Robert Collier – Renew Thy Youth Like The Eagle

 

“Age is a quality of mind:
If you have left your dream behind,
If hope is cold,
If you no longer look ahead,
If your ambition fires are dead—
Then you are old.

“But if from life you take the best,
And if in life you keep the jest,
If love you hold;
No matter how the years go by,
No matter how the birthdays fly,
You are not old.”

 

“Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” — Ps. 103:5

Most people seem to think that the Bible was written for religious instruction only, that it is something far removed from their ordinary, work-a-day lives.

But what are the facts?

The early Scriptures are primarily the chronicles of a people, meant first and foremost to preserve for them those experiences and those discoveries that would help them in overcoming the difficulties and dangers of their primitive existence.

They tell of mighty men, and how one may become great and strong by doing as they did. They list some of the foods which they found most healthful, they give the sanitary laws which seemed to them of greatest value. And over and above all, they give the moral code that all should live by, and the methods by which one might count upon the help of Jehovah in time of need.

“Search ye the Scriptures,” we are told, “for in them ye find the words of eternal life.”

Much of our modern health regulations and medical practice was foreshadowed by the Mosaic Law.

The Bible is the Log Book of Experience. Through thousands of years, the wise men of old handed down the things they learned which might be most helpful to posterity. How else would you interpret this passage from Deuteronomy?

“Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall COMMAND your children to observe to do. For this is not a vain thing for you, because IT IS YOUR LIFE (your health): and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land.”

What loomed up as of greatest importance to primitive man? Health, strength, did it not? So we may well expect to find in the Scriptures the methods which, in the experience of the sages of old, were best calculated to produce strong men, mighty men, men who retained their vigor and youthfulness to a great age.

You see the promise of this running as a thread all through the Scriptures. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be,” we are assured in Deuteronomy. And again in the same book it is chronicled: “And Moses was 120 years old when he died, yet was not his eyes dim, nor his natural force abated.”

So sure did Moses feel that his teachings were right, so confident was he of results, that he dared offer this guarantee:

“HEREBY YE SHALL KNOW THAT THE LORD HATH SENT ME: If these men (who obey me) die the common death of all men (in the prime of life), or if they be visited after the visitation of all men (stricken with divers ailments and diseases); THEN THE LORD HATH NOT SENT ME.”

Go back over all the heroic figures in the Bible, and what trait do you find most common among all of them?

They were mighty men, strong men, healthy men, and unless cut down by violence, men who lived to great ages. “There were giants in the earth in those days,” we are told in Genesis, “and also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children unto them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

Men of renown . . . go back over the list and see how many were strong men as well—Samson, Moses, Joshua, Saul, David, the Maccabees, John the Baptist, and a host of others. It was said of Saul—”Saul, a choice young man and a goodly; from his shoulders and upwards, he was higher than any of the people.” And of David—”He was ruddy, withal of a beautiful countenance and goodly to look to.”

But how about the greatest of them all? How about Jesus? Does He conform to this picture? Most of the pictures we have of Him depict Him as weak and ascetic looking. If the purpose of the Old Testament was largely to show men how to build up mighty bodies, strong, healthy physiques, how is it that He, who knew that Old Testament so well, should be pictured to us as a weak and anaemic-looking figure?

“BEHOLD A MAN!”

To get the real background of Jesus, it is necessary to remember that the Roman soldier of the pre-Christian era was a rough lot. He had conquered the world, and he knew no law but force. He feared neither God nor man, and the only thing he revered was strength and power.

Yet it is written that when the Roman soldiers were first sent out against Jesus, they returned empty-handed, awed by his stature and bearing. It was said of Him that He could be seen afar off, towering head and shoulders above the crowds around him.

Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, the soldiers sent to seize Him drew back on finding Him, so cowed that they were ready to flee. Pilate was lost in admiration at His stature and presence, so much so that he presented Him to the multitude with the highest words of praise a Roman could offer—”Behold a MAN! ”

Artists and religious teachers have been fond of picturing Jesus as weak and ascetic, as a “Man of Sorrows.” That is the idea of Jesus that most people have. That is the idea of Him that many teachers have fostered. But it is not the idea of Him that a careful reading of the Gospels will give you.

A physical-weakling? Anaemic? Ascetic? Jesus worked as a carpenter until He was 30 years of age. He wielded an adze and pushed a plane in days when there were no sawmills to cut up the lumber, when every bit of work from chopping down the tree to raising the timbers of the house had to be done by hand. Tools were few in those days, and sheer strength took the place of winches and pulleys. Could a weakling have done such work?

Jesus single-handed chased the hucksters and the money-lenders from the Temple, scourging them as they went. Would any crowd of usurers and push-cart men that you have seen run from any but a giant among men?

A “Man of Sorrows”? He made people happy wherever He went. The sick, the poor, the sorrowful, all flocked to Him and were sent away happy. Little children loved Him—and were joyous and happy with Him. He was the most popular dinner guest in Jerusalem.

Jesus was a Man among men, one who towered over all about Him, one who commanded respect and awe from His very presence. He sat in a boat on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and made Himself heard over the lapping of the waves and the noise of the crowd, even by 5,000 people. Anyone who has tried to make himself heard by a few hundred people outdoors knows what strength and resonance of voice that required.

