TOLL OF YEARS.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10740, 10 November 1928, Page 10

TOLL OF YEARS.

THE DANGER) OF MIDDLE-LIFE. CHARACTER DETER TOR ATION, I

Some words spoken by the Dean of St. Paul’s, London, the Very Rev. Dr. Inge, on middle-life tragedies are worthy of our deepest interest arid, note! • “To he; content and to compromise with life as it is, is a danger that threatens most of us in middle life,” he said. ' “Few things, as a recent writer has observed, are more tragic than the depreciation of character which often sets in about the age of fifty: 1 ■ ' * - r ..." - : “There is less inclination to right against weakness. People become rather more opportunist, rathe - clever at taking the line of least resistance. arid have less capacity for the heroic.” Those who escaped the danger were, rarely found, among the successful in world affairs, but rather among those , who ' had fully experienced life’s trials. .' He believed that the habit of private prayer would do more than anything else to keep at bay that fatty degeneration of character.

Long ago the prophet Hosca took stock of life’s undetected losses when ho wrote, “Grey hairs- are here and there upon us, and we 1 know it not.” In these days, when t-lio cult of comfort lias laid hold of .-o many people and vast, numbers worship" at the shrine v of “ease and a good time.”-!-yes, and often good church people unwittingly do it—there comes the insistent call that wo should ask ourselves how . are we living, whether there is any. secret carelessness, some buried sin about us, what of our prayer life?. Otherwise there will be paralysis and powerlessness. The Philistines will be upon us. Herein wc detect one of the great weaknesses of present-day life!