The King's Wagons
“And when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob, their father, revived.” — Genesis xlv., 27.
THE Egyptian capital was the focus of the world’s wealth. In ships and barges, there had been brought to it from India frankincense, and cinnamon, and ivory, and diamonds; from the North, marble and iron; from Syria, purple and silk; from Greece, some of the finest horses of the world, and some of the most brilliant chariots; and from all the earth that which could best please the eye, and charm the ear, and gratify the taste. There were temples aflame with red sandstone, entered by gate-ways that were guarded by pillars bewildering with hieroglyphics, and wound with brazen serpents, and adorned with winged creatures — their eyes, and beaks, and pinions glittering with precious stones. There were marble columns blooming into white flowerbuds; there were stone pillars, at the top bursting into the shape of the lotus when in full bloom. Along the avenues, lined with sphinx, and fane, and obelisk, there were princes who came in gorgeously-upholstered palanquin, carried by servants in scarlet, or elsewhere drawn by vehicles, the snow-white horses, golden-bitted, and six abreast, dashing at full run. There were fountains from stone-wreathed vases climbing the ladders of the light. You would hear a bolt shove, and a door of brass would open like a flash of the sun. The surrounding gardens were saturated with odors that mounted the terrace, and dripped from the arbors, and burned their incense in the Egyptian noon. On floors of mosaic the glories of Pharaoh were spelled out in letters of porphjny, and beryl, and flame. There were ornaments twisted from the wood of the tamarisk, embossed with silver breaking into foam. There were footstools made out of a single precious stone. There were beds fashioned out of a crouched lion in bronze. There were chairs spotted with the sleek hide of leopards. There were sofas footed with the claws of wild beasts, and armed with the beaks of birds. As you stand on the level beach of the sea on a summer-day, and look either way, and there are miles of breakers, white with the ocean foam, dashing shoreward; so it seemed as if the sea of the world’s pomp and wealth in the Egyptian capital for miles and miles flung itself up into white breakers of marble temple, mausoleum, and obelisk.
This was the place where Joseph, the shepherd-boy, was called to stand next to Pharaoh in honor. What a contrast between this scene and his humble starting, and the pit into which his brothers threw him! Yet he was not forgetful of his early home; he was not ashamed of where he came from. The Bishop of Mentz, descended from a wheelwright, covered his house with spokes, and hammers, and wheels; and the King of Sicily, in honor of his father, who was a potter, refused to drink out of any thing but an earthen vessel. So Joseph was not ashamed of his early surroundings, or of his old-time fixther, or of his brothers. When they came up from the famine-stricken land to get corn from the king’s corn-crib, Joseph, instead of chiding them for the way they had maltreated and abused him, sent them back with wagons, which Pharaoh furnished, laden with corn; and old Jacob, the father, in the very same wagons, was brought back, that Joseph, the son, might see him, and give him a comfortable home all the rest of his days.
Well, I hear the wagons, the king’s wagons, rumbling down in front of the palace. On the outside of the palace, to see the wagons go off, stands Pharaoh in royal robes; and beside him prime-minister Joseph, with a chain of gold around his neck, and on his hand a ring given by Pharaoh to him, so that any time he wanted to stamp the royal seal upon a document he could do so. Wagon after wagon rolls on down from the palace, laden wath corn, and meat, and changes of raiment, and every thing that could help a famine-struck people. One day I see aged Jacob seated in the front of his house. HeTs possibly thinking~ofTi1s” a1teen1rboyTS-(sons, however old they get, are never to a father any more than boys); and while he is seated there, he sees dust arising, and he hears wagons rumbling, and he wonders what is coming now, for the whole land had been smitten with the famine, and was in silence. But after a while the wagons have come near enough, and he sees his sons on the wagons, and before they come quite up, they shout, “Joseph is yet alive!” The old man faints dead away. I do not wonder at it. The boys tell the story how that the boy, the long-absent Joseph, has got to be the first man in the Egyptian palace. While they unload the wagons, the wan and wasted creatures in the neighborhood come up and ask for a handful of corn, and they arq satisfied.
