The wisest and best productions of the human intellect, says Dr.
Moore,[67] have proceeded from those who have lived through the bustling
morning and meridian periods of their day, and calmly sat down to think
and instruct others in the meditative evening of life. Even when the
brilliancy of reason’s sunset yields to the advancing gloom, there is an
indescribable beauty haunting the old man still, if in youth and vigour
his soul was conversant with truth; and even when the chill of night is
upon him, his eye seems to rest upon the glories for awhile departed; or
he looks off into the stars, and reads in them his destiny with a
gladness as quiet and as holy as their light.
How instructive is the usual state of memory and hope in advanced life!
As the senses become dull, the nervous system slow, and the whole body
unfit for active uses, the old man necessarily falls into constant
abstraction. Like all debilitated persons, he feels his unfitness for
action, and, of course, becomes querulous if improperly excited.
Peacefulness, gentle exercise among flowers and trees, unstimulating
diet, and the quiet company of books and philosophic toys, are suitable
for him. With such helps his heart will beat kindly, and his intellect,
however childlike, will maintain a beautiful power to the last. Objects
of affection occasionally move him with more than their accustomed
force. Young children are especially agreeable to him. When approaching
him with the gentle love and reverence which unspoiled childhood is so
apt to exhibit, his heart seems suddenly to kindle as the little fingers
wander over his shrivelled hand and wrinkled brow. He smiles, and at
once goes back in spirit to his childhood, and finds a world of fun,
frolic, and liveliness before him; and he has tales of joy and beauty,
which children and age and holy beings can best appreciate. Next to the
children of his children, the old man, whose thoughts have been directed
by the Bible, loves the society of persons of holy habits; and as he
finds these more frequently among females, such are generally his
associates. But all aged and infirm persons he deems fit company,
because they, like himself, are busied in reviewing past impressions,
rather than planning or plotting for a livelihood, or reasoning about
ways and means. The past is his own, and he cons it over like a puzzling
but at least an interesting lesson. If his soul have been trained to
delight in truth, his will becomes weaned from this world of effort in
proportion as he feels the weakness that disqualifies him from
struggling on in it. Yet _in our ashes live their wonted fires:_ he
feels an internal, a spiritual energy, awakening in a new manner the
sympathies that belong to his being, and he feels as if his affections
had been laid by to ripen into an intensity out of keeping with the
usages and objects about him. He realises most fully the facts of a
coming life, and even now lives apart from the present; and if his
habits of reflection be not distracted, and his heart broken by hard and
ignorant treatment, and if his soul have not been wedded to care by a
love of gold without the possibility of divorce, and mammon have not
branded his spirit with indelible misery, then is the old man ready to
enter on a purely spiritual existence with alacrity and joy.
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Footnote 67:
_The Use of the Body to the Mind._
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