Old Age

"Life's Stages: Their Duties and Opportunities." By James Stark; Minister of Belmont Congregational Church. Aberdeen: 1889.

(1.)  OLD AGE

(1a.) If you would see old age to the best advantage read the Old and New Testaments. There you find the last stage of human life hallowed and ennobled. The frailty of the body, worn with use, battered with the storms of time and shocks of fortune, is not concealed; and even occasionally, as “desire faileth,” a certain weariness of spirit may be detected; but in the main the old man comes before you in Scripture with a faith that is unsubdued, a hope that is unextinguished, a resolution that is undaunted, as he treads with tottering step the narrow space between him and the grave. What a rare picture gallery of old men and women, as original as it is reassuring to those coming after them, these sacred pages present to our view.

(1b.) Let the eye rest upon a few of the more illustrious examples of that saintly old age which, through communion with the Living God, has “light at eventide.” Abraham, that calm and majestic figure which towers above all others in the dawn of the world’s history,-“he gave up the ghost in a good old age, and old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.”Jacob, the chastened and purified Jacob, who after many trials emerged from the crafty and selfish Jacob of former days,-“when he was a-dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph, and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.” Joseph, whose distinction it was to be an able man of the world and yet a true man of God, said in his old age: “Behold I die, and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land into the land which He sware unto the fathers.” What strikes one in reading about those patriarchs is the quiet, business-like air with which they accepted the facts that lay at the farther end of life’s journey. “They died as men o’vepowered by sleep lie down.” They certainly afford a most satisfactory proof and vivid illustration of the text, “He that believeth shall not make haste.” God was so real and so near to them that they always felt they were in His hands whatever should betide them, and therefore all must be well,-must be as it ought to be. Their tranquillity arose from the fact that they looked not at the things which are seen and temporal, but at those that are unseen and eternal.

(1c.) Turning to the New Testament, do we not see old age transfigured and brought to the very gate of heaven, and therefore to the perfection of serene satisfaction, as old Simeon hails with ecstatic rapture the new-born Christ, and feels now that desire in consummated, that his life had fulfilled its purpose, and he can afford to die? “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Paul, “the aged,” physically exhausted with incessant toil and unexampled hardship, has yet the victor’s exultant shout and the ardent hopefulness of an heir-apparent, as he views the situation at the last stage: “I am now ready to be offered up, and the time of my departure is at end. I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them that love His appearing.”

(1d.) What secret springs had those men access to that they could maintain such perennial freshness of feeling amidst winter’s frost and chilly breath? Where did they get “their joys which were lodged beyond the reach of fate?” Where you and I can get them-in heaven’s communications with men! “He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and walk and not faint.” “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age: they shall be fat and flourishing.”

(1e.) It is not nature which does that. It is the result of a supernatural gift. Apart from divine grace, most men who live to an extreme age are not so; but are like the leaves of one of our beech hedges that cling to the branches all through the long weary winter. They are withered and brown, and as they shake and shiver in the stormy blasts, they seem to mourn their hard fate that they should have survived the leaves of other shrubs now buried in the soil.

(2.) THE OLD AGE OF THE RIGHTEOUS IS A TIME FOR CONGRATULATION.

(2a.) A man who had been in Paris during the whole of the period of the great revolution, and had been witness of most of those swift and tragic transformations which were of daily occurrence, was asked if he had done anything. He replied that he had lived. He thought that to have survived all the perils with which a residence in Paris was then beset was in itself an achievement.

(2b.) In like manner, an old man in virtue of his very age is, in some measure at least, a victor. When you think of the delicacy of the human structure, the extraordinary fineness of some of the chords of this harp of a thousand strings, the marvel is that the instrument should keep in tune so long, and that no tender part should snap under constant use long before the threescore year and ten have been reached. It has been said than an acquaintance with physiology unqualified by experience and habit would make even the young afraid to leap or run, so delicate is the mechanism of some of the vital parts. Does it not sometimes surprise you that the heart should go on beat, beating, by day and night, never stopping to take rest till the seventieth or eightieth milestone in life’s journey calls a halt? When you remember, too, that the body is like a beleaguered fortress with countless forces, many of them unseen as well as subtle, besieging the life that is in you with hostile intent, you cannot but admit that there is some little distinction in having by prudence and resolution kept the enemy outside the gates till the divinely allotted measure of days has been fulfilled.

