"I have been young, and now am old," said David, "yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread."
"Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth," cried the venerable Joshua; "not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you."
Such words had additional weight from the very fact that those who uttered them were aged. When the old tell of the goodness of God—His power to sustain in trouble and to guide in difficulty—they speak, not merely of what they believe, but what they have "experienced." The respect due to the aged is enforced by the command of the Most High: "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the Lord."
The law is general; but never do we more strongly feel its force than when the hoary head has the halo of piety around it—when the old man, like Zacharias, stands up as a witness for God. His feeble broken accents may then have more power than the most fervid eloquence of the young, to lead the heart to trust in the love of Him who so fulfils His promise:
"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 will deliver you."
But if age has its privileges, it has also its own peculiar trials, especially in the case of the childless, and those who are encompassed with many infirmities. Solomon calls theirs "evil days, . . . when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; . . . when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, . . . and fears shall be in the way, . . . and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail." How touching and how true a picture is here given of decrepit age, bowed down with feebleness and infirmity! When loneliness is added to all this—when the childless man has outlived all the companions of his youth, and the years of his long life have been marked out by gravestones—how deeply does he claim the sympathy and compassion of his brethren and sisters in the Lord! He may have a long, tedious time of waiting by the banks of Jordan, while they who were behind him press on before him; and though the prospect on the other side of "the narrow stream" be ineffably fair, on this side it is indeed a dry and barren wilderness to him.
But there is divine love even in the decree that so often weakens the powers and dims the faculties of the aged. Very beautiful is the simile used by a departed authoress, * when, alluding to the decay of sight and hearing which is natural to extreme old age, she remarks, that God acts towards His feeble servants as a tender mother towards her child as the time for rest approaches she draws the curtain to shut out the light, and stills every sound in the chamber, that, the outer world excluded, her beloved may more quietly sink into slumber. We may draw out the parallel further. When the memory ceases to retain its grasp upon what were once objects of interest, what is it but the same loving Parent gently taking from the child the toys of life's little day as the evening shades fall around, and laying aside whatever might keep the mind restless and awake?
* Mrs. Gaskell. I quote from memory.
God's love is remembered when the things of earth are forgotten. Who has not heard of the Christian, aged and dying, whose memory had so failed that he knew none of the friends around him, not even the wife, so fondly beloved; but when he was asked, "Do you know the Lord Jesus?" That name was so deeply imprinted in the heart and memory that the erasing of all besides left it but more distinctly legible, and the saint, in his second childhood, exclaimed, "Precious Saviour! He is my only hope." So, to pursue the simile, though the light was darkened and the room stilled, and all that had once delighted the senses was put away, God's child felt beneath him the everlasting arms, and knew the voice of the Parent hushing him to that sleep from which the same voice should awake him to life and to joy in the dawn of the everlasting day.
Such are a few thoughts suggested by a relic of the aged Zacharias, the saint well stricken in years, whose latter days were, we doubt not, his brightest and best. We know nothing of the struggles of his youth or the efforts of his manhood; but we know that the angel's visit and the message from God—the father's rejoicing, and the prophetic hymn inspired by the Holy Spirit—were reserved for the evening of a life which had been devoted to the service of God.
