(1) What is meant by a sincere and loyal keeping of the faith ? It is, for one thing, to hold it in trust for the benefit of others and to always give it out. To keep the faith is to defend it, if we are able, by force of argument against all that assail it. But, above all things, to keep the faith is to live it, to exemplify
^ Christina G. Rossetti, Some Feasts and Fasts.
2 TIMOTHY IV. 6-8 239
it in one's thought and speech and actions. We all know people who keep their religious creed very much as they keep their in- surance policies. They have got them signed and sealed and locked up in a safe. There is no need to look at them again ; they are of use only at death. You may possibly keep religious creeds in that way. You cannot keep the faith in that way. There is a beautiful old legend which tells us how two crosses were given to two young men to carry through life. One of them fastened the cross upon his breast and wore it in the open light every day before the whole world. That cross became luminous in the hour of death, and lighted his way across the dark river. The other took his cross and hid it away somewhere, and did not bring it out again until the hour of death, and that cross was just a bit of common wood and gave no light.
(2) The faith which a man has kept up to the end of his life must be one that has opened with his growth and constantly won new colour and reality from his changing experience. The old man does believe what the child believed ; but how different it is, though still the same. The joy of his life has enriched his behef, his sorrow has deepened it, his doubts have sobered it, his enthusiasms have fired it, his labour has purified it. This is the work that life does upon faith. This is the beauty of an old man's religion. His doctrines are like the house that he has lived in, rich with associations which make it certain that he will never move out of it. His doctrines have been illustrated and strengthened and endeared by the good help they have given his life ; and no doctrine that has not done this can really be held up to the end with any such vital grasp as will enable us to carry it with us through the river and enter with it into the new life beyond.
^ Another friend, amongst other things refers to a strange and beautiful trait in my father's character — he had no age- consciousness. He could speed down the years so as to be able to be of the same age as a young lad, and if he had met Methuselah he would have felt no disparity in years betwixt himself and this primeval ancient. He was quite young enough to say of many a student's preaching, " He greatly blessed me," and quite old enough to listen with glowing joy to the rich sermon of a patriarch. Tor this " youth who refused to grow up " had all that is most beautiful in joyous age and happy youth, and loved
240 THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
both, for he knew that Eternal Life folds both within its warm embrace. The same friend writes : " It cannot be an easy thing as a rule for an older man to bridge the gulf of about thirty years, and put himself alongside a younger generation. It never occurs to most men to try, and they have no idea how remote and inaccessible they are. I can't say that your father bridged the gulf. It simply wasn't there ; he waved his wand and it was gone. I understood better afterwards where the secret was. Strictly speaking, he did not grow old. If there was a stale thought in his mind, he never showed it. He never acquired that look of superhuman wisdom which makes many ministers so depressing, and he had no disillusioned tones. If I wanted to maintain that selfishness is always a deadening thing — slow suicide — and that love is always a vitalizing thing, I should think of your father as my shining instance of the second proposition." ^
Old, — we are growing old : Going on through a beautiful road, Finding earth a more blessed abode ; Nobler work by our hearts to be wrought, Freer paths for our hope and our thought : Because of the beauty the years unfold,
We are cheerfully growing old !
Old, — we are growing old : Going up where the sunshine is clear; Watching grander horizons appear Out of clouds that enveloped our youth ; Standing firm on the mountains of truth ; Because of the glory the years unfold,
We are joyfully growing old.
Old, — we are growing old: Going in to the gardens of rest, That glow through the gold of the west, Where the rose and the amaranth blend, And each path is the way to a friend: Because of the peace that the years unfold,
We are thankfully growing old.
Old, — are we growing old ? Life blooms as we travel on Up the hills, into fresh, lovely dawn ;