(2c.) I always feel disposed to rise and uncover in the presence of an old man. We should have the same feeling for him that we have for the veteran soldier who has borne himself bravely on many battlefields, or the hardly mariner who has weathered a thousand storms, or the successful explorer who has gone over all the ground and completed the task entrusted to him. It is a great deal to have lived an upright, useful life, for seventy years. It is distinction to have so done, though nothing brilliant has been achieved; and therefore I say an old man has earned our respect, unless he himself by him misconduct has made respect impossible.

(2d.) Any one who knows men cannot be unmindful of the fact which the psalmist alludes to when he says: “The wicked have no hands in the death, but their strength is firm.” There are some who, while they fear not God nor regard man, know how to take care of themselves physically, and are selfishly prudent in their very vices. There are natures hard, self-enclosed, and niggardly, and as very little “virtue goes out” of them for the sake of others, their lease of life is not curtailed by a single day. Others, again, of tender and sympathetic feeling, expend themselves freely, the consumption being so rapid that the light is in danger of going out too soon. There is exaggeration and injustice along, however, with a few grains of truth, in the well-known lines: “The good die first, and those whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.”

(2e.)  But the truth of that observation is immensely overshadowed by the counter declaration: “Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high because he hath known My name, . . . with long life will I satisfy him, and show him My salvation.” In the Old Testament length of days is regarded as a mark of divine favour. While the teaching of this book fosters the heroic, self-sacrificing spirit which induces a man to set a light value upon temporal possessions, and to count not his life dear unto him in view of the more clamant consideration of allegiance to truth and duty, yet in its sweet reasonableness, the Word of God always endeavours, when it can do so consistently with its higher ends, to bind piety with longevity. This text for example strikes a note that is familiar to readers of the Scripture: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.”

(2f.) Most of the things that go to shorten life are not of God. How few die prematurely because of their sublime devotion to the will of God. Would it not be making a generous admission to say that unreserved consecration and unshaken fidelity to the cause of God had killed only their thousands; while it would be no exaggeration to affirm that war, dissipation, pestilence, and preventable diseases of various kinds had killed their tens of thousands? As science advances, as men become more temperate, as the comforts of life are multiplied and distributed, as God’s will is increasingly done, a much larger number of men and women will reach the normal age of at least threescore years and ten.

(3.) OLD AGE IS A TIME FOR THANKFULNESS.

(3a.) Life is a blessing. It must be so, for life as we know it in ourselves is the masterpiece of Him who is of infinite resource and love. Men often under-estimate life as they do a picture, because they do not see it in the right light, which is the light of His countenance. Are any of you what too many of this weary and satiated generation are, pessimists, “life’s tired out guests?” Change your point of view. Take the cross of Christ and the promises of God therewith connected as your standpoint, and the preciousness of life will rise immeasurably in your eyes. He that knows Emmanuel will never put the question: “Is life worth living?”

(3b.) Is it good to be alive. “It is good to be born, to be a happy, healthy babe, with heaven lying all round in our fancy; good to be a boy, light of heart, crowded with wistful questions, and dowered with quenchless hopes; good to be a girl, loving, tender, true, and helpful; good to be a man, with a manhood that is wise, and strong, and holy, and good; good to reach a well-ordered and serene old age, wearing the old man’s befitting crown of glory.”

(3c.) Who has such cause for thankfulness as an old man? What a wide space he has on which to build his gratitude. What a retrospect he has of beneficence received. No one else has had the same opportunity of testing the faithfulness and forbearance of God, putting to the proof the divinity that dwells in Him in whom he has lived and moved and had his being.

