The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1895-01-24


ine On the other hand, . real faith in
man flowing from faith in the Father of
humanity bubbles up like a spring in the
desert of age to cool the parched sands
and supply the thirsty soul That there is
divine meaning in life--in the life of
the lowest man-that every force of the
universe is set TO make this concealed
gem Of good fash out its light; that
every power Of love in heaven and earth
will ply its energies to the evolution of
the angel from the brute; that it is not
an even chance between good and evil
with respect to his soul; that the whole
set Of things is for goodness; that God
has manifested his interest in this mat.
ter at an awful sacrifice-the man who
really has these ideas at the core of his
life will feel the renewals Of hope day
by day. Youth Of soul will be his for
ever, and old age will be an autumn
time in which no may gather the fruit
of his faith.
Third. "a good old age" is thus
an old age which, by the influence Of
great ideas, has attached the grains of
experience each to the other, so that at
last they have made life unit Expert.
ences enough we all have had to have
made us rich in wisdom. But, / fancy,
they have yielded no permanent gain to
us, because we had no place for the
gains. They have been like beautiful
gems. We have had no strings on which
to string them, and one by one they
have been lost Noble thoughts are the
strings ON which we keep the events of
life together Ideas are pegs on which we
hang our experiences Great ideas will
take and hold whole life's expert
ences. The man who is surest to find
after awhile in his old age the most Of
wisdom is he who has now ideas great
enough to run all through his life
ideas under which he may classify his
experiences. One of the great thoughts
which has made many an old age a
throne of glory is this: God is the au.
thor and impulse of great movement
in the universe in which | live. That
movement is the one fact which binds
age to age and is the soul of history
! shall league my life with that move.
ment which runs so swiftly toward eter-
nal good. "
Lesson Taught by Moses.
If ever there was a grand old age, ii
was that of Moses, yet the very beauty
of his declining day came from that
living unity which his life with all its
countless events, had and that con.
seriousness that his life had been caught
within the moving life Of God in hu-
hfgfnfxr An1 oh
ready to bury his weary body, with fu-
neral rites that he alone would attend,
Moses looked back past the contentious
and hosannas of life, past the plains Of
Moab, over Mount SER and Mount 81.
mai, through the wilderness Of Paran
and the wilderness of Shur-yea,
through the Red sea-back to that burn
ing bush where his life got hold of
great idea, all idea long enough and
strong enough to bind its days and years
together, as the many leaves Of book
are kept together by clasp Of gold and
at life's close his prayer was ''for the
good will of him who dwelt in the
bush. Into that age there had gone no
hardness and forgetting Of the truth
which had kept life fresh and buoyant
all along. The last day of the last year
sparkled with the deepest meaning with
which the MONDAY Of life was made
radiant Moses had yielded himself at
the burning bush to the sovereignty Of
a master idea, and it bound the frag.
ments Of busy manhood and happy age
into unity. The same is true of Glad
stone, who yesterday, at 50, pleads for
stricken Armenians,
Oh, let us save ourselves from a pee
wish, rasping temper Of mind which goes
down to life's west window protesting
every step and struggling against the
setting sun, temper which finally
makes us sit down and count nothing
but the snowtiakes as they drift across
the red sunset glow and pile up on our
window sill. There is just one security
against listening to the moan Of the
evening wind, and that is to have such
perpetual morning tide within the
breast that its minor tones are all proph-
eoies Of how surely the sun which
has just gone down will make morning
elsewhere There is immortal youth in
every good cause, in every genuine
truth. He who has kept the society of
good caufes has their imperviousness to
decay.
Precursor of the Judgment Day.
Fourth. But this all leads me to say
that good old age is an old age with
the memory Of a we'll spent life behind
it. Our experiences make our eyes to
great extent Memory, il has been
limited, has q sublime but awful func.
ton to fulfill when age has come
She, like precursor of the Judgment
day, gets the old man to go backward
with strange accuracy. She takes him
to his very childhood with magic
power of recollection, leading him by
the pathways and scenes which he had
forgotten, as he thought, until the
whole book Of life is opened wide and
every unoonsoiously written record read
again. That book is one of 1.-THE books"
which ''shall be opened"-yea, it is al.
ready opened. 1t is the soul preparing
itself for the Judgment o God, that
with dark and vicious past the awful
doom could not wait for deathl o heav-
en-. that when q heroic. true past is be-
hind old age thou sendest memory to re-
create its roadways and line them with
the old sweet howersl God help us all
to put noble past behind us for old age
to wander in
Fifth IA good old age" is an old
age conscious Of its privileges and du-
Haa-tha auarl aafiuo, III yna xu hinh xua oall