Health and Temperance by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 23, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 28.

Health and Temperance.

By Editor

Down the Home Stretch.

RACING men have made this term familiar to the public as the name of the return half of the course, over which the racer gets back to the goal from his farthest outing. It is that portion of the whole distance which most severely tries the wind and endurance, and where break-downs oftenest occur. Usually, he who reserved himself in going out is most apt to come back in triumph.

There is a sense in which this phrase may fairly be applied to human life, as characterizing those later years which lead down and back from the farthest out-post of mature middle life, toward that second childhood which—to those who live long enough—precedes and preludes the grave. If threescore years and ten—prolonged, by reason of strength, to fourscore—be the inspired estimate of the duration of human life, then between thirty-five and forty-five—variously, according to temperament, constitution, and so on—men turn about, face their second infancy, and begin with gradually increasing feebleness to travel, to limp, and finally to totter, "down the home stretch."

Now and then there seems to be neither limping nor tottering, and men whose heads may be like the driven snow for whiteness stride on erect and stalwart with all their early robustness about them, as if in defiance of the law of decrepitude. Such men were blessed with "good constitutions" to start with, but that is generally the least part of the explanation. They reserved themselves in their pre-maturity. They habitually lived in close accordance with the laws of health and strength in their young manhood and early ripeness, and so have developed, nursed, and kept unwasted a vigor which now rewards them with its autumn and winter of vivacious content.

Now and then, only, is there such an one, for the great majority of young men and women are not content to live slowly enough to live out their full term. The youth of twenty becomes, for example, an incessant smoker, and says it doesn't hurt him. The young woman of the same age turns night into day with "society" amusements, and is sure that she is as well off at the year's end as at its beginning. It may seem so, and may seem so for years. But a reckoning comes.

We were deeply impressed, in reading lately Edmund Yates's fascinating volume, with his noting of celebrities who had dropped off before, or just after, they had begun the home stretch. Fechter, Beliew, Shirley Brooks, Sothern, and we know not how many others to whom he refers, burned their life candle at both ends, and came to an untimely—often a deplorable—death. In respect of nothing does the rhyme which Longfellow voiced from the old Sybilline oracles come more true than this:

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all."

Every youthful excess, which to all contemporaneous appearance carried its ill no further than the next morning's headache, is sure to be heard from on the home stretch, unless, indeed, with enough of its kind, it have executed sentence of death upon the offender before the distance-post had been rounded. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore—says the preacher of the old dispensation—the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. In their early days they ignored altogether the home stretch.

But when it is too late and in their enfeebling frames they feel the rust and rottenness into which the sins of their youth have seeded, vainly they envy those who have been content to live alway according to God's law, and found it health to their navel and marrow to their bones, and having length of days as its fruit and reward.—Congregationalist.