no definite employment, and are only excited to mental exertion by peculiar events or circumstances. In such cases the mental faculties are on some occasions overtasked, while in ordinary conditions, they are suffered to grow sluggish. It is obvious that such a habit must tend to impair the steady vigor of the mind. Daily and uniform. mental exertion are the price to be paid for long-continued mental force. And accordingly we find that those men whose faculties have held out the longest in useful service, are those whose intellectual habits have been the most regular and steady. Thus students of nature, professors in institutions of learning, and ministers of the Gospel, are most likely to hold out in mental power to a good old age.

It is of great value to aged persons to maintain their habits of reading in the line of the living age. It is proverbial that the old are prone to think that "the former times were better than these." One reason of this, doubtless is, that they live mainly in the past, and do not keep abreast of the times by reading and other means of information and culture. A man must be conversant with present events, to be able to estimate them aright; and the general reading of living literature and news will tend to keep him in sympathy with the actors on the stage, and to compare justly the present with the past. If, moreover, a person would keep his mind quickened and energetic he must commune habitually with the thinking men of the age now passing. No man can derive impulse and spirit from those who have gone from the world, as from those who are living and moving around him. As the aged ab

sorb physical life from the young by close contact with them, so they draw fresh mental vigor from their daily intercourse with the young thought of the acting world. Let every man in his declining years keep up his habits of reading the freshest books and periodicals, and he will reap the reward in the intellectual stimulus which he will bor

row from younger minds.

The like may be said also, in regard to the habitual study of living subjects. The aged man is prone to dwell upon the themes that interested him most in his earlier years. But many of those topics have lost their hold upon the public mind. The subjects that now occupy the attention of the people are mainly new, or have assumed new forms. And if a man is not conscious that his thinking is running parallel with that of other men of the acting generation, he will by degrees lose the activity of his thought. Every one needs the quickening influence of the stirring world on every side of him to keep his mind awake and vigorous. The theological questions, the political questions, the literary questions, the social questions of the present hour, are the ones to engage our interest and keep our intellectual faculties on the alert. By dwelling upon such living themes we are aided in our mental activity, as our senses are kept awake on a journey by the scenes through which we are passing and not by those which we witnessed somewhere else years ago.

On the same principle it behooves every aged person to maintain his habits of intercourse with living society. The old are tempted to withdraw, in a great measure, from soci

ety, either from lack of sympathy with the young, or from the apprehension that their presence is not welcome. An earnest effort should be made to overcome this tendency, both for the sake of others, and our own benefit.

By the continued cultivation of social habits, it is possible for almost every aged person to mingle in general society with pleasure and profit, and at the same time to minister to the satisfaction and enjoyment of others. We are brought into the closest contact with other minds by personal intercourse with them; and the quickening influences of society are therefore fitted to contribute to our continued mental vivacity as nothing else can. It is for this reason that social persons are in most cases mentally bright, and often even brilliant, when the sere leaves of advanced autumn are almost ready to fall. If we would keep our minds astir with youthful spirit, let us keep ourselves in the atmosphere of the young and acting generation.

3. Need I suggest, in this connection, the importance of maintaining habitual control over the feelings and passions? A man who gives way to moroseness and fretfulness, or to restless discontent, or to a fault-finding spirit, as age advances, will inevitably lose the power of commanding his intellectual faculties to good purpose. For how can he use his mental energies well if an irritable spirit has the mastery over him? Calmness of mind is an essential condition of well-balanced intellectual activity. The indulged excitability of harsh tempers is frequently a most. serious obstacle to the best exercise of the intellectual

powers in the cases of aged persons who from impaired nervous health or from unrestrained habits lose the needful rule over their own spirits. Such persons are verily "like a city broken down and without walls; " while "he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city," both in respect to the comfort of others and the healthful activity of his mental faculties in every direction. Watchfulness at this point grows increasingly necessary with the progress of years. For experience teaches the mischiefs of ill-regulated passions in that period of life when sereneness of mind ought to crown the glory of the setting sun.

4. One other condition of long-continued and well-poised mental activity, is habitual cheerfulness. A sombre temper, though not characterized by special excitability, is like a sullen cloud hanging over all the mental faculties. Sunlight is needful to keep vegetation alive and vigorous in the material world; and so a cheerful spirit is essential not only to the buoyant elasticity of the mind in youth and middle life, but especially to its protracted vigor in later years. If a gloomy disposition is sometimes present where the intellectual powers continue active three or fourscore years, this is not habitually so. In the great majority of cases a cheerful temper goes along with a healthful mental activity as long as life lasts. This fact is brought forward in this connection for the reason that in the latter end of life there are often peculiar occasions of mental depression, which it is difficult to resist, so as to keep up a cheerful and joyous habit. But it is possible by special effort to culti

vate such a spirit, even in the anticipation of the dark hour that must come to all. It is well, in old age, to think often upon the brighter passages in former life, to keep the mind intent upon some present duty, and to cultivate that Christian faith which "looks beyond the bounds of time," in forecasting the glorious morning that is to follow the approaching night. Thus the spirit will be preserved in a mood most favorable to continued intellectual life, and the pleasures of a good conscience and of an assured hope will shine out in the countenance and shed their radiance over the whole soul, until the brighter light of the coming day shall introduce the springtime of immortal youth.

MENTAL ENERGIES IN OLD AGE.

To die as Plato died, with pen in hand, is the ideal close of life to every lover and follower of intellectual work. The thought of a second childhood is intolerable. A man's intellectual life will be paralyzed and his thirst for knowledge quenched and his usefulness consequently diminished, if he have the conviction that a decline of mental vigor inevitably awaits him as he verges toward the seventies.

On the other hand, it is not easy to over-estimate the inspiration and progressive spirit which will be wrought into the very life of the intellect by the controlling idea that the power of thought shall move as deeply, as vigororously, and with keener and nicer discrimination at its setting than at its meridian. Both ideas have been dis