PREPARING FO..I OLD AGE. SERMON PKEACHKD AT " Ar>L-Soui.s '' ('mi: n, NV.\v \'ui:iv, <>\ I--KO.M Tin-: FI;M-:K.\I. AI WAI.I'OI.I:, X.H., or I MRS. LOUISA BELLOWS KNAPP, WHO DiKD .MAIICII (i, 1.S7-J, AGED 86, Relict of Jacob Newman Knapp, who died July 27, 1868, aged ninety- five years. BV HENRY W. BELLOWS, Mil'lIKW OF TUB DECKA-^KD. PRESS OF JOHN \'.'ILSO\ AM) SON. 1872, PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. SERMON PREACHED AT " ALL-SOULS" Cnuucn, NEW YORK, ON RETURNING KROM THE FUNERAL AT WALPOLE, N.H., OP MRS. LOUISA BELLOWS KNAPP, WHO DIED MARCH 16, 1872, AGED 86, Eelict of Jacob Newman Knapp, who died July 27, 1868, aged ninety-Jive years. BY HENEY W. BELLOWS, NEPHEW OF TUB DECEASED. CAMBRIDGE : PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 1872. LJBKAHY ISITY OF CALIFORNIA SAM'A 1URIS\!{\ PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. "THEY SHALL STILL BRING FORTH FRUIT IN OLD AGE." Ps. xcii. 14. r I ^HIS is the promise which, through the mouth of the Psalmist, God gives those that live godly and obedient lives. * The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree : he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of * our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age : they shall be fat and flourishing." All prudent people see the wisdom of preparing against the bodily wants of their declining years. They anticipate the time when their physical vigor, capacity of labor, power to sustain exposure and hardship, will forsake them ; when they will require more of comfort, rest, and retirement, freedom from anxieties, and a cessation from struggle and forethought ; and they are willing to labor hard, and to be saving and self-denying, that they may 4 PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. lay up the means of competency and comfort for themselves and those growing old with them. Even the animals and insects possess an instinctive prudence, and, in the summer, provide against the winter's wants. But how much rarer is the fore- thought that anticipates the necessary provision to be made for the deeper wants of old age ? It is infinitely more important to prepare the man him- self for growing old with peace and cheerfulness than to prepare the external circumstances in which his age is to be passed. Of course he will need shelter and food and external supplies and comforts, and he is wise in prudently providing against such obvious necessities. But how much- more does he need to keep himself in all possible vigor and repair, that he may not, through abuse and neglect, carry a needlessly shattered and disordered frame, a perverted and poisoned constitution into his declining years ? The ills and infirmities of age are enough of themselves, without being loaded with the pains and penalties of gluttony, intemper- ance, excesses of the passions, neglect of the laws of health, through wilful exposures, broken sleep, reckless toil in pursuit of useless w r ealth, torture of the nerves through straining use, and exhaustion of vital powers. There is no reason why people PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. 5 of average constitutions should not, by due moder- ation of the appetites, proper regard to the claims of sleep, control of the passions, regularity of life, and avoidance of needless exposures in dress, preserve their bodies to a late age in fair health and powers of enjoyment. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died ; yet the sacred historian says, "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated." It is by no means true, that youth, or even middle age, is necessarily the period of greatest uniformity of health, or, in all respects, of greatest vigor. The period of greatest physical beauty and redundancy of spirits is not usually that of greatest endurance or the most even hap- piness. There is a balance and co-ordination of the organs and physical powers, which is only attained by time. The human system, carefully preserved, settles into equilibrium, consolidates, toughens, becomes capable of prolonged exertion, loses sus-, ceptibility to the disturbing influence of cold and heat, and is in every way more able to bear, and really to enjoy, labor at forty than at twenty. Then comes, oftentimes, a well-earned period of even health ; when the irritable ganglions of the stomach, most sensitive in the redundant sensibility i* PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. of youth, lose their exquisite power to disturb and annoy. Even the decay of the bodily passions favors the tranquillity and vigor of the nobler parts of the frame. Men who obey the laws of nature, and are moderate and self-controlled, have stronger as well as calmer brains at sixty than at forty ; are more capable of long-protracted mental exertion; and have, in a true view, more life, and more happiness in life, from sixty to seventy, and often till eighty, than at any other period. But this, from a physical point of view, is wholly dependent on early and steadily maintained order, moderation, and self-control. What can. the man who eats to repletion, who drinks intemperately, who uses narcotics without stint, who is careless about sleep and reckless in exposure, not to speak of still more wasting vices, expect his old age to be, if he is unhappy enough to be left a wreck or shadow of himself to drag out his miserable days ? "What thoughtful young man will risk his health and comfort for the latter half of his three- score and ten years, to indulge the destructive appetites and passions of his early manhood ? His bones will be full of the sins of his youth. His senses