gain, in that, because "there is a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heav ens," where mortality shall be swallowed up of life. Then another thing which I want to be sure about, when that time comes, is, that the world is not rushing headlong into destruction because I am no longer guiding it. It may be cause, or it may be effect, I can never quite tell which; but I have noticed it is one of the keenest miseries of a restless old age, that it is quite convinced everything is going wrong, and getting worse and worse, from the little grandchild, who is not at all what his grandfather was seventy years ago, to the vast and solemn interests of the nation, going, beyond redemption, to ruin. It was this which made that misery in Luther's later life, of which I have spoken. He was sure the world was given over to the Evil One. His last letters speak of life as utterly hopeless. "The world," he said, " is bent on going to the devil." "It is like a drunken peasant." "Put him on his horse on one side, and he tumbles over on the other; take him in whatever way you will, you cannot help him." Now, the evil with Luther dated back many years be fore this, when he would not trust our common humanity in as reasonable a request as it ever made, but took the side of the nobles against the peasants, and with his own hand tried to put back the clock of the Reformation. It is one of the qualities of the most restful and joyful old age, that it believes in the perpetual incoming of the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. And so its heart is full of belief and hope in the new time and the new generation. "The former times," such old men say, "were not better than these, and I was not better than my grandson." Like Paul the aged, such an old age is not sure it shall see the coming kingdom and power and glory, but it is sure it is to come, so that infancy is to it a perpetual prophecy; and the old man can always take the young babe, and cry, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." It is one of the best blessings of a good old age, that it can believe in a good new age which it has helped to bring in, and in which it is permitted to stay for a little while,and welcome it. Such a one as Paul the aged is always quiet about that. Then I shall hope to realize how wonderful is this great, faithful Providence, which, since I can first remember, has wrought such marvels in the earth; how men and nations are in the hand of God. And while age will make my religious ideas so unalterable that, if one shall come as directly from God as Christ did, with a new Gospel, I shall not be able to give up this for that, I shall be able to feel that all the differences of good, true men are included within the great harmonies of God. But all this, and all else, can only come in one way. In a wise little book, given me lately, on the art of prolonging life, the author says that in old age the system should have more generous nourishment. It is the correlative of a truth Say what we will, about the soul. "Except we are growing pure and good, There can be no good in growing old. It is a path we would fain avoid if we could; And it means growing ugly, suspicious, and cold." God help us if, as we are growing older we do not grow better, and do not nourish our souls on the most generous thoughts and aspirations. A noble German thinker speaks of his inten. tion to store up, for his death-day, whatever is best in all he has thought and read. I would not wait for that day. I would have my store ready, when, some time after sixty, I begin to feel the first chill of the cold waters, and then feed my heart on it all the way along to the end. The great promises of the sacred books, the faith in the fatherhood that was in Christ, the joyful hope that rings through great poems, like that of Wordsworth on Immortality, and Tennyson's "In Memoriam," and this wonderful work of "Jean Paul " which I have just mentioned. Then the winter of my life shall not be the winter of my discontent. I will take a lesson even from the little creatures that hide in the woods, that in bright summer weather make their store-house, and in the autumn lay up their store; then, when the storms sweep through their sylvan homes, and the frost and snow turn the great trees into pillars of ice, live snug and warm among their kind, and wait for the new spring. "Grow old, then, cheerily; The best is yet to be The last of life, for which the first was made. "Our times are in His hand, God sees all; Nor be afraid." XVI. AT THE SOLDIERS' GRAVES. ISA. Ixi. 3: "Beauty for ashes." WE gather, to-day, from our great city, in this city of the dead, for a noble purpose. It is, that the tender grace may rest on us that rests on the dust of the men who died to save us; and that we may strew flowers on their graves, not so much for a token that we will not forget them, as for a sign that they may not forget us. It is a good time to meet for this purpose just as the spring is passing into summer, and the full bloom of the world is about us, to make this the symbol of the feeling that is in our hearts for those who went forth as spring was opening into summer in their lives, and gave them to their country. And this fitness in the time is the more fitting from the fact that this day falls on a Sunday. It is the first time we have come |