Paul has a cheering thought about the undecaying inner life. The outward man, he says, always decays, but the inner man is renewed day by day. This teaching is full of comfort for those who are advancing in years. The problem of Christian old age is to keep the heart young and full of all youth’s gladness, however feeble and broken the body may become. We need to be most watchful lest we allow our life to lose its zest and deteriorate in its quality when old age begins to come on. Hopes of achievement appear to be ended for us — our work is almost done, we think. Sometimes people, as they grow old, become less sweet, less beautiful in spirit. Troubles, disasters, and misfortunes have made the days hard and painful for them. Perhaps health is broken, and suffering is added to the other elements that make old age unhappy.
Renan, in one of his books, recalls an old French legend of buried city on the coast of Brittany. With its homes, public buildings, churches and thronged streets, it sank instantly into the sea. The legend says that the city’s life goes on as before, down beneath the waves. The fishermen, when in calm weather they row over the place, think they sometimes can see the gleaming tips of the church spires deep in the water, and fancy they can hear the chiming of the bells in the old belfries and even the murmur of the city’s noises.
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