One day the wagons are brought“^up4-.fpr Jacob, the old father, is about to go to see Joseph in the Egyptian palace. You know it is not a very easy thing to transplant an old tree, and Jacob has hard work to get away from the place where he has lived so long. He bids good-bye to the old place, and leaves his blessing with the neighbors, and then his sons steady him, while he, determined to help himself, gets into the wagon, stiff, old, and decrepit. Yonder they go, Jacob and his sons, and their wives, and their children, eighty-two in all, followed by herds and flocks, which the herdsmen drive along. They are going out from famine to luxuriance; they are going from a plain country home to the finest palace under the sun. Joseph, the prime minister, gets in his chariot, and drives down to meet the old man. Joseph’s charioteer holds up the horses on the one side — the dust-covered wagons of the emigrants stop on the other. Joseph, instead of waiting for his father to come, leaps out of the chariot and jumps into the emigrants’ wagon, throws his arms around the old man, and weeps aloud for past memories and present joy. The father, Jacob, can hardly think it is his boy. Why, the smooth brow of childhood has become a wrinkled brow, wrinkled with the cares of state, and the garb of the shepherd-boy has become a robe royally bedizened! But as the old man finds out it is actually Joseph, I see the thin lip quiver against the toothless gum as he cries out, “Now let me die, since I have seen thy face; behold, Joseph is yet alive!” The wagons roll. up in front of the palace. Help out the grandchildren, and take them in out of the hot Egyptian sun. Help old Jacob out of the wagon. Send word to Pharaoh that the old shepherd has come. In the royal apartment Pharaoh and Jacob meet — dignity and rusticity — the gracefulness of the court and the plain manners of the field. The king, wanting to make the old countryman at ease, and seeing how white his beard is, and how feeble his step, looks familiarly into his face, and says to the aged man, “How old art thou?” Give the old man a seat. Unload the wagons; drive out the cattle toward the pastures of Goshen. Let the slaves in scarlet kneel and wash the feet of the newly-arrived, wiping them on the finest linen of the palace. From vases of perfume let the newly-arrived be sprinkled and refreshed; let minstrels come in with sandals of crimson, and thrum the harps, and clap the cymbals, and jingle the tambourines, while we sit down, at this great distance of time and space, and learn the lesson of the king’s luagons.
My friends, we are in a world by sin famine-struck; but the King is in constant communication with us, his wagons coming and going perpetually; and in the rest of my discourse I will show you what the wagons bring and what they take back.
In the first place, like those that came from the Egyptian palace, the King’s wagons now bring us eoryi and 7neat, and many changes of raiment. We are apt to think of the fields and tTTe“^ orchards as feeding us; but who makes the flax grow for the linen, and the wheat for the bread, and the wool on the sheep’s back? Oh, I wish we could see through every grain-field, by every sheepfold, under the trees of every orchard, the King’s wagons! They drive up three times a day — morning, noon, and night. They bring furs from the arctic, they bring fruits from the tropic, they bring bread from the temperate zone. The King looks out, and he says, “There are twelve hundred millions of people to be fed and clothed.
yn So many pounds of meat, so many barrels of flour, so many yards of cloth and linen and flannel, so many 7^1 hats, so many socks, so many shoes;” enough for all, save that we who are greedy get more shoes than belong to us, and others go barefooted. None but a God could feed and clothe the world. None but a king’s corn-crib could appease the world’s famine. None but a king could tell how many wagons to send, and how heavily to load them, and when they are to start. They are coming over the frozen ground to-day. Do you not hear their rumbling? They will stop at noon at your table. Oh, if for a little while they should cease, hunger would come into the nations, as to Utica when Hamilcar besieged it, and as in Jerusalem when Vespasian surrounded it; and the nations would be hollow-eyed, and fall upon each other in universal cannibalism; and skeleton would drop upon skeleton; and there would be no one to bury the dead; and the earth would be a field of bleached skeletons; and the birds of prey would fall dead, flock after flock, without any carcasses to devour; and the earth in silence would wheel around, one great black hearse! All life stopped because the King’s wagons are stopped. Oh, thank God for bread-^or bread!
I remark again that, like those that came from the
Egyptian palace, the King’s wagons bring us goodjiews.
Jacob had not heard from his boy for a great many
years. He never thought of him but with a heart-ache.