will prematurely decline. His body will become the prison and torture-chamber of his PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. mind. At fifty, he will be an old man, and loathe his life, which he will yet dread to surrender, became of an accusing conscience, and a just sense of a coming judgment. But it is not the body only that needs to be prepared for old age. It is true, the control and due moderating of bodily habits is one of the greatest means of moral and intellectual discipline. If a man wants to have control of his bodily appetites, he must control his mental desires, regulate his temper, govern his im- agination, order his thoughts, install his conscience in its sacred shrine, and bring his will into daily exercise. With proper exceptions, there is hardly a better test of a man's mental and moral state, than his bodily condition. Wholeness and holiness have the same meaning : health and salvation are ideas of one import. Intemperance is as much a mental as a bodily disease; licentiousness has its worst fountain in a prurient and polluted imagination. A man who reads books, or seeks to see pictures, which fill the mind with impure or heated thoughts, is already a lost man. The wise and aspiring will not peruse, even in the daily papers, what is designed to minister to low and passionate tastes. I have often said before, and I repeat it again, that one of the most 8 PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. important and valuable of the forms of self-dis- cipline is to pass resolutely over in papers and magazines and books, all anecdotes, stories, reports, which fill the imagination with pictures of sin, crime, and sensuality. A history of thieves and robbers, the Newgate Calendar, the Police Gazette (and which of our daily or weekly papers is not, in parts of it, too well deserving of that title), makes ten rogues and libertines for one it warns. A man is to be known, and a woman too, by the books and magazines they read. A trashy set of maudlin novels, or profligacy veiled in sentiment, or sensu- ality thinly covered by poetic diction, is the source* of nine-tenths of the faithless virtue, the wrecked modesty, the domestic misery of society. A cer- tain school of French novels, which women of fortune often spend half their lives in reading, saps them of all moral dignity or inward purity, and leaves them, if in possession of their honor, without real chastity of mind, or the power of domestic happiness. What but a miserable, cynical, sour, old age can be in store for those who have filled the chambers of imagery, in their minds, with recol- lections that shame and poison their thoughts? But the way to escape evil is to be preoccupied with what is good. The principal armor against PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. 9 bad thoughts, low tastes, idle fancies, a life that is wrecked on appetite and passion, caprice and self- indulgence, is early and with persistency, up to middle life, to be occupied with pursuits and tastes and duties that involve regularity, self-control, earnestness, thoughtful ness, and sober and honest feelings. And divine Providence has given, as the usual lot, a necessary sphere of duty and employ- ment, which, if well-filled, is the best safeguard for honor, purity, moderation, and health. If people have an honest and constant occupation, which they fill reputably for the twenty-five most active years of their life, they are at the best school, which God opens, for health, peace of mind, and prepa- ration for old age. The chief exposures to danger are for those from whom the very virtues of their parents take away the necessities of self-provision. It is a serious misfortune for a young man not to be called to bear the yoke in his youth. Rapid and artificial promotion is another misfortune. A young man should not, without due apprenticeship, be lifted to a post of responsibility in a mercantile es- tablishment, simply because his capital enables him to command the place. Half of our commercial disasters are due to the fact that men who did not come up through all the stages of preparation to it 10 PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. the control of great affairs have their hands on the helm. Young women whom the wealth of parents can protect from household cares have a fearful exposure to unhappiness, because not ballasted with duties just when their sails are fullest of wind. What can a girl of passion and power and educa- tion do with her nature to keep it from all kinds of vain desires and caprices, and lurches into senti- mental excesses, who has no duties ; nothing neces- sarily to demand her thoughts except her toilet, and her lovers? There is no country in the world where so many girls are brought up in idleness, as in ours. They begin their womanhood, assert their liberty, have the whole control of their time, earlier here than in any civilized community; and, as a consequence, they make the least prepared wives and mothers; they fill our western courts with bills of divorce; they furnish us with the scandals of the hour. If nothing else can arrest the attention of rich parents to the duty of giving household cares, a domestic education, a moderation in dress and pleasures, a habit of occupation in serious reading and unpalatable pursuits to their daughters, let them reflect upon the future they are preparing for them. What is to be the domestic happiness, what the old age of children brought up with such PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. 