ºtoluing Øſt to some 19tutpost. ºn tº *- PREACHED /AV /º/R.S. 7 CHO/A'CH'. JANUARY 17, 1875. By R U F Us E L L is, MINISTER OF THE CHURCH. for 33ribate HBistribution. B O S T O N : OF JOHN WILSON . 1875. Görðuíng (PIU to £50mt 19tutpogt. COMMEMORATIVE SERMON PREACHED IN FIRST CHURCH, JANUARY 17, 1875. By R U F U S E L LIS, MINISTER OF THE CHURCH, jur #ribate Bistribution, B O S T O N : . PRESS OF JOHN wilson AND SON. 1875. ELIZABETH ANNA. FOSTER, Bitt, 3anuarg 11, 1875, IN THE SEVENTY-SECOND YEAR OF HER AGE. Slºvu, otº S E R M O N, “And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning.”— job xi. 17. OUR life is commonly complained of as too short, and yet we spend like prodigals the days and years that make up life, as men rather unwilling to die than engaged to live. What we need is not more time, but more of the inward strength and wealth which alone give value to time; indeed, without which, shortness would be the best thing about it. If we really live, each moment will be precious to us, and we shall see clearly that each period of life is rich in its own blessing; not only the days of eager, hopeful preparation, not only the time of ut- most capacity and service, but those years as well when we hear ourselves called old, and are sur- prised, but presently call ourselves old, and then are old. Life does not begin and end with the few years when we are at our best for labor and endur- ance. As we have again and again seen, it runs far beyond that, strength and beauty and blessedness to the very end of the threescore and ten and four- score years. 4. I have a few words to say about growing old to some purpose, and what I have to say concerns others as well as those whose years are largely be- hind them; for, unless we have lived to some pur- pose before, we shall enter upon that way in the time of our age only at great disadvantage. I have in mind only those who have been real workers, and have filled some place in the world, and who, instead of lamenting any growing disability, are not ready to plead it as an excuse from active duty. The wealth of many a life is all gone before age comes to lock it up for a season beyond our reach. Instead of laying up for the future we have been drawing upon the future; instead of transmuting the lower and perishable into the higher and imperisha- ble, we have consumed it upon our lusts; instead of feeding upon the love which builds up, we have devoured the knowledge which puffs up. “Pleasure for youth, ambition for manhood, avarice for old age,” may be true of the highest of the animals; it is not true of him who is but a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor. Every thing depends upon the being within, the spiritual and moral life, stimulating, and guiding, and almost creating, certainly preserving, our intellectual pow- ers, and fulfilling the sacred promise, “ They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.” 1. “Thine age shall be clearer than the noon- day;” for it takes time to ripen fruit, and the early harvest is the time for ripening. Yesterday how 5 hard and green it looked; the wealth of the sum- mer sunk in that crude and unpromising lump, bitter in the mouth, and for food worse than useless! See what a change even a September sun has made in it ! So you shall sometimes note with increasing years a steadily improving character: the nobler and higher and better gradually coming into its own; an ever-deepening purpose binding together youth and age, an advance even so marked and sudden that it seems to be the result of a momentum gained by a life-long race; you shall see the working of a spirit ready to take advantage of some providential en- largement, the dropping away of some long-borne burden and oppressive restraint; a spirit coming at length into the light, and grasping surely what has long been blindly reached after. Our passions quickly come of age, and, unless they are redeemed into affections, spend their substance in riotous liv- ing. The best things in us are of slow growth, and are for ever increasing as they are used and enjoyed. You shall see the good growing better as they grow older, with a wider and wiser and sweeter and more hopeful and more charitable goodness, a mellowing of the fruit of life as it gives back to the sun his golden light through the withering leaves. It is the harvest of earth; cheering and beautiful anticipation of the harvest which is the end of the world. Are there not angel-reapers for this ingathering also? “Clearer than the noonday,” for that was the time of hard labor and stern discipline, of failure and dis- 1 * 6 couragement; but, God and man working together, at even-tide there is light. * * 2. Again, “Thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning,” because a really mature wisdom is prophetic as well as commemorative, a mediator and reconciler, deriving even from the failures of the past arguments of hope, not always listening for the crack of doom, conservative of the old because it has yielded so much which is true and helpful and de- monstrated for all time, but ready to see what has been fulfilled in what is to be, taken up into larger statements, the abundance of a deeper life, enriched by the grafting of new shoots into the old stock. There are those who are growing old to some pur- pose, because they can say with the prophet, “Be- hold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.” As we grow old the mind should broaden to the measures of the well-instructed scribe who brought out of his treasury things new and old, — deep things and high which are from everlasting, and bind the ages together. We grow old to some purpose, if, as time goes on, we enlarge our acquaint- ance in the world of knowledge and thought as well as in the world of men and women. And as to the complaint of age as no longer progressive, never believe that one, the habit of whose life it has been to move thankfully towards the least glimmer of light, will turn his back upon any coming day be- 7 cause he is growing old. Simeon and Anna, the aged, were young enough to welcome the Christ. He who has served Jesus long and faithfully never hopes to serve Him save in the utmost hospitality to all accredited Truth: that Truth we carry with us, an ever-increasing treasure, only dropping here and there it may be an opinion, and so moving forward more