IV
Age comes on suddenly, in most cases; very often with some special event, usually some sickness, which performs the function of what is called picket-duty in military life. Then oftentimes there is disclosed, just as suddenly, the difference (hitherto concealed) between men and the various outcomes of their lives. While some still endeavor with redoubled eagerness to enjoy the last fruits of their autumnal days (though age often reveals them now as so little worth while), or else give themselves up to pessimistic despair over the transitoriness of all things earthly (which always forms the close of each great period of pleasure), more earnestly minded spirits are now for the first time saying: “Whither am I bound? The world’s call to pleasure sounds hollow to me, now that the doors of eternity stand open before; I am sated with the whited bowl of untruth and its vapid draughts, and I bear my empty pitchers to thy springs, O thou city of God!” These are the laborers that stood idle all the day, or fatigued themselves with useless toil. These also will be accepted still, and will receive their penny at the end of the day’s labor as well as those who came earlier. The mercy of the Lord of Toil thus wills it, though many murmur against this, even yet.
But it is better, nevertheless, if this incoming has taken place earlier and the third period is not a time of turning about, but merely the natural sequence and development of the second. For the true steps of life have about them something of the Dantean Paradise; namely this, that in each of them, even in the lowest, already resides something of the uppermost—something that pacifies the soul, without longing for more, and yet with hope for more.
In the life of people who have become old, three sorts of dispositions are regularly shown. The ordinary one, when outward circumstances are favorable, is that of elderly people who are fond of life and who want as much as possible to enjoy the remnant of their existence in a finer or coarser manner, and accordingly sink now and then into caricatures of youth. The basis of this disposition is selfishness, which, even in its finer form, at last affects unpleasantly every one who meets it. Aristocratic idlers have such an exit to life, for the most part. A worthier end is when people who have been busy for the most of life take their repose, whether it be a resting upon their laurels, or, as more frequently happens, upon their accumulated capital. These are, in the best instances, the cheerful old people who are treasured and cared for by their relatives, spend their last days in respectably doing nothing, revel in memories of their youth, or student-years, or travels, or campaigns, and now and then compose memoirs, or let their jubilees be celebrated. Apart from a certain vanity and pettiness that is always joined therewith, this is an innocent exit to life, and the world is as a rule lenient toward it—if for no other reason, at least for the reason that these people no longer stand in anybody’s way; therefore it gladly gives them a handsome burial and a few fitting obituary notices in the papers on the day of the funeral, and with that its concernment is definitely fulfilled. The third kind of conclusion to life is the moving forward to a higher existence, the hand continuously at the plough, never looking backward to the past, but always directing the eyes toward what is yet to be attained. This conception of life is really only possible with persons who believe in a future life; nevertheless, it also appears among other earnest workers, but is then joined with sadness over the continual decline of the powers. This is the worthiest, indeed the only worthy exit to life, though often accompanied with sorrows of some sort, to keep one in fit condition for conflict. These three endings of life resemble the three caskets in Shakespeare’s drama: the first, in the golden casket, is outwardly the most splendid, but within is full of emptiness and is at bottom to be despised; the second, in the silver casket, is not unworthy, but somewhat “ordinary”; the third contains, in mostly invisible form, the real crown of a life that has been wisely understood and well-employed to the very end, and that bears within itself the full assurance of a yet better continuation beyond.
At any rate, the special task of the final step of life is living in all sincerity in nearness to God—something that it is much easier to think of than to describe. The descriptions of those who have themselves experienced this suddenly leave us, as a rule, in the lurch, whether because they lived in order to act, and not to describe, or because they disdained saying things about themselves which, at their stage of advancement, seemed matters of course and nowise meritorious, but something to be continuously received in humility. The goal of this period is just here—no longer to receive anything for one’s own sake, but to become a blessing to others in that humble spirit which now has come to belong to the virtues that have been won.
To begin with, there will usually come a great and final trial; for all men in whom God takes a real interest (if we may so speak) must again and again, in the different periods of their life, pass anew into a kind of smelting fire, whose glow, as Dante says, alone brings the spirit to its majority and separates the inferior elements of its nature, which perhaps appear as still necessary at a lower stage. Without a firm trust in God, such as should now exist in this final period of life, these last trials were often not to be endured; yet in them, nevertheless, each hard blow now has a tenfold effect. It is the best sign of advance if the soul possesses the grace to welcome this suffering and not to be tired of it until God himself removes it as quite superfluous. Psychologically correct in this regard is the remark of St. Angela of Foligni, that men at this stage must still, for their penance, harbor within themselves for a time, quite against their will, the very faults which once they voluntarily cultivated.