(3d.) It is the privilege, too, of an old man who has walked with God to be thankful for all the diverse elements that have entered into his lot, the bitter not less than the sweet, the shadows as well as the sunbeams, the losses quite as much as the gains. It all those had been seen beforehand, as Shakespeare says:-

“The happiest youth, viewing his progress through; What perils past, what crosses to ensue; Would shut the book, and set him down to die.”

(3e.) But whatever he might have felt in anticipation, or even as he was passing through the varied vicissitudes of life, now that he looks back upon them, and perceives how grace and wisdom hold and control them all, the old man can say from the bottom of his heart: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

(3f.) An old person is as thankful for the “mercy” as the “goodness,” for the medicine as well as the food of his soul; for no one has such a humble estimate of his own worth before a holy God as the man who has been many years in this world. One of the best evidences that one has profited by years is a deepening humility. Years need not have a withering, but they certainly ought, and generally do, have a mellowing effect upon the spirit. No one knows himself so well as an old man, and no one has such an overwhelming sense of the long-suffering of God. When he thinks of his errors, shortcomings, and sins against the light, his failures in duty, his neglected opportunities, his worldliness and selfishness, how thankful he is that the God with whom he has to do is merciful as well as just, and as he reviews the past he exclaims, with a full heart and tearful eye: “It is of the Lord’s mercies I am not consumed;” “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

(3g.) The gratitude of the aged in Christ does not spring merely from the recollection of the past, but also from the experience of the present. The saint is thankful for what is before as well as for what is behind. He does not think that “all the life of life has flown.” Old age is not something he has been dragged to, as a prisoner to his dungeon, or a captive to a land of exile. It is something he has won. He now has “the last of life, for which the first was made.” His is the joy of harvest. His feeling is not described when it is said that he is reconciled to age. He accepts it as the monarch his crown, the victor his palm, the bride the hand of her betrothed. He is thankful that he is now so far on his journey. “I am advancing,” said a Christian lady, above eighty years of age, to me once, “it is long since my vision was beclouded, my hearing is very much impaired, my feeble limbs can scarcely support me; I am advancing, I shall soon be home.” Oh! what has not Christianity done to redeem old age from brooding melancholy and weariness which maketh the heart sick?

(4.) OLD AGE IS A TIME FOR THE INTENSE SPIRITUALITY WHICH THE CLEAR VISION OF OVER-MASTERING FAITH BRINGS.

(4a.) One of the saddest sights in this world is an old person who is destitute of Christian faith, and at the same time without material comfort. When the blood is thin and cold, energy has ebbed, and all bodily action is sluggish, there is a much greater dependence than was in former years upon external supplies and artificial aids. The youth, full of health and animal spirit, has the conditions of physical happiness very much within himself, and if he has bread and his skin covered, he is independent of creature comforts. But the additional clothing, the staff, and the spectacles, all speak of the diminished power of the frame in the course of the years, and the need there is of provision for old age.

(4b.) But however large the account may be at the bankers, it cannot by itself go very far in covering the needs of age to any one who lives other than a mere animal existence. No one knows better than an old person that “man shall not live by bread alone.” You may feel the desolation of life though you are in a gilded chamber, and you can pine upon a velvet couch. Provided one is in possession of the necessaries and common comforts of life, the difference between the rich and the poor is even narrower in old age than in any previous stage in life. Money cannot buy back the freshness and energy of youth. No skill can be hired, however high the fee offered, to repair the failing senses and bar the entrance of death. How touching the words of Barzillai the Gileadite: “I am this day fourscore years old; and . . . can thy servant taste what I eat or drank? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? Wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burden unto the lord the king?” One of the most touching incidents I have read for a long time is recounted by Oliver Wendell Holmes, now bordering upon eighty years of age. In an article descriptive of a tour he made in our country not long ago, he says: “As we drove over the barren plain at Stonehenge, one of the party suddenly exclaimed ‘Look! look! see the lark rising.’ I looked up with the rest. There was the bright blue sky, but not a speck upon it which my eyes could distinguish. Again one called out ‘Hark! hear him singing!’ I listened, but not a sound reached my ear. Was it strange that I felt a momentary pang? ‘Those that look out at the windows are darkened, and all the daughters of music are brought low.’ I had a very sweet emotion of self-pity which took the sting out of my painful discovery that the orchestra of my pleasing life-entertainment was unstringing its instruments, and its lights were being extinguished-that the show was almost over.” He adds: “All this I kept to myself of course, except so far as I whispered it to the Unseen Presence which we all feel is in sympathy with us, and which, as it seemed to my fancy, was looking into my eyes, and through them into my soul, with the tender tearful smile of a mother who for the first time gently presses back the longing lips of her as yet unweaned infant.”

