1.00 12mo 12mo Christianity the Science of Manhood. Life Questions. 16mo Bluffton: A Story of To-day. 12mo Helps for Daily Living. 12mo The Signs of the Times. 12mo Life. 12mo. The Minister's Hand-book. For Christenings, Weddings, 1.50 Unitarian Catechism. With an Introduction by E. A. Horton. 20 cents. Per doz., 1.50 30 2.50 Mr. Savage's weekly sermons are regularly printed in pamphlet GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. LIFE AT FIFTY. "And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou?"-GEN. xlvii. 8. THIS is the seventh day of June. On next Wednesday, the 10th, I shall be fifty years old. When Pharaoh asked Jacob his age, he is said to have answered, "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." What peculiar circumstances in the life of Jacob led him to answer in this way I do not know. Perhaps, as people have always been doing ever since, he wanted to glorify the "good old times" and tell how much longer folks used to live in the past. Perhaps life had really been a burden to him; for his children, at any rate, appear not to have been any great comfort. Or, again, perhaps, as people do now, he remembered only the disagreeable things and overlooked the pleasant ones. At any rate and whatever he may have meant, I wish simply to say that I do not at all agree with him in his estimate of life. My days have been "few" enough, from my own point of view, but they have not been "evil"; and I cannot join the old patriarch in his whining complaint. When I was a boy, fifty seemed dreadfully old; and I used to think a man by that time ought to be ready to die. My father being almost that when I was born, I can remember thinking that he must be nearly through. And yet he lived on until I was well beyond forty. I do not trouble myself over the question as to whether I shall reach his term years. I only know that my estimate of being old has wonderfully changed. I have learned what Dr. Holmes meant when he said that a man had better be "seventy years young than to be forty years old." Four or five years ago I preached a sermon on "How to Grow Old." One of my parishioners at the time said to me, "If you would only tell us how to grow young, I should be glad to hear you." There was a wistful humor in his tone that let me into the secret that he did not like the advancing years. Lord Derby, when he was old, said he would gladly give his title of nobility, his political distinction, his literary fame, his wealth, if only in exchange he could be a healthy young man of twenty-one. Most people do not like it. They shrink from the rapidly recurring birthdays. They carefully remove the few first gray hairs, until they find that nature is doing the work quite fast enough. The poets sing of it in a minor key. It is suggestive of gray locks or none at all; of dull ears and dim eyes; of stiffened joints and many infirmities. Perhaps the attention is too much confined to the yellowing stalk, and not enough to the ripening corn. As I do not at all agree with most of the estimates I meet of growing old, it has seemed to me worth while to tell you how life looks to me as I survey it from the height of fifty years. Perhaps the best way to come at it will be to note some of the superficial estimates one constantly comes across, and contrast them with my own. I. I may as well begin with the familiar and beautiful lines of Wordsworth, and let them stand as a type of what is very common on the lips of men : "There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light,— The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore: Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. "The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy; But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,- The youth, who daily farther from the east And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, This is beautiful, most beautiful, as poetry. But is it true? For one, I don't believe a word of it! The poet had a thesis to maintain, a case to make out; and perhaps this unconsciously colored his words. People are so apt to exaggerate in order to make a point. But still we must admit that these words chime in with a very common complaint of life. The tender light, the dewy freshness of the morning, followed by the broad sun and the "heat and burden" of the day! The romance, the dreams, the wonder of childhood and youth, followed by disillusion, and the stern, the hard realities of the workaday world! So is the picture sketched. Hood echoes the same wail:— "I remember, I remember, The fir-trees dark and high; It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heaven Than when I was a boy." poetry. But also, again, not true. Again, beautiful Heaven was never so near as it has been brought to us by modern thought. To be sure, there is a truth here. For the man may get so absorbed in dust and trifles as to think of heaven and God only as old-time dreams, though they fold him round still as close as a loving mother clasps a child that dreams and moans in its sleep. He may come to be like Bunyan's man with the muck-rake, who gathered sticks and straws unconscious of the shining angel who was holding out to him a crown just above his head. But God's great realities are not annihilated when we shut our eyes or turn away our heads. The question, then, is, Does the world grow poorer and more commonplace as we grow older? No, a thousand times, no! if only we keep our eyes open. My own childhood was a lonely one; for I was an invalid boy, who, shut out of many boyhood plays, wandered alone, seeing visions and dreaming dreams. It was a wonderworld I lived in. All the glory and the freshness I saw, lying on my back under the trees and sailing across the heavens with the floating clouds; talking with squirrel and bird, and listening to the wind-voices; glad with the play of the sunlight on the river; lost in the mystery of deep woods; climbing near to heaven on the tops of high hills; wondering what the great world held for me of love and fame. That morning light that shone on the landscape of childhood and youth has faded. About me is "the light of common day." These things are left behind, as the childhood world has left its myths and legends, its dreams of Arthur and Hercules and the Golden Fleece. But, in this "light of common day," what? Is the world poorer, less poetic, less romantic, less full of mystery and wonder? I pity the man who thinks so; for it means, not that the world is growing |