Out of all this there then arises the thoroughly humble man, no longer in the least infatuated with himself, to whom everything is right that befalls him, who believes he deserved nothing better, but something still worse if pure justice had been done, and who can let everything please him if it is God’s will. But if this is all genuine and not mere pious talking, this is a difficult task for which the man will be completely qualified only toward the end of his life. For self-love must be burnt out still more thoroughly than before, and he must be inflicted, or at least threatened, with the hardest blow that can be given to his special failing. If he passes through this without ever losing his trust in God, then he has approached nearer to the divine than could happen in any other way; and if there is such a thing at all as a life of blessed spirits after the fashion of our present feelings and conceptions, then he will be brought so near to this by acquiring such a temperament, that a transition to that life will now appear conceivable and possible to him.
But in that case the last aggravations of the earthly life have, without doubt, the further purpose of making the departure from it less difficult for the man thus tried; just as nothing in old people pleases us less, or makes a more vulgar impression upon us, than when they still hang tightly on to life.
One of the best aids is never to look back, because he who in Purgatory “looks back, must turn back”; and further, not to lose a single minute of life, but to keep one’s full activity up to the last moment. For the purpose of life in the period of age is to bear fruit, not to repose, and so long as something is still left to be done, what is already done is to be regarded as nothing.
The characteristic quality of this sort of old people is not an imaginary “saintliness,” but their wholesouledness. The only saintliness we attain to on this earth consists in a complete harmony with the divine will and in a complete readiness to fall in with it, so that no serious struggle between good and evil any longer finds place within ourselves. On the other hand, a mediæval saint rightly says that saintliness, whenever it is genuine, sets the outward man in order also. For God is a “God of order” and by no means a friend of singularities of any sort, especially in outward things. People who set a value upon such singularities, though they may not be wholly spurious “saints,” are certainly, nevertheless, very weak ones, whose peculiarities make them sometimes uneasy to live with. If religion, in this final stage of life, does not at least set such things right, but lets the man go on being querulous and selfish and difficult for those around him, then it has never been of much worth. A special indication of the ripeness of age, furthermore, is the union of qualities which, at other periods of life, are wont to exclude one another; for example, naïveté and shrewdness, dignity and childlike gayety, fineness of taste and complete simplicity, sternness and gentleness, clear judgment and enthusiasm of emotion. This alone gives the impression of completeness, as far as is possible here upon earth.
One or the other of my readers may still ask how one can remain young in old age. The most important spiritual means is probably “always to be learning some new thing,” to have an interest in something and to keep something always before oneself. Therefore the great apostle of Christianity said shortly before his departure: “Forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal, unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus: let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded, and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, even this shall God reveal unto you.” This, then, is a clear and simple road, and in this direction is already contained the final watchword of life: Obedience. Everything that is done for oneself, for one’s own elevation, even in the best sense, has, nevertheless, a slight after-taste of self-seeking, and in old age one will scarcely keep his life spiritually sound to the final moment, if it does not result at last in an absolute military obedience, and in a “harvest of God,”—reaped, that is, for Him, and not for ourselves. The secret of religion lies indeed in one’s keeping near to God, in all the stages of life; but first, one must learn to endure it (not to flee from it); then to seek it; and finally to have it, and “dwell in the everlasting glow.”
That this can not happen upon earth altogether without suffering, even to the very end, lies in the nature of things, and is shown in the life of many admirable men, who have eagerly longed for rest, and have said with old Simeon at the end of their days, “Now lettest thou thy bondservant depart, O Master, according to thy word, in peace.” Besides, as already pointed out, it may really happen that a so-called beautiful death, in the circle of one’s own people and amidst the general recognition of one’s fellow-citizens, may not at all mean the best destiny and the highest recognition on the part of God, as would some heroic death which is itself a last deed done for country or for humanity. But our time has become so feeble in its Christianity that such a thought now lies quite outside the reckoning of most men, even the most devout. But at any rate it does not lie in their power of will what form their death shall take, any more than formerly what form their life should take, and they must, under any circumstance, have found their peace with God in respect to this last of all life-problems also.
The most beautiful thing about a life near to its close is its repose of soul, that abounding peace which nothing can shake any longer, and which has fought it out with God and men, and has prevailed.
The essential element in all religion requisite thereto is very simple, and really lies already in the forgotten meaning of that word itself. It consists in the careful and constant maintenance of the “bond” which unites us with God, through our unfailing good-will toward Him, and through our renunciation of all that stands in the way—what the Scriptures call “seeking God.” This is our part. Then God also comes “ere we are aware, and lets much good fall to our share.” He comes even to such as know him only very imperfectly (and, for that matter, that is the case with us all), if only there is a sincere longing for Him in their hearts.
But unless He does come, each and every religious practice, in whatsoever form it now takes or may conceivably take hereafter, is but a still-born device of man, and never procures us what we are all nevertheless seeking—Happiness.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Originally an address before an association of young merchants.
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