Old Age

Old age without God ? -the best wine is in this case taken first :youth and manhood drain the cup . When these are ended , it is exhausted ; waning years must be content with "that which is worse ,"or mocked with the empty vessel . Old age with God ? - the best wine is kept for the last .  Old age without God ?- it is graphically described as the overthrow of all worldly pride and glory-" Bel boweth down , Nebo stoopeth " (Isaiah 46 1-4.) it is the spoliation of the earthly temple , the pillage of everything that ministered to earth's ephemeral happiness. Old age with God - it can stand with the prophet , even in the midst of catastrophe and ruin and death , claiming as its own the sustaining words , "Even to your old age I am He ; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you ; I have made and I will bear; even I will carry , and deliver you ."

"O joys, that sweetest in decay
Fall not like like withered leaves away;
But with the silent breath
Of violets drooping one by one
Soon as their fragrant task is done ,
Are wafted high in death !

Say not it dies , that glory,
'Tis caught unquenched on high;
Those saint-like brows so hoary
Shall wear it in the sky.
No smile is like the smile of death,
When , all good musings past ,
Rise wafted with the parting breath,
The sweetest thought the last ."


" And I with faltering foot steps  journey on ,
Watching the stars that roll the hours away ,
Till the faint light that guides me now is gone ;
And like another life , the glorious day
Shall open o'er me from the empyrean height
With warmth and certainty , and boundless light. "
      J.R. Macduff

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