(4c.) It is undoubtedly part of the order of things, and we must lay our account with it, that, keeping only the physical nature in view, the pleasure of existence does decrease with age. Old age is then an enemy to happiness! Yes, unquestionably it is, if you draw your happiness solely from the senses. Old age is bankruptcy to the voluptuary, and not much better to the respectable worldling. An old heart can’t be other than miserable, as it is a heart linking its fortunes with those of time, and therefore laying itself open to age, decay, and misery; a heart seeking peace outside of God-in the things of God, and not in God Himself. How then are we to fortify ourselves against the enemy? By the possession of the young heart, which faith gives: by reinforcements for the spiritual world. The only way in which you can counterbalance loss and decay on the material side of life is to draw more largely upon that faith which is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” If you “live in the spirit;” if you “walk by faith;” if you are “increased with the increase of God;” "though the outward man is perishing, the inward man will be renewed day by day.” The joy of existence deepens and intensifies as life goes on, if in and through Christ you have acquired an inheritance that is “incorruptible” and that “fadeth not away.” If you aspire to be as God is, to participate in His blessedness by sharing in His love of righteousness and compassion for men, you will find that God, instead of putting you in your old age in a “strait” place, has given you a “large room,” as “the limits of the mortal life begin to melt into a wider horizon.” You will then be able to feel as an old bed-ridden Avoch fisherman once said in my hearing, when he was asked “How are you”-“Just lying at anchor here waiting for orders to sail.”

“It is the evening hour; And thankfully; Father, Thy weary child; Has come home to Thee; I lean my aching head; Upon thy breast; And there, and only there; I am at rest; Thou knowest all my life; Each petty sin; nothing is hid from Thee; Without, within; All that I have or am; Is wholly Thine; So is my soul at peace; For Thou art mine; To-morrow’s dawn may find; Me here or there; It matters little, since Thy love; Is everywhere.”

(4d.) In order to have an old age that is all we should like it to be, take the following suggestions:- 

1.  Accept old age as heaven’s best gift for you as a citizen of the earth. Consent to be old. Do not make vain attempt to disguise age.

2.  Seek pleasures that are inward and lasting.

3.  Cultivate the society of the young.

4.  Do not retire too soon from the business of this world. If you do not require to work for a living, remain at the post of duty as long as you can, that you make money for God. “He is already dead who lives only to keep himself alive.”

5.  Have interests that take you out of yourself and bring you near to the fellowship of God and sympathy of men.

6.  Do not take the faults of youth into your old age, for old age brings its own defects.

7.  Turn towards heaven. Do not walk backwards.

8.  Think of “the oak of the centuries’ growth still putting on its green leaf, contributing to the hopefulness and the promise of spring and the beauty of summer,-a contribution all the more valuable that it gives a sober tinge to prevailing brightness and gaiety.”

(5) OLD AGE POEMS

(5a.) “To the animal nature the pleasure of existence decreases with age; but to the soul the joy of existence deepens and intensifies.”-John Pulsford.

(5b.) “When cold winds range my winter nights; Be Thou my summer door;

Keep for me all my young delights; Till I am old no more.”-George MacDonald.

(5c.) “I hear it singing, singing sweetly; Sweetly in an undertone; Singing as if God had taught it-It is better farther on.

“Night and day it sings the same song; Sings it while I sit alone; Sings so that the heart may hear it-It is better farther on.

“Sits upon the grave and sings it; Sings it while the heart would groan; Sings it when the shadows darken-It is better farther on.

“Farther on? But how much farther? Count the milestones one by one? No! no counting,-only trusting-It is better farther on.”