/”- There was in Jacob’s heart a room where lay the corpse
. ‘pf his unburied Joseph; and when the wagons came, the
‘’^/king’s wagons, and told him that Joseph was yet alive,
he faints dead away Good news for Jacob! good
news for us! The King’s wagons come down and tell
US that our Joseph- Jesus is yet alive; that he has forgiven us because we threw him into the pit of suffering and the dungeon of shame. He has risen from thence to stand in a palace. The Bethlehem shepherds were awakened at midnight by the rattling of the wagons that brought the tidings. Our Joseph-Jesus sends us a message of pardon, of life, of heaven; corn for our hunger, raiment for our nakedness. Joseph- Jesus is yet alive! I go to hunt up Jesus. I go to the village of Bethany, and say, “Where does Mary live?” They say, “Yonder Mary lives.” I go in. I see where she sat in the sitting-room. I go out where Martha worked in the kitchen, but I find no Jesus. I go into Pilate’s court-room, and I find the judges and the police and the prisoner’s box, but no Jesus. I go into the Arimathean cemetery; but the door is gone, and the shroud is gone, and Jesus is gone. By faith I look up to the King’s palace; and behold I have found him! Joseph -Jesus is still alive! Glorious religion, a religion made not out of deaths’-heads, and cross-bones, and undertaker’s screw-driver, but one bounding with life, and sympathy, and gladness. Joseph is yet alive!
“I know that my Kedeemer lives.
What comfort this sweet sentence gives! J^ *7
He lives, He lives, who once was dead, i-^
He lives, my ever-living Head! C vy
“He lives to grant me daily breath,
He lives, and I shall conquer death.
He lives my mansion to prepare,
He lives to bring me safely there.
“He lives, all glory to His name;
He lives, my Jesus still the same.
Oh, the sweet joy this sentence gives,
I know that my Redeemer lives ‘”
46 (^ J^ TEE KING’S WAGONS.
The King’s wagons will after a while unload, and they will turn around, and they will go back to the palace, and I really think that you and I will go with them. The King will not leave us in this famine-struck world. The King has ordered that we be lifted into the wagons, and that we go over into Goshen, where there shall be pasturage for our largest flock of joy, and then we will drive up to the palace, where there are glories awaiting us which will melt all the snow of Egyptian marble into forgetfulness.
I think that the King’s wagons will take us up to see our lost friends. Jacob’s chief anticipation was not se~e=^ ing the Nile, nor of seeing the long colonnades of architectural beauty, nor of seeing the throne-room. There was a focus to all his journeyings, to all his anticipations; and that was Joseph. AYell, my friends, I do not think heaven would be worth much if our brother Jesus was not there. If there were two heavens, the one with all the pomp and paraphernalia of an eternal monarchy, but no Christ, and the other were a plain heaven, humbly thatched, with a few daisies in the yard, and Christ were there, I would say, “Let the King’s wagons take me up to the old farm-house.”
If Jesus were not in heaven, there would be no music there; there would be but very few people there; they would be off looking for the lost Christ, crying through the universe, “Where is Jesus? where is Jesus?” and after they had found him, with loving violence they would take him and bear him through the gates; and it would be the greatest day known in heaven within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Jesus never went off from heaven but once, and he was so badly treated on that excursion they will never let him go .again.
Ob, the joy of meeting our brother, Joseph -Jesus! After we have talked about him for ten, or fifty, or seventy years, to talk luith him, and to clasp hands with the hero of the ages; not crouching as underlings in his presence, but, as Jacob and Joseph, hug each other. We will want some new term by which to address him. On earth we call him Saviour, or Redeemer, or friend; but when we throw our arms around him in everlasting embrace, we will want some new name of endearment. I can think of what we shall do through the long ages of eternity; but what we shall do the first minute I can not guess. In the first flash of his countenance, in the first rush of our emotions, what we shall do I can not imagine. Oh the overwhelming glory of the first sixty seconds in heaven! Methinks we will just stand, and look and look and look.
