Fifty Years and Beyond: Or, Gathered Gems for the Aged

Front matter

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Dedication

TO THE GOODLY COMPANY OF MEN AND WOMEN IN OUR COUNTRY, WHO

HAVE REACHED OR PASSED THE

FIFTIETH MILE-STONE OF LIFE.

Preface

This volume has been prepared for persons of mature and advanced years, under the conviction that such a work will fill a space in our literature, and with a hope that it will prove a blessing to all its readers.

There are numerous volumes for children and youth. Books abound for young men and young women, and for men and women in life's various relations and pursuits, but only a few volumes have ever been prepared for those who are passing through the afternoon and evening of life.

There are numerous periodicals for children and youth, and young people, and departments in many more for these classes, but there are no periodicals, and no departments in any, for the aged.

This volume is a religious miscellany for the mature and the aged. But, it is intended to do more than simply provide interesting and entertaining reading for such persons. The author has sought to enrich its pages by such articles as will impart instruction and comfort to the aged, teaching how the later years of life may be spent, so that they shall constitute the happiest and most useful of all life's periods.

There can be no reason why the period of life at " Fifty anc5 Beyond " may not be rich in usefulness, and abundant in its comforts and joys. Did men expect this, and in the earlier periods of life prepare for it, they would find this period in its usefulness and ^tomforts exceeding their high^ est hopes.

The articles which have been prepared for this volume, by the following eminent physicians, and distinguished

•

VI PREFACE.

divines, will be read with great interest : N. S. Davis, M.D., LL.D.; J. S. Jewell, M.D., and E. L. Holmes, M.D., and Eev. Drs. Edwards, Patterson, Paddock, Crews, Ninde, Fallows, Eeddy, Jewett, and Eev. Glen Wood, and also the articles of Joseph Eichardson, M.D., and Eev. Dr. Wentworth, which, though not specially prepared for this volume, are valuable contributions to it.

To all these writers the author is under great obligations, and hereby expresses his most sincere thanks.

It is hoped that the reader will learn many things from these original articles, as well as from the selected ones, in relation to the laws of health and life, especially in their application to advanced years; and that they will meet many practical suggestions which will help them to joyfully finish up the work of their life, so that the later periods of life may prove to be their best and brightest ones, and they at last " come to their graves in a full age, as a shock of corn cometh in his season."

" Fifty Years and Beyond." Fifty years is life's meridian. Then cometh Age, Old Age, Death, and the Great Beyond. The Author employs his title as embracing all these periods and events, and the reader will find much in relation to each of them.

It is the Author's most earnest desire, and devout prayer, that all the readers of this book may have a joyful experience of the Divine presence and blessing in their Age, Old Age, and Dying, and then passing to the Great Beyond may receive the glorious inheritance embraced in the "Certainties," and in the "Possibilities" of the redeemed soul in heaveiu

Introduction

** A solemn murmur in the soul Tells of the world to be, — As trav'lers hear the billows roll Before they reach the sea,'

It

Aging and dying are but courses of Nature. Physical maturity and decline may be as gentle and sweet and grateful as the sequence of blossom and fruit and harvest. The world is but a womb whence we are born into a perfect realm whose life and immortality were brought to liglit by Him who vanquished Death. We do not rest in the familiar argument that universal human longing for future being "proves" that such a future awaits all men. We prefer to believe that that longing establishes simply a presumption that man may live again. The Christian has better proof. The man who has been quickened into the new spiritual life, which is the heritage of every obedient soul, has a downright, unshakable consciousness that divinely prepared mansions await him above. Having this hope, we purify ourselves, and the purification includes that clear vision which rewarded Moses, and plants a glad mountain of transfiguration beneath the feet of every loyal pilgrim.

The skeptic, who professionally attacks this correct Christian philosophy, is a ruthless warrior against man, and society. Kapine, murder, incendiarism, slander, and prostitution of childhood are not more pitiless. Rationalistic death is a failure more downright only than ration-

VIU INTRODUCTION.

alistic life. The man who believes he happened into being, must stagger and happen along through physical maturity, must exist on moral food unguarded by even the example of the monkeys, which are said by their habits to suggest to travelers what are and what are not poisonous foods — and then ''to die and be forgot," like a song-bird or a beast, lacks motive for this world and light upon the next. Tom Hood asks for another, we trust, and not for himself, when he says,

