Advantages of Years by Gail Hamilton

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 12, 1865

Advantages of Years.

By Gail Hamilton

You are getting into years. Yes, but the years are getting into you—the ripe, rich years, the genial, mellow years, the lusty, luscious years. One by one the crudities of youth are falling off from you, the vanity, the egotism, the isolation, the bewilderment, the uncertainties. Nearer and nearer you are approaching yourself. You are consolidating your forces. You are becoming master of the situation. Every wrong road into which you have wandered has brought you, by the knowledge of that mistake, so much closer to the truth. You no longer draw your bow at a venture, but shoot straight at the mark. Your possibilities concentrate, and your path is cleared. On the ruins of shattered plans you find your vantage ground. Your broken hopes, your thwarted purposes, your defeated aspirations, become a staff of strength with which you mount to sublime hights. With self possession and self command return the possession and command of all things. The title deed of creation, forfeited, is reclaimed. Earth and sky pour out their largest of love. All the past, crowds down to lay its treasures at your feet.—Gail Hamilton.