11 premature freedom, or such capricious tastes, with such idle reading, with so little discipline ami drill of mind and heart! The education of life is not confined to the mere season of school-days. And even that short period which we call emphatically the season of education is better tested by the mental habits and moral training it has established, than by the amount of knowledge or accomplish- ments it has communicated. To secure the power of attention and fix the habit of application is worth tenfold over all else that can be learned in school. To teach how to study, how to think, how to govern a wandering attention, how to overcome the reluctance of the mind or the vacillation of the will, how to abstract the thoughts, in short how to use the mental tools and the moral forces, this is what the best educators labor at. And it is what the wisest parents seek to nourish and secure by home-training and the trades and callings to which their sons and daughters are bred. What do you suppose is meant by compelling the princes of the German Empire to learn a trade, in addition to the regular curriculum of academic education? One becomes a glazier, another a plumber, another a carpenter. It is doubtless to compel precision, posi- tive knowledge, executive skill, and the necessity 12 PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. of testing by results the theories of elementary instruction, a sympathy with ordinary life and common people. An education at school or in the home, in which no stern and positive control has been established, no routine steadily submitted to, no hardship borne, no accountableness exacted, no suppression of caprices required, can end only in inefficiency, self-indulgence, selfishness, crime, and final unhappiness. If at twenty, young people, in any station of life or of either sex, have no regular duties, no fixed employments, no habits of sober reading, no mental self-control, no willingness to do what is not immediately pleasant or agreeable, no life but one of lounging, parading, visiting, conning magazines and novels, or indulging senti- mental fancies, they are in peril of making ship- wreck of their bodies and souls in the next twenty years, in which comes the season of full liberty, when their position is to be taken, their livelihood made, their character exhibited, their domestic virtues tested, their conflict at close quarters with other people endured, their paternal or maternal powers and graces tried, and all that is in them subjected to strain and stress. On the use and development of these twenty years between young manhood and maidenhood and middle life, depends PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. 13 the dignity, the usefulness, and the happiness of old age. This middle life brings forth the natural fruits of the discipline and drill of boyhood and girlhood. A few overcome the defects or follies of their unhappy bringing up. But the boy is father of the man, in most cases the girl mother of the woman; and, according to the wisdom of domestic and school training and drill, the character, tastes, habits, then formed, will be, in ordinary cases, the life and career of the children as men and women. And then, how certain is an industrious, prudent, high-toned, virtuous, and religious middle life to prepare a dignified, happy, and serene old age? Who are the long-lived; who preserve longest the feelings and even appearance of youth; who are the wise and honorable, the revered and beloved in their declining days, except those whose middle life has been governed by self-respect, ordered by self-control, improved in all opportunities of wis- dom, blessed with the well-earned confidence of their peers, and dignified with the trusts and responsibilities that naturally fall to competent character and well-balanced minds ? I had occasion this very week to attend, two hundred miles north in the country, the funeral of an aged relative, who, at eighty-six, in a 14 PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. fresh and honorable old age, was gathered to her fathers. Perhaps I may be excused for asking even the sympathy of my flock with the mingled pride and sorrow I have in contemplating the illustration she offered of the principles of this discourse. The youngest sister of my own father, she passed her girlhood in his house, and on the death of our mother in my infancy, became, for a time, the virtual mother of my brothers and sister. She had closed the eyes of my paternal grand- parents, and then those of my own father and mother; borne me, an infant, in her arms. I had been at school to her husband, a most gifted and excellent man, and for my whole life enjoyed a frequent and most familiar intercourse with this venerable and beautiful couple; he, closing his spotless life in nearly full possession of his mental powers, three years ago, at ninety-five; and she, surviving until last week, to eighty-six, in full possession of an equally remarkable understanding. In the summer vacation, my house was within a few rods of theirs, and it was love and reverence for them that drew me to the spot, and made it such a refreshment and delight to go there season after season. Beginning life with the imperfect school- ing of country-girls, eighty years since, but with the PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. 