The king’s wagons took Jacob up to see his lost boy, and so I really think that the King’s wagons will take us up to see our lost kindred. How long is it since Joseph went out of your household? How many 3’ears is it now last Christmas, or the fourteenth of next month? It was a dark night when he died, and a stormy day it was at the burial; and the clouds wept with you, and the winds sighed for the dead. The bell at Greenwood’s gate rang only a few moments, but your heart has been tolling, tolling, ever since. You have been under a delusion, like Jacob of old. You have thought that Joseph was dead. You put his name first in the birth-record of the family Bible, and then jolx put it in the death-record of the family Bible, and you have been deceived. Joseph is yet alive. He is more alive than you are. Of all the sixteen thousand millions of children that statisticians say have gone into the future world, there is not one of them dead, and the King’s wagons will take you up to see them. You often think how glad you will be to see them. Have you never thought, my brother, my sister, bow glad they will be to see you? Jacob was no more glad to see Joseph than Joseph was to see Jacob. Every time the door in heaven opens, they look to see if it is you coming in. Joseph, once standing in the palace, burst out crying when he thought of Jacob — afar off. And the heaven of your little ones will not be fairly begun until you get there. All the kindnesses shown them by immortals will not make them forget you. There they are, the radiant throngs that went out from your homes! I throw a kiss to the sweet darlings. They are all well now in the palace. The crippled child has a sound foot now. A little lame child says, “Ma, will I be lame in heaven?” “No, my darling you won’t be lame in heaven.” A little sick child says, “Ma, will I be sick in heaven?” “No, my dear, you won’t be sick in heaven.” A little blind child says, “Ma, will I be blind in heaven?” “No, my dear, you won’t be blind in heaven.” They are all well there.
In my boyhood, for some time we lived three miles from church, and on stormy days the children staid at home, but father and mother always went to church: that was a habit they had. On those stormy Sabbaths when we staid at home, the absence of our parents seemed very much protracted; for the roads were very bad, and they could not get on very fast. So we would go to the window at twelve o’clock to see if they were coming, and then we would go at half-past twelve to see if they were coming, and at a quarter to one, and then at one o’clock. After a while, Mary, or David, or De Witt would shout, “The wagon’s coming!” and then we would see it winding out of the woods, and over the brook, and through the lane, and up in front of the old farm-house; and then we would rush out, leaving the doors wide open, with many things to tell them, asking them many questions. Well, my dear brethren, I think we are many of us in the King’s wagons, and we are on the way home. The road is very bad, and we get on slowly; but after a while we will come winding out of the woods, and through the brook of death, and up in front of the old heavenly homestead; and our departed kindred, who have been waiting and watching for us, will rush out through the doors and over the lawn, crying, “The wagons are coming! the King’s wagons are coming!” Hark! the bell of the City Hall strikes twelve. Twelve o’clock on earth, and likewise it is high noon in heaven.
During the past week somepf God’s wagons have come to us, and a loved one is gone: John R. Lansing, an elder of this church, loved by me, loved by you all — one of those pure spirits that we sometimes see early ripening for heaven. I never heard a young man pray as Lansing did. He talked with God like an old Christian. Last Thursday morning the King’s wagon halted at his pillow. There was no one present to see him go. Yes there was; Jesus was there. I went around afterward where he dwelt, and they had nothing but words of praise to say of him — so kind he was, so gentle he was, so pure he was, so upright he was! We picked him out of our large congregation as especially qualified for the service of the eldership. I have always been glad since, we did. He was a young man to be called an elder; but he was worthy of his ofl&ce, and he honored it. If I h^>^;;A.- ^-^ nil
50 ‘I THE KING’S WAGONS. “1 n
knew ot any better words of eulogium, honest eulogium, than those I have already uttered, I Vv’ould say them. Joy to him! ISTo more asthma or heart disease for him. He is well now. He will never cough again. Joy, joy! But ours is the grief, in the elders’ board, in the Sabbatb- school, in the prayer-meeting — ours is the grief “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.” May God comfort those that mourn, especially that aged mother, too feeble to hear of such tidings. I do not know but that the King’s wagon will take them both side by side through the gates into the city.
Does not the subject of the morning take the gloom out of the thoughts that would otherwise be struck through with midnight? We used to think that when we died we would have to go afoot, sagging down in the mire, and the hounds of terror might get after us, and that if we got through into heaven at all, we would come in torn, and wounded, and bleeding. I remember when my teeth chattered and my knees knocked together when I heard any body talk about death; but I have come to think that the grave will be the softest bed I ever slept in, and the bottom of my feet will not be wet with the passage of the Jordan. “Them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
I was reading a day or two ago of Kobert Southey, who said he wished he could die far away from his friends — like a dog, crawling into a corner and dying unobserved. Those were his words. Be it ours to die on a couch surrounded by loved ones, so that they with us
I may hear the glad, sweet, jubilant announcement, “The
II King’s wagons are coming.” Hark! I near them now. »l Are they coming for you or me?