The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1893-03-11

"AAS AShH u ~ bho
been climbing, but now he has got to
the top of the hill and he takes a long
breath. He is halfway through the
journey at last, and he is in
a position to look backwardor forward.
He has more good sense than he ever
had. He knows human nature, for he
has been cheated often enough to see
the bad side of it, and he has met SO
many gracious and kindly and splen-
did souls he also knows the good side
of it. Now, calm yourself. Thank God
for the past and deliberately set your
compass for another voyage. You have
chased enough thistledown. You have
blown enough soap bubbles. You have
seen the unsatisfying nature of all
earthly things. Open a new chapter
with God and the world. This decade
OF the forties ought to eclipse all its
predecessors in worship, in youthful
ness and in happiness. Forty" Is a
great word in the Bible. Gods ancient
people were forty years in the wilder
ness. David and Solomon and Jehoash
reigned forty years. When Joseph WIS.,
tied his brethren he was 40 years old.
VII, tlilo bop vi INV " OiCo
You have now the character you will
probably have for all time and all eter-
nifty. God. by his grace, sometimes
changes a man after the ~forties, but
after that a man never changes him
self.
My sermon next accosts the tifties.
How queer it looks when, in writing
your age, you make the first of the two
figures u S." This is the decade which
shows what the other decades have
been. If a young man has own wild
oats, and he has lived to this time, he
reaps the harvest of it in the fifties, or
If by necessity he was compelled to
overtoil in honest directions he is called
to settle up with exacting nature some
time during the fifties. Many have it
so hard in early life that they are octo-
~genarians at so. Sciaticas and rheuma-
tisms and ~neuralg;as and vertigos
and insomnias have their play
ground in the fifties. Oh, We
who are in the ffties think of It'll A
half century of blessing to be thankful
for, and a half century subtracted from
an existence which, in the most marked
case of longevity, hardly ever reaches a
whole century. By this. time you
ought to be eminent for piety. You
have been in so many battles you
ought to be a good soldier. You have
made so many voyages you ought to be
a good sailor. So long protected and
blessed, you ought to have a soul full
of .doxologY. IN bible times in Canaan
every fifty wessby Gods command
1 Of jubilee The people did not
work that year. II property had, by
misfortune, gone out of ones posses
sion, IN the fiftieth year it came back
to him. 1.-The had fooled it away it was
returned to him without a farthing TO
pay. If a man had been enslaved he
was, in that year. emancipated. A
trumpet was sounded loud and clear
and long, and it was the trumpet
of jubilee. What a time it was, that
fiftieth year! And if under
the old dispensation it was
such a glad time, under our new and
more glorious ~dispensation let all who
have come to the fifties hear the trum-
pet of jubilee that 1 now blow.
My sermon next accosts the sixties.
The beginning of that decade is more
startling than any other. In his
chronological journey the man rides
rather smoothly over the figures ''2''
and 49, and ~" and SIS" but
the figure &c" gives him a big jolt
Sixty! Now your great danger is the
temptation to fold up your faculties
and quit. You will feel n tendency to
reminisce. If you do not look out you
will begin almost everything with the
words. when l was a boy" But you
ought to make the sixties more memoir
able for God and the truth than the
ffties or the forties or the thirties.
You ought to do more during the next
ten years than you did in any thirty
years of your life, because of all the
experience you have had. You have
committed enough mistakes in life to
make you wise above your juniors.
Now, under the accumulated light of
your past experimenting, go to work
for God as never before. When a man
in the sixties folds up his energy and
feels he has done enough, it is the devil
of Incidence to which he is surrender
ing, and God generally takes the man
at his word and lets him die right away.
My subject next accosts those in the
seventies and beyond. My word to
them is congratulation. You have got
nearly, II not quite, through. You
have safely crossed the sea of life and
are about to enter the harbor. You
have fought at Gettysburg, and the war
is owe Here and there a skirmish
with the remaining sin of your own
heart and the sin of the world, but /
guess you are about done. There may
be some work for you yet on a small
or large scale. Bismarck. of Germany,
vigorous in the eighties; the prime
minister of England strong at 81;
Haydn composing his oratorio,
The Creation" at 20 years of age;
Isocrates doing some of his best work
at "a; Plato busy thinking for all sue.
ceeding centuries ut 81; Noah Webster,
after making his world-renowned die
tienary, hard at work until IS years
old; Rev. Daniel Waldo praying in my
pulpit at 100 years of age; Humboldt
producing the immortal Cosmos" al 70
years; William Blake at 81 learning
Italian so as to read Dante in the origi.
nal; Lord Cockburn at 81 writing his
treatise. John Wesley stirring great
audiences at 81. William c. Bryant,
without spectacles, reading in my
house 'Thanatopsis," at SO years Of
age. Christian men and women in all
departments serving God after becom-
ing sepsuagenarians and octogenarians
and nonagenarians prove hat there
are possibilities of work for the aged,
but / think you who are past the seven
ties are near being through. How do
you feel about it? You ought to be ju-
bilant because life is a tremendous
struggle, and if you have got through
respectfully and usefully, you ought to
feel like people toward the close of a
summer day seated on the rocks watch
ing the sunset at Bar Harbor or Cape
May or Lookout Mountain. l am glad
to say that most old Christians are
cheerful. The young have their
troubles before them. The old
have their troubles behind
them. You have got about
ali out of this earth that there is in it.
Be glad that you, an aged ervant of
God, are going to try another life and
amid better surroundings. Stop look
ing back and look ahead. Oh, we in the
seventies and eighties and the nineties,
your best days are yet to come, your
grandest associations are yet to be
formed, your best eyesight is yet to be
kindled, your best hearing is yet to be
awakened, your greatest speed is yet to
be travelled, your gladdest song is yet to
be sung. The most of your. friends have
gone over the border, and you are going