15 admirable training of wholesome necessities, and the example of virtuous and prudent parents, this excellent woman had spent her married life of fifty years in the society of an educated, aspiring, and saintly man; and in that long period of unbroken happiness into which had entered toil, the rear- ing of children, the necessities of daily economy, and the most rigid virtues of the housekeeper she had so unfolded her sympathetic and affec- tionate nature, as to become the friend, adviser, and consoler of a wide circle of relatives, and then of all the people in the village. No ear so open, no heart so tender, no tongue so swift and kind; no- body so patient to listen, so wise to counsel, and so persistent in following up her advice with the interest and watchfulness of years. She never gave up anybody who had the family blood or name, whatever discouragements or faults in them were visible to others. To emphasize all that Was good and hopeful, and overlook all that was other- wise, was her habit; although none was keener to discern the faults she would not openly recog- nize. Her devotion to her husband was complete. She appeared to think him perfect. (which, indeed, he almost seemed to others), and the nearest thing on earth to her Saviour; and he repaid her homage 16 PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. by a love and gallantry, a trust and reverence, which is usually seen only among those not in daily and long contact with each other. What is written in books of poetry might have been daily witnessed in their lives. They delighted, above every thing, in each other's society, which was not the mere intercourse of habit, or the sympathy which oxen that work together have in a common yoke; but it was the daily and hourly interchange of thought, the obvious and intentional ministration to each other's mental and moral improvement and pleas- ure. They read the same books together; they studied the Scriptures; they discussed the prin- ciples and ideas of the day; and knew all that was going on in the great world of affairs, though seldom leaving their country home. Until over ninety, he w r orked in his garden for a couple of hours daily; and then, clothed in spotless gar- ments, sat down to his books, the classics, and the elegant and solid literature of the past. She busied herself about her house, tended her flowers, or even busied herself, up to eighty, in her kitchen, for a few hours; and then, in the neatest and pre- cisest garb, sat next her husband, to share his book or to converse for hours upon the questions of patriotism, science, philosophy, poetry, and religion, PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. 17 on which he gave his own views, and received hers with equal respect. He was a poet, sage, and saint by original endowment, and by culture as a student in theology, and as a teacher who had had the first men in Boston and Salem under his charge, the Prescotts and Peabodys and Grays and Amorys. His spiritual mind, profoundly interested in the present and in the actual, was equally at home in speculation and in aspiration. The future of society on earth, for which he had the boldest and noblest hopes, and the future of the soul in heaven, were his favorite themes; and on both he talked with such beauty and wis- dom that his conversation, up to ninety, was the pride of the town, and the attraction of men of taste and culture from far about. She almost or quite equalled him in the gift of graceful expres- sion, and was fascinating and charming in the acuteness, fluency, and fervor of her spirit. To- gether they made a couple, such as I have never seen in life, in respect of the high level of their intercourse, the equality of their powers, and their complete and increasing happiness in each other. But in one respect, she was the more instructive example, because she was not only equally strong in womanly affections and ready sympathies, and 18 PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. in intellectual apprehensiveness and wide interest in impersonal affairs, a singular and beautiful antithesis, but unlike him, who began with a cultivated mind, she acquired a highly cultivated mind after thirty, and continued obviously to widen and strengthen, to acquire fresh views and larger comprehension, to the very close of her life. She was one of the few women with whom it was not necessary to choose one's topics, or to avoid themes of subtle or philosophical quality. It was as de- lightful to talk either theology or philosophy with her, as with a scholar by profession. The last book read to her, at eighty-six, a few weeks before her death, was a volume of Herbert Spencer's philosophy. Thus she had been growing all her life, disproving wholly the necessity for ever losing the youth of the mind or the heart, and presenting a perfect argument for immortality. She was pious without cant or blindness, or a mere imitative sympathy; and showed how calm, reasonable, and practical faith may become to a nature that is habitually thoughtful, and straining ever upwards. But I will not place her, by the partiality of my affections, in a light that may discourage imitation. I wish her example to shine in upon you, not only to dignify and sweeten your ideas of the possibil- PREPARING FOR OLD AGE. 19 ities of domestic union and blessedness, but also to bear witness to the possibilities of making old age i green and growing. She fulfilled perfectly the promise of the Psalmist, " They shall bring forth fruit in old age." How large and full and sweet the harvest was, I cannot make you know and feel; but if you could read the gratitude and affec- tion and pride that swell my heart and a hundred other hearts, to whom her name is a bond and a spell, you would appreciate the force of all the arguments I have used in this discourse on the duty and possibility of preparing in youth and middle life for a serene, vigorous, happy, and triumphant old age. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482