easily in age than in youth, still led by the spirit of the Lord, which is the spirit of prophecy, not obstinately protesting against inevitable changes, but seeking rather to bring from the fading past a beautiful future. And, indeed, nothing so makes one young again as a new call from God, and a new departure, which, however it may seem to be out- wardly at variance with the traditions of a lifetime, is really in accord with their spirit and, their deep- est meanings. We grow old to good purpose when, with the calmness and the balanced judgment which should come with years, we bear our testimony as to what we have found real, and what we have found unreal, the things which remain and may be strength- ened, and the things which must pass away. It is too much the custom of those who have had much experience timidly to hide the counsel of mature: wisdon in their hearts, and the world is none the better for all that years have taught them. So man must try over and over again the old experiments, and go again and again to the broken cisterns that hold no water. “If I were a younger man,” we say; and so what we have learned goes down into 8 the grave with us, or into that other world where it can hardly be so much needed as in this. It is never too late to go forward at the word of God. See Moses, at fourscore, leading Israel out of Egypt; or hear the apostle who, for love's sake, rather be- seeches than commands, being such a one as Paul, the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ, or that Gentile saint and sage, that old man in Athens, discoursing to his friends of the immor- tal life, whilst the jailer prepares for him the fatal poison. 3. I might go on to speak of that beautiful life which in our later years we are permitted to live in or through others, we supplying as we may in- spiration and guidance, and they the outward force, – a life in which we are more eager to get our work done than to get the fame of doing it. I might tell of those labors of love which are possible only to the comparative freedom and resources of age, labors which men too often leave to their heirs, effectual correctives of avarice, if that be indeed a besetting sin of the old. I might tell how they enrich and help who only wait, speaking to us in their quiet way of the joys and sorrows that have made earth precious, and of the reasonable hope that makes the world to come real and engaging; but I have room only for a word which beyond my wont must be direct and personal. And should any one ask why I have spoken this morning of the light that may shine so bright and sweet as years increase, let me 9 say that such years have been much and vividly in my thought during the past week. Of the many homesteads that sent their families to our old church, and made up the church neighborhood, one only has held its place amidst the changes of the time. Flames could not burn it: the tidal wave of traffic could not sweep it away. It stood through that terrible night of the 9th of November, whilst fire and water strove with each other for the mastery above and around. To my eyes the flames seemed to burst from the roof, by the side of the firemen, but it came out unharmed, almost untouched, one of the few dwellings that were unchanged within and without, a survival from the days of your childhood, a restful place in these restless times, having a value as a home which suffered no man to calculate its value as a place for improvement, as the phrase is. Of the family which for so many years the old walls-had sheltered but one remained, and now that one is gone; she was no longer young, and yet not aged, the sole surviving child of the venerable man, who for many years was the only deacon of this church, and had its interests very near his heart. Into her father's loyalty to this ancient congrega- tion, she entered largely and lovingly, and with a readiness which was singularly sweet because she clung to the old walls and the old ways, – a plain- ness, which she would never call ugliness, a sim- plicity which she would never call meagreness, and could at best only tolerate our many changes. But IO it was her church all the same: and she would help build its house of prayer, and make it strong and beautiful. One of these fair windows witnesses for her heart's desire. But it was not this loving medi- ation between the old and the new that chiefly drew my feet towards the ancient quarter, almost every stone of which was familiar to my childhood. The light of life in that dwelling was a light to linger in, a very little taper compared with what are called lights, – but sometimes flare so terribly, and go out so foully! — and yet, shedding a very cheering and helpful brightness. It would be hard to find less mindfulness of self, more mindfulness of others. I think she did not render her due unto herself as also with the rest a child of God; but she had ideal luxuries of justice and kindness, and when you came to understand what they were, you wondered no longer at the absence of a luxuriousness so.tedi- ously common. How could that devout and tender and loyal heart grow old, or fail to go out in its great abundance even in the time of age? Where one has been so much and so altogether at home, what significance in the old words—The places that have known them once shall know them no more for ever! One ministering servant less! One name to be struck from the list of those to whom the min- ister tells the story of poverty and suffering, sure that it will not be told in vain; one less of those whose faith has never suffered a moment's eclipse, and whose age was as infancy for the heaven that II lay about it, one less of those meek worshippers whose presence makes the sanctuary a pavilion against the strife of tongues Keep that number good, for when they fail the Ghurch is but a name and the house of God only an ancient landmark. Keep that number good, and then the Christian household shall abound in faiths and prayers and labors and charities as in years, and world without end its “age shall be clearer than the noonday,” and when men shall say of Thee, Church of the living God, “Thy days are numbered!” Thou shalt shine forth, Thou shalt be as the morning ! And now to the God and Father of Him who is the Light and Life of the Church, be glory evermore! 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