The past ages had a remarkable story about a fountain of youth, the waters
of which possessed the power to keep one young forever. Some of the early
explorers of America were lured on their way by the hope of finding that
spring of unfailing vitality somewhere in the Western World. But they died
without having realized their dream. They failed to realize it because
they had supposed the fountain of youth to be a localized thing. As a
matter of fact, location has little to do with it.
There is a fountain of youth. Its place, however, is limited neither by
the balmy waters of the southern seas nor by the icy fastnesses of arctic
regions. Such as it is, it exists everywhere. The healing of its waters is
not denied to any seeker. Like most priceless things, it is as well within
the reach of the poor as of the rich. It is the privilege and opportunity
of high and lowly alike.
One of the paths to the fountain of youth is a right attitude of mind and
right habits of thought. While many have been seeking vainly through the
world for the desired fountain, they were all the while unconsciously
carrying it about within their own inner lives.
One is as old as the spirit within him. The outer life simply takes the
mould of the inner thought. The marks of age take possession of one’s
frame in approximate proportion to the degree of his surrender to them.
A landscape bears the color of the spectacles of the beholder. The whole
world has for a norm the attitude of the individual toward it. When the
mind grows sluggish and purposeless, the spirit of age has laid hold upon
its possessor. While the mind remains clear and fresh, with its vigor
unabated, the individual still shares in the saving waters of the immortal
fountain. The date of one’s birth may be misleading, but the spirit of his
soul never is.
One stands each moment upon the threshold between the past and the future.
It is for him to decide which shall claim his thought. Youth dwells upon
the future, because the future holds its hopes and plans. Age dwells upon
the past, because the past holds the memory of its activities and kindred
ties. While one keeps his face to the future, he remains young. When he
begins to live in the past, he is allowing himself to grow old. There is
a sweetness about an occasional hour spent in roaming the halls of memory,
but in to-morrow lie life’s supreme considerations.
Those who keep thinking and toiling grow old more slowly than do those who
relinquish their hold upon the activities and the concerns of life. Body
and spirit alike begin the process of atrophy on the day when interests
begin to decay. When the mind and the hand pass to rest, the body may be
expected to soon share their slumber. This is the reason why so many busy
people grow old so courageously. It also suggests the reason why so many
fail to long outlive their active days. Only while the mind craves
knowledge and the heart feels the throb of the social impulse does the eye
remain undimmed and the natural force unabated.
A second path to the fountain of youth is that of right living. This is
not merely implicit obedience to arbitrary law. It is living in harmony
with the universe. Without it youth can never long remain.
A very marked type of divine healing is to be found in the abounding
health which is the result of living in accord with the divine laws of
nature. The finest instances of that healing are perhaps to be found in
the absence of diseases that have never occurred. In other words, its
chief usefulness is preventive.
In a wholly Christian race of men there would be but a minimum of disease.
Insurance companies understand this fact. The physical decay of the body
is chiefly the result of inroads made by disease, and the greatest
fostering influence of disease is wrongdoing. Both directly and
indirectly, sin works havoc with mankind. Physical abnormalities root in
someone’s disregard for established laws. In one case the sin may be one
of intentional wrongdoing, and in another it may be the equally
disastrous one of common ignorance and carelessness.
The Hebrews furnish a notable instance of racial vitality. They are what
they are to-day largely as a result of the fact that their remote
forefathers were born and nurtured in camps and cities where uncleanness
was a disgrace and where a violation of the laws of life was a sin. The
laws of right living are not merely a list of arbitrary regulations, the
highest design of which is to prove the willingness of men to obey them.
They are the provisions of a kind Providence for humanity’s own welfare
and progress.
A third path to the fountain of youth is the conservation of health
along scientific lines. This may involve medical means frequently, and
it may, on occasion, even involve surgical means. It will most generally,
however, involve conformity to a liberal knowledge of the ways of nature.
Dr. Metchnikoff, the great Russian scientist, who spent his last years in
Paris, has given to the world some illuminating discoveries upon this
question of old age. He long suspected that the thing we have been calling
by the name of old age, was simply the physical indication of the inroads
made by disease germs to which the increasing weakness of advancing years
opened a freer way. He proved to his own satisfaction, and to that of many
others as well, that the apparent signs of age are the result of the
ravages of a certain bacillus which inhabits the intestinal tract. He also
proved the sour principle of buttermilk to be fairly fatal to that germ.
One of the evidences of his latter conclusion is the fact that some of the
most noted cases of longevity have been those of regular drinkers of sour
milk. Physical decay seems to be only a symptom of inner attacks which
will sooner or later break down an organ or result in a general collapse.
It is not to be supposed that any regard for the laws of health, however
strict it might be, will make it impossible ever to grow old. Physical
decay is inevitable and physical death is certain. It is possible,
however, to long preserve the physical condition of youth by keeping the
resistance of the body at the highest possible point. This can be done
only by preserving the best possible continual state of health.
The sedentary character of much of the life of to-day is one of the
weakening habits of our age. On the other hand, we have an army of people
who are so over-exercised at their daily toil that their bodies are sapped
of all vitality and their minds are robbed of all vigor. Between these two
extremes lies a golden mean. Well-directed use of all the muscles and
regular movement of all the organs does afford vast help in keeping the
body fresh and youthful.
We are the victims of another age-producing habit in the excessive
quantity and richness of the food we consume. We are too willing to eat
all we can get and contain. We are overdisposed, too, to truckle to the
demands of palates that have been trained to enjoy unnatural and
unwholesome tastes.
Any experience which would drive us all back to plain living, simple
eating, and active habits would probably result in large benefit to us.
If our plan of living were re-established upon a childlike plane, we might
again expect to enjoy childlike vitality, with its intermingling of
childlike activity and childlike slumber.
An Old Testament story tells how a Hebrew king prayed for a new hold upon
life and how his prayer resulted in the turning of the shadow upon the
dial. That invisible hand which turned the shadow upon the dial of the
days of a king waits ever to preserve the lives of the members of the
race. The One, however, who heard the prayer of Hezekiah was the same One
who established the laws of life and nature. Obedience to those laws is
still the key by which the very years may be swung backward in
their flight.