p. 459 | Man's Age

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 19, 1882

Man's Age.

Few men die of age. Almost all die of disappointment; passion, mental or bodily toil, or accident. The passions kill men sometimes, even suddenly. The common expression, "choked with passion," has little exaggeration in it, for even though not suddenly fatal, strong passions shorten life. Strong-bodied men often die young; weak men live longer than the strong, for the strong use their strength, and the weak have none to use. The latter take care of themselves; the former do not. As it is with the body, so it is with the mind and temper. The strong are apt to break, or, like the candle, to run; the weak burn out.

The inferior animals, which live temperate lives, have generally their prescribed number of years. The horse lives twenty-five; the ox fifteen or twenty; the lion about twenty; the dog ten or twelve; the rabbit eight; the guinea pig six or seven years. These numbers all bear a similar proportion to the time the animal takes to grow to its full size.

But man, of all the animals, is one that seldom lives this average. He ought to live a hundred years, according to physical law, for five times twenty are one hundred, but instead of that, he scarcely reaches on an average, four times his growing period; the cat six times; the rabbit even eight times the standard of measurement. The reason is obvious; man is not only the most irregular and the most intemperate, but the most laborious and hard worked of all the animals. He is also the most irritable of all animals; and there is no reason to believe, though we cannot tell what an animal secretly feels, that, more than any other animal, man cherishes wrath to keep it warm, and consumes himself with the fire of his own secret reflection.—Sel.