And Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people.- Gen_25:8.
At length the time drew on when this great and fruitful life should itself close. It pleased God to spare His aged servant long enough to see the stock of Isaac, after twenty years of waiting and of barrenness, blossom in a double birth. In the twins born to Rebekah was renewed the joyful “laughter” which had hailed the child of Sarah. And the brief, strange oracle which was granted to the impatience of that mother, when she sought to penetrate the future of her unborn offspring, could not be concealed from the aged head of the sacred line. It may even have been through himself, as God's prophet and mouthpiece, that the enigmatical words were spoken on which the destiny of Esau and Jacob was to turn:-
Two nations are in thy womb,
And two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels;
And the one people shall be stronger than the other people;
And the elder shall serve the younger.
To him, at all events, these few words must have been significant and precious, since, so far as we know, they contain the latest revelation which he received from heaven. They came, a late and solitary message, obscure enough, yet welcome in spite of obscurity, to gild the long, slow, closing years of God's friend, with a reminder that God was still the watchful and gracious Guardian of His covenant. They opened before his dimming eyes one last glimpse into coming generations, and must have satisfied him that God would prove true to His promise, by continuing to be the God of his seed after he himself had been gathered to his fathers.
A Scotch missionary went to West Africa in 1882, and lived for some years in perfect loneliness in the midst of savage tribes. But they learned to respect him, and to marvel at his courage and unselfishness. His triumph was all based on a growing faith. He wrote home and confessed the secret. “I am just beginning to realize that God's promises are not mere words written for the instruction of our minds, but certainties to go by, and the assurance of one of them is better than the presence of an army.”1 [Note: J. A. Clapperton, The Culture of the Christian Heart, 49.]
1. In what various conditions and positions have we seen the patriarch! With tears of farewell in his eyes, and pilgrim staff in hand, he departs from the lovely valley of the Euphrates for a new and, humanly speaking, a dark world. Here the nomad prince is transformed into a priest, who offers sacrifice and prayers at sacred altars and on holy earth, and unfurls his banner in the name of the Lord. Not the same and yet the same, does he, after a short interval, appear, as a heroic warrior wielding his flashing sword against the enemies of Canaan. Then again, under how different an aspect is he seen, as the hospitable host waiting on his heavenly guests under the palms of Mamre. A few hours later, and the man so lately beaming with happiness is lying in the dust like a worm. There, on the hill commanding the vale of Siddim, he strives with God in prayer in the light of the setting sun, entreating God's mercy for the ungodly. A year later we see the man of one hundred years bearing about his newborn son, a new song upon his lips. Then again, he is seen as a gardener planting tamarisks for the future generations whom, by faith, he greets in his little son. And now, behold the man upon the heights of Moriah, his countenance full of anguish and horror, his hand trembling and yet raised, and beneath him the victim whom he is to slay-his own son. And again, what a different picture when, weeping, lamenting, but not despairing, he buries in a Cave of Machpelah his dearly-loved Sarah, who had shared his joy and sorrow from youth. Once more, what a subject for a painter, when the venerable man blesses the marriage of his son with the youthful, beautiful, and amiable Rebekah, or, as a grandfather, rocks his grandchildren on his knees.
And now contemplate the venerable old man lying there upon the bier. Peace rests upon his massive brow, a happy smile still plays upon the lips of the slumberer. Is it not as though a reflection from those golden gates through which his glorified spirit has just soared were beaming on his face? Truly he is dead and yet he lives. Have not we also, in many a pleasant hour, felt a reviving breath of his spirit? How should he be dead from whom life still streams forth? Death was but the entrance into his soul's true home, into the City whose builder and maker is God. For that City he was looking all his life, and therefore God was not ashamed to be called “his God.” How should he be dead of whom such a thing is told? No, not dead, but released.
Tho' changed the scene, the strife endures for ever:
Still stand for him the imperishable laws;
For death is life, and life is growth, and never
Is ever any pause!
He has but shattered thro' another fetter,
Gained one more step in the eternal quest
Along the high-road leading on thro' better,
And onward still to best.1 [Note: G. Thomas, The Wayside Altar (1913), 28.]
2. Grandly sets the sun of such a life. An old age spent in domestic privacy with the young hopes of his line about his feet; old age dwelling still with growing thankfulness upon the splendid revelations which had glorified its manhood and telling with unabated ardour the ever-memorable tale, yet forecasting by the new life that was springing up what fresh tokens of God's grace and truth the coming years may bring-surely this was a fitting and a beautiful close to the toils and trials of the noblest lifetime men had yet seen. With his character grown ripe, and his work done, with his name filling the lands, his family spreading on every side, and the sacred line of the covenant budding into another generation, nothing seemed awanting to fill up his cup, who to the end of time was destined to wear the name that is of all earth's names the purest: The Friend of God. Well may the page which records his end say, with touching and simple words, that he died in his hoary age, full and satisfied with life.
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not the decline that it recalls, but the first days of immortality.1 [Note: Madame de Staël.]
“Few things are more exhilarating,” he wrote at this time, “I might almost say inspiriting, than the sight of a man full of years, yet not suffering otiose habits to grow on him, never affecting the affairs of youth, yet never exaggerating the infirmities of age; ever in affectionate sympathy with the young; entering with intelligent and sincere interest into the politics and literature, and social and religious movements of the day; not talking much of death, but quietly recognizing that it may be imminent, living in the fear and presence of the Risen Saviour, knowing that to depart and be with Him is best of all.”2 [Note: C. H. Simpkinson, The Life and Work of Bishop Thorold, 336.]
