News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-01-14

breath and the brGVlty OF human lie
1t is too much for my gravity to heal
an octogenarian talking about the
shortness of human life. From all
can find out he has always been here,
and from present prospects he IS al
ways going to stay. Remain young.
Hang up your stockings in Christmas
time. Help the boys fly the kite.
Teach the girls how to dress then
dolls. Better than arnica for your stiff
joints and catnip tea for your sleep
less nights will be a large dose OF
youthful companiOnship.
THE WORLD IS GROWING BETTER.
Set back the clock of human life.
Make the shadow of the sundial OF
Ahaz retreat ten degrees. People
make themselves old by always talk
ing about being old and wishing foI
the good old days which were never
as good as these days. From all ]
can hear the grandchildren are not
half as bad as the grandparents were.
Matters have been huShed up. But
if you have ever been in a room adj
"
people a little deaf were talking over
old times you will find that this age
does not monopolize all the young
rascals It may now be hard to get
J young people up early enough in the
morning, but their grandparents al
ways had to be pulled out of bed.
1t is wrong now to play mischievous
tricks on the unsuspecting, but eighty
years ago at school that now venera-
l BILE man sat down on crooked pin
not accidentally placed there, and
purposely drove the sleigh riding par
ty too near the edge of the embank-
ment that he might see how they
would look when tumbled into the
snow. And that man who has SO little
! patience with childish eXuberance
was in olden times up to pranks one
half of which, if practiced by the
eight-year-old of today, would set
grandfather and grandmother crazy.
Revive your remembrance of what
you were between five and ten years
of age, and with patience capable of
everything join with the young. Put
back the shadow of the dial not ten
degrees, but fifty and sixty and sew
enty degrees.
Set back your clocks also by enter
ing on new and absorbing Christian
work. In our desire to inspire the
young we have in our essays had
much to say about what has been ac-
complished by the young; of Romu-
lus, who founded Rome when he was
twenty years of age; of COrtes, who
had conquered Mexico at thirty
years; of Pitt, who was prime min
lister of England at twenty-four
years; of Raphael, who died at
thirty-seven years; of Calvin, who
wrote his Institutes at twenty-siX; of
Melancthon, who took a learned pro
fessor's chair at twenty-one years; of
Luther, who had conquered Germany
for the Reformation by the time he
was thirty five years.
And it is all very well for us to
show how early in life one can do
very great things for God and the
welfare of the world, but some of the
done by septuagenarians and OctO-
genarians and nOnagenarians In
deed, there is work which none but
such can do. They preserve the
equipoise of senates, of religious de
nominations, of refOrmatOry move
ments. Young men for action. old
men for counsel. Instead of any of
you beginning to fold up your ener-
gies, arouse anew your energies
With the experience you have OBJ
tanned and the opportunities of OBJ
servatiOn you have had during long
life you ought to be able to do in one
year now more than you did in ten
years right after you had passed out
of your teens. Physical power less,
your spiritual power ought to be
more.
Up to the last hour of their lives
what power for good old Dr.. Archi-
bald Alexander, old Dr. Woods, old
DR.. Halves, old Dr. Minor, old DR..
McIlvaine, old DR.. Tying, old DR..
Candlish, old Dr. Chalmers What !
have been Bismarck to Germany, and |
Gladstone to England, and Oliver
Wendell Holmes to America in the |
time of an advanced age? Let me |
say to those in the afternoon of life:
Don't be putting off the harness;
when God wants it off he will take it |
off. Don't be frightened out of life by |
the grip, as many are. At the first |
sneeze of an influenza many give up |
all as lost.
No new terror has come on the
earth. The microbes as the cause of |
disease were described in the Talmud !
seventeen hundred years ago as lin
visible legions of dangerous ones"
Don't be scared out of life by all this
talk about heart failure. That trouble |
has always been in the world That
is what all the people that ever passed
out of this life have died of-heart
failure. Adam had it, and all of his
descendants have had it OF will have
it.
Do not be watching for symptoms,
or you will have symptoms of every
thing. Some of you will yet die of
symptoms. Symptoms are often only
what we sometimes see i'll the country
"a dead owl nailed on a barn door to
scare living owls. Put your trust in
God, go to bed at ten o'clock, have
the window open six inches to let in
the fresh air, sleep on your right side
and fear nothing. The old maxim
was right, Get thy spindle and
distaff ready, and God will send thee
flax"
TOWARD THE SUNRISE.
But while looking at this sundial
of Ahaz and l see the shadow of it
move l notice that it went back to-
ward the sunrise instead of forward
toward the sunset - toward the
instead of toward the night.
That thing the world is willing now
to do and in many cases has done.
There have great many things been
written and spoken about the sunset
of life. | have said some of them
myself. But my text suggests a bet
ter idea. The Lord who turned back
that day from going toward shutdown
and started it toward sunrise is will
ing to do the same thing for all of us.
The theOlOgians who stick to old
religious technicalities until they be-
come soporifics would not call it
but conversion. l call it a
change from going toward shutdown
to going toward sunrise. That man
who never tries to unbuckle the clasp
e L. L