Psalms 37:25

I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.

The voice of age to youth

Between youth and age, in one sense, there is a great gulf fixed. It is impossible that there should be an entire intelligence on the one side; it is rare to find an entire sympathy on the other. And yet surely the old ought to have something to say to the young. Curiosity alone would bid them to find out what they can about that undiscovered country from which a voice comes to them, saying, “When you reach it, you will find” this and this--its feeling, its experience, its memory, its regrets, and its aspirations. If, in addition to this, anything could be said as to the best way of making the journey--anything as to the secret of “a good old age,” what has to be done, and what has to be avoided in the start; what companions would be congenial, and what insufferable, as the long future unfolds itself and the terminus is at last discernible in the distance--there would be no lack of listeners to such discourse. If in one sense there is a wide and deep chasm between youth and age, in another there is no break and no disruption at all between the two. We are all very ready to suppose that we shall have some notice, that we shall not pass quite unconsciously from young men into old. The very putting of the thought into words shows its futility. It is not so; one age of life shades off into another. Each particular day is of the same piece and colour with its yesterday and its to-morrow. The only notice given comes too late. The continuity is never snapped in twain; the tenor of the life is one and but one. “The child is father of the man,” and the man of the old man, and the old man of the everlasting being who lifts up the eyes for bliss or woe in Hades. No sin dies a natural death; it cannot be conquered without a battle. It can be a battle in which, in some sense, Satan casts out Satan, that is when pride, or ambition, or fear of the world, or dread of consequences, prevails against some particular evil tendency, and so to say, the body of sin cuts off from itself one member. Such is the history of many reforms and many amendments. Heaven keeps no register of them. They are neither here nor there as to the everlasting life of the man. This is one battle. Many men never fight even this battle. Many go on in their sins weakly, helplessly, till they are found out far on, or till they die in them, late or early, and go hence to be no more seen. But there is another battle with sin quite different in history and character, in course and end from this. This is when a man knowing that there is no gulf fixed by age or the lapse of time between him and sinning, knowing that no man sleeps off, or sleeping loses or outlives his sin, and knowing that he must not risk eternity in the chance of truth, whether taught by experience or taught by revelation, turning out after all a lie, tries upon himself the Gospel remedy, watches and prays, prays and watches, on the faith of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and with many failures and many defeats, yet withstands and is found standing, conquering, one by one, the sins of youth and the sins of age, till he may cast his crown before the Throne, and ascribe his salvation to God and the Lamb. To recommend this course, to press its reasonableness, its necessity, its urgency upon such as have ears to hear, this is why age speaks to youth, and this is what it is saying: “Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right,” etc. (Dean Vaughan.)

Testimony from an aged saint

The aged Christian is able, from his own experience, to testify to the protecting care of a Divine Father’s love. The difference between the testimony of an old man and a very young man is the difference between knowledge and supposition, between fact and surmise; it is the difference between the words of a veteran who carries the scars, the sword-cuts, and the bullet-wounds of many battlefields, and the words of the ruddy-faced youth who has not yet won his shoulder-straps.