** What can^n pld man do but die? "

If there is on record no answer from above and beyond, what need a young man do better than die and have done with the perplexing problem and the unrenmnerative investment? Little wonder that in countries uncheered by intelligent Christianity or unrestrained by proliibitive Koman Catholicism, suicide is a habit and a joyful release. Europe, by its history of self-murder, is logical and suggestive. A corresponding history is being interwoven into our American life in proportion as these foreign rationalistic tendencies are being imported. In heathen lands the aged are classed with, and follow to neglect and death, worthless female children. Christ's gospel exalts the value of all sexes and ages. Christian homes welcome the girl babies as the future organizers of orderly households, and hoary heads are honored, as crowns are guarded for the sake of their jewels. The philosophy of a godless death is the basis of a Christless view of life. f Books, like the one to which these appreciative lines / are an introduction, are some of the fruits of Christian. , dvilization. A loval life postpones death and delays the

INTRODUOnON. IX coming of age. We come not into life for the sake of ' going out of it, but rather to do, and do as much and as long as possible, before we die. Easy births into the world, fruitful lives, and intelligently tranquil births out of the world, are direct results of redemption from the curse pronounced in Genesis. Christian science and the godly physician are direct gifts of rewardful providence, and among the "indirect evidences of Christianity." As far as the world is concerned, a valuable life prolonged is better than two bliglited lives. When, therefore, experienced physicians, like Doctors Davis, Jewell, Richardson and Holmes, identify the ordinary causes of premature decay, and instruct men how to modify and measurably thwart those causes, they perform a service second only to the divinity that originally gave life. Such counsellors belong to the grand race of redeemers, at whose head stands the perfect man, the God-Christ. The devout physiologist, whose ministrations enlarge the scope of God's workmen, becomes a direct partner in the workmen's products, and becomes a veritable evangel.

Tliis book illustrates also the grand services of men who by exclusive devotion give their lives to the study of revelation, and who thereby ascertain quite clearly what the Word says. respecting the two worlds. They have discovered and located the headlands of all continents, have traced treacherous currents and formulated what revelation teaches concerning the mighty trade-winds of life. When, therefore, the barometer of hope and expectation rises and falls. perplexingly, the fleets of solicitous humanity may well gather about these confident pilots, and receive their

INTRODUCTION.

*' courses and bearings." We do not say that these teachers have made the sea and its dangers, or have placed embargos upon ports of safety, save to privileged mariners. Let all that pass as the lies of men who, for the sake of consciences that long to destroy authority and murder responsibility, cast reproach upon the counsels of men who have inquired of God. Like all pilots, they study the sea as they find it, and benefit the roving navies who do not know all that which is so familiar to those who study the details of the world's harbors. Moreover, like all human analogies that relate to spiritual things, our analogy must fail, since the beacons that guide were not located by man. Our pilots in this Christian navigation discovered the flight-houses that guide and guard the headlands of heaven. Their blessed flash-lights drop into momentary eclipse in order that they may reward and more intensely illumine the eye of him who devoutly seeks guidance and illumination. On all the coasts of the future life there lie not the ribs of a single soul-ship that was wrecked in its honest effort to enter the inlets of heaven.

Then, too, the testimony — the "testimonials" — of those who went in with shouts of rejoicing ! They are a goodly company, and those we love were enrolled among the heavenly witnesses before they vanished from our longing sight. Paul was inspired to write, but so was Wesley when filled by the same spirit of God. John stood on Patmos, and so did Hooper Crews, who spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost i:i the lines which have been printed since that saintly writer ascended. It may be that some dying persons speak of visions that have no objective iNTKODuonoN. zi reality in their particular cases. The concurrent testimony, however, of the ascending host of redeemed men is proof as solid and actual and convincing as the harmonious verdict of men and angels named in Scripture. The formally untaught habit of savages who reckon in simple digits, and the cultured nations who cypher in millions, alike testify to the fundamental reality and accuracy of the -two basal principles in mathematics. The angels of God who speak from above by divine inspiration, and the redeemed toilers of earth who by like inspiration have learned the dialects of heaven, are in the same glorious school, and " speak with one voice" the irrefutable fact that God is with man. A Christian aging man or woman who is crossing the equator that girts the middle of his century of life, is in the moral autumnal equinox when God, his sun, is directly overhead. That period may be the brightest, lightest, blandest year of his life, to date. As the years thenceforth increase, and the angle of illumination changes, n

•an old age serene and bright

And lovely as a Lapland night Shall lead thee to thy grave/'

Then will follow existence in a clime where no physical orbit will alternately banish or bring the sun, and make half the year a lightless night. The laws that bind men here shall surrender to their Framer, and a nightless existence shall reward those who once waited in sorrow for the morning. The Christian never dies. Death once was conquerer — but now, as Coleridge so beautifully says, on the bed where a Christian expires,

•• Tis Death itself there dies."

AETHUR ED^ AS1^%.