Solomon imperilled his reputation for wisdom when he said of the days of age that we should find no pleasure in them. It was the judgment of a pessimist and a voluptuary. By reason of failing strength and subdued passion, the pleasures of the senses may fail; but there are still pleasures of the mind and the heart. The nobler joys of life do not fade, but rather grow and strengthen with increasing years; and the surest means are to be found in the cultivation and improvement of the mind in youth. If we give full play to our higher powers, to the affections and the intellect, we shall never lack pure and elevating joys. Cicero would not have written his treatise on old age unless Roman society had appreciated the value of that time of life. He says: “The old man does not do the same things as the young man, but he performs much higher and better duties,” though he admits old age “will never be anything but burdensome to a fool.” One of our latest philosophers, Mr. Lecky, wrote: “Old age, when it is free from grave infirmities and from great trials and privations, is the most honoured, the most tranquil, and perhaps, on the whole, the happiest period of life.”1 [Note: W. H. Smith, The Life Worth Living, 233.]
3. Abraham died “in a good old age.” The words mean more than merely advanced in years. To the Hebrew mind old age was the reward of righteousness. And the Hebrew mind was not wrong in connecting a good old age with uprightness of life. What are the things that tend to bring a good old age?
(1) The first creative force of a good old age is faith. Abraham, who is said to have “died in a good old age,” was the “father of the faithful.” Paul, our other illustration, was, and yet is, faith's most distinguished champion. The force, in both men, which kept the heart-beats strong, full, and regular, in spite of advancing years, was faith. Faith kept the stream of life full of “the murmurs and scents of the Infinite Sea.” Faith kept in their souls the persuasion that clouds which hid the sky and sun were affairs of the earth, and that beyond them were a clear sky and a cloudless sun. This temper of mind, this spirit of trustfulness, first manifested itself as faith in God. Abraham and Paul “believed God.”
(2) This faith in God manifests itself as faith in humanity. There can be no real belief in the future of man, here or elsewhere, which does not spring out of faith in God. And without ‘faith in humanity, old age is a helpless convict, walled about with ruins the most dismal, with an experience the most awful, that the mind can imagine. On the other hand, a real faith in man, flowing from a faith in the Father of humanity, bubbles up like a spring in the desert of age to cool the parched sands and supply the thirsty soul. That there is a Divine meaning in life, in the life of the lowest man; that every force of the universe is set to make this concealed gem of good flash out its light; that every power of love in heaven and earth will ply its energies to the evolution of the angel from the brute; that it is not an even chance between good and evil with respect to his soul; that the whole set of things is for goodness; that God has manifested His interest in this matter at an awful sacrifice;-be sure of this: the man who really has those ideas at the core of his life will feel the renewals of hope day by day; youth of soul will be his for ever, and old age will be an autumn time in which he may gather the fruit of his faith.
(3) “A good old age” is thus an old age which, by the influence of great ideas, has attached the gains of experience each to the other, so that at last they have made life of a unit. Experiences enough we all have had to make us rich in wisdom. But they have yielded no permanent gain to us, because we had no place for the gains. They have been like beautiful gems; we have had no strings on which to gather and string them, and one by one they have been lost. Noble thoughts are the strings on which we keep the events of life together. Ideas are pegs upon which we hang our experiences. Great ideas will take and hold a whole life's experiences. The man who is surest to find in old age the most of wisdom is he who has now ideas great enough to run all through his life-ideas under which he may classify his experiences. One of the great thoughts which have made many an old age a throne of glory is this: “God is the author and impulse of a great movement in the universe in which I live. That movement is the one fact which binds age to age and is the soul of history. I shall league my life with that movement which runs so swiftly towards eternal good.” To a young man who seriously puts that conception of life in his heart, there is no dolorous, broken age. He is moving with the youth and hope of God. He has none of the wretched self-consciousness of a man who has kept his life for himself, and feels himself thrown aside in the universe. Nay! He sings:
Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs;
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.
After Dr. McLaren had passed his seventieth birthday the Psalmist's words, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” were often quoted by him, and especially when he was asked to do some one definite service from which he shrank. He had visions of how delightful it would be really and truly to “retire,” to be done with never-ending “engagements.” But when faced with the idea of coming to a decision, he recalled words of John Woolman: “There was a care on my mind so to pass my time, that nothing might hinder me from the most steady attention to the voice of the true Shepherd.” He could not say that he heard that voice telling him to give up his work, and yet the thought of a quiet life allured him. As far back as the year 1889, when his old friend Dr. Russell gave up work, he wrote to Mrs. Russell: “I enter into all that you say about the contracting of interests, and feel that it has a pathetic side. But don't you think that there is another way of looking at it, and probably a better one, namely to think of it as the expanding of leisure and calm, not unwelcome, not unfitting the evening? When a thing has two handles (as most things have) it is best to grip it by the smoother of the two. Do you know a little piece of Whittier's “My Psalm,” which gives very beautifully the peaceful withdrawal from work which is coming to be our lot?-
I plough no more a desert land,
The harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.
I break my pilgrim staff,-I lay
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.
“Then he says that it is enough:-
That care and trial seem at last,
Through Memory's sunset air,
Like mountain-ranges overpast
In purple distance fair;-
That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.
“We may call it our psalm as well as his. What a deep dent Quakerism makes on even those who have drawn a good deal off from it!”1 [Note: Dr. McLaren of Manchester, 170.]
So take and use Thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!2 [Note: Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra.]
