around with great wide open eyes, wondering how anybody could be so
old. The parents cannot stay many days, for they are a little
restless, and especially at nightfall, because they sleep better in
their own bed; but while they tarry you somehow feel there is a
benediction in every room in the house. They are a little feeble, and
you make it as easy as you can for them, and you realize they will
probably not visit you very often--perhaps never again. You go to
their room after they have retired at night to see if the lights are
properly put out, for the old people understand candle and lamp better
than the modern apparatus for illumination. In the morning, with real
interest in their health, you ask them how they rested last night.
Joseph in the historical scene of the text did not think any more of
his father than you do of your parents. The probability is, before
they leave your house they half spoil your children with kindnesses.
Grandfather and grandmother are more lenient and indulgent to your
children than they ever were with you. And what wonders of revelation
in the bombazine pocket of the one and the sleeve of the other!
Blessed is that home where Christian parents come to visit. Whatever
may have been the style of the architecture when they come, it is a
palace before they leave. If they visit you fifty times, the two 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 what figure of the carpet, and at what door-sill they parted
with you, giving you the final good-bye. Do not be embarrassed if your
father come to town and he have the manners of the shepherd, and if
your mother come to town and there be in her hat no sign of costly
millinery. The wife of Emperor Theodosius said a wise thing when she
said: "Husband, remember what you lately were, and remember what you
are, and be thankful."