The Secret of Perpetual Youth
By Rev. J. D. Jones
BLESSED is the man in whose heart are the highways to Zion, for he has the secret of perpetual, immortal youth. “They go from strength to strength.” In other journeys, the longer you travel, the more tired you become. We read in history that in long marches men sometimes fall by the way, utterly unable to stir another step. When they begin in the cool of the morning, they march briskly enough; but marching mile after mile, in the blazing sun, they become tired, and they drop out, worn out, panting, utterly exhausted. You notice all that is reversed in the case of the pilgrim in whose heart are the ways to Zion. He never falls out of the march. The nearer he is to the end, the more eager and vigorous he is. He gathers new energy and fresh power with every mile he travels. He goes on “from strength to strength,” and that is not poetry but blessed fact. The pilgrim at the beginning of the march finds it toilsome and painful enough, and he is only able to drag himself painfully along. But talk to the old pilgrim who has been fifty years on the road, and he is going on “from strength to strength,” and is stepping out very briskly and vigorously now. That is the history of every man in whose heart are the highways to Zion, he goes on from “strength to strength,” as the years pass. What a contrast to ordinary old age, when the powers decay, the senses fail, the strength disappears, so that old age is often little more than a living death. The pilgrim who has the secret of perpetual joy, immortal youth, the older he gets the younger he becomes. His hair is white, but his soul knows no touch of decrepitude or decay. He brings forth fruit in old age, his soul is fat and flourishing. Though the outer man decay, the inner man is renewed day by day, and he goes on from strength to strength. He can say, “Of his fulness have we all received, and grace for grace.” “We all,” said Paul, “are changed into the same image.” How?—“From glory to glory,” “from strength to strength.” That is the spiritual history of the man in whose heart are the highways to Zion. “The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger.”— Rev. J. D. Jones.