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If I were young again!
Originally published in the August 13, 1935 issue of The Christian Science Monitor
Those who believe material existence to be the totality of being, are apt to accept as true the mournful sense testimony of accumulated years. According to mortal belief, each individual emerges from a mysterious unknown; then, after passing through childhood, youth, maturity, and age, he is again lost sight of in the uncertainty of a great beyond.
Because youth is a type of receptivity, buoyancy, activity, and spontaneity, mortals believe that abundant life is coincident with a material sense of youth, and limited thereto. Thus erroneous belief allocates opportunity, achievement, and unfoldment to one brief period of mortal existence. The swiftly flying years, according to this belief, not only record vanishing youth but also testify that so-called middle life and age are likely to be haunted by blighted ambitions, Iost energy, fading opportunity, and fleeting joys. Past mistakes often seem to cast long shadows across the present and darken the future with a sense of irretrievable loss. Job's pathetic lament (Job 29:2,4), "Oh that I were as in months past, . . . as I was in the days of my youth," re-echoes in the plaintive remark, If I were young again!
That humanity has ever rebelled against the limitation and blight which this phrase implies, is evidenced by the fact that it has ceaselessly endeavored to turn backward the cycles of time. In one way or another, mankind has sought the fountain of perpetual youth. Failure to find the object of their quest has led many to believe that the deepest longing of the human heart, namely, the desire for the perennial activity of life, is never to be realized.
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If I were young again!
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