Of all those who lived upon this earth, I think we may safely assume that Jesus had the most commanding stature, the most perfect build, vitality and strength equaled by none.

There is in the Vatican Library in Rome a description of Jesus said to have been written to a friend by a Roman Pro-Consul who had seen Him often:

“His fair hair is long, flowing down to the ears and thence to His shoulders. It is slightly crisped and curled, parted in the middle and falling on either side as is the custom of a Nazarene. His cheeks are somewhat rosy, the nose and mouth well shaped, the beard is thick and is the color of a ripe hazel nut; it is short and parted in the middle.

“His looks reveal both wisdom and candor. His blue eyes at times flash with sudden fire.

“This Man, usually so gentle in conversation, becomes terrible when He reprimands, but even at such times there seems to emanate from His Person a safe serenity . . . His voice is grave, reserved and modest. He is as handsome as a man can be. He is called Jesus, the Son of Mary.”

Sir Edwin Arnold describes Him:

“Straight-standing like a palm-tree; hands and limbs
So molded that the noblest copy them:
Among the Sons of Men fairest and first.”

“I came that ye might have LIFE,” Jesus assured us, “and have it more abundantly.” Doesn’t that mean greater health and strength, length of days and the capacity to enjoy them to the full?

Like the earlier Scriptures, the teachings of Jesus were meant to improve our physical well-being as well as our spiritual. And who understood those physical laws as well as the One who by His mere touch was able to cure all manner of diseases?

But remember how often He warned those He cured—”Go and sin no more.” In other words, transgress no more against the laws of health.

Modern science has made huge strides in the treatment of disease. It has discovered a host of drugs which are said to assist Nature in remedying all manner of physical disorders. But for every disease that modern science seems to eradicate, a new one springs up, until the great need of the day appears to be . . . NOT medicines to CURE disease . . . but methods of building strong bodies, mighty bodies, that shall be IMMUNE to disease.

It has been done to a great extent with many plants. Dr. Charles Northen of Orlando, Fla., has shown that healthy plants, grown in soil containing all the mineral elements in proper balance, will resist most insect pests . . . without spraying, without outside help.

He took an orange grove infested with scale, and by restoring the mineral balance to the soil around certain trees, rid them completely of scale, though all the trees around them were still infested with it. By the same method, he grew healthy rose-bushes between rows that were riddled with insects, and the insects would not touch the bushes grown in soil with proper mineral balance. He even intertwined healthy cucumber and tomato plants with diseased plants. The bugs ate the diseased plants, and refused to touch the healthy ones!

Dr. Horace Packard of Boston University, in a paper read before the Surgical and Gynecological Society, advanced much the same theory with regard to the diseases of mankind: “All forms of malignant disease,” he said, “are possible because of absence of or loss of immunity. All animal life in normal state of environment and supplied with nutriment bearing all the organic ingredients necessary for the maintenance of disease-resisting vitality, possesses in itself a protective immunity to cancer.

“In view of the well-established fact that in the vegetable world an adequate supply of the earth’s salts, phosphorus, potassium, iron, magnesium, silicon, calcium, etc., acts as a distinct deterrent of parasitic life and makes for vigorous disease-resisting life, may we not assume as much for the animal world?”

Reduced to the ultimate, plant cells and human cells are much the same. They get their nourishment in the same way, and if the one can be made immune to disease, it would seem that the other should be as well.

In “The Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East” by Baird T. Spalding (published by DeVorss & Co., of Los Angeles), we read:

“You ask if we believe death is avoidable. Let me answer in the words of the Siddha. ‘The human body is built up from the individual cell, like the bodies of plants and animals, whom we love to call younger and less evolved brothers. The individual cell is a minute microscopic unit of the body. By a process of growth and division repeated many times, this minute nucleus of a cell unit results at last in a complete human being, built up of almost countless millions of cells. These body cells specialize for certain different functions, but they retain in the main, the characteristics of the individual cell whence they arose. The individual cell may be looked upon as the torchbearer of animal life—reaching back to the time when life first appeared on this planet.

” ‘This individual cell has the property of unlimited youth. The group cells called the body arose from the individual cell, and retain its individual characteristics, one of which is the latent fire of life, or Eternal Youth. The body group functions as guardian of the individual cell only during the short span of life as you know it now.

” ‘The most ancient of our teachers by inspirational means perceived the truth of the fundamental unity of all life reactions. We can imagine these teachers beneath the great Banyan tree, teaching their pupils: ‘Look at this giant tree.’ The vital process going on in this and in ourselves is fundamentally the same. Behold the leaves and the buds at the tips how young they are— young as the seed from which the giant sprang into life. As the leaves and buds at the tips of the branches are as young as the seed from which the oldest tree sprang, even so the group cells in man forming the body need not gradually lose their vitality and die, but may grow young and ever green as the ovum or individual cell itself.

” ‘Your body should grow as young and vital as the life seed from which it sprang. The Banyan tree does not die except through accident. No natural law of decay seems to exist within the tree. The same is true of the human form divine. No inevitable old age process exists within his body or group cells—nothing that can gradually paralyze the individual. Death then is an avoidable accident. Senile decay, which is the common experience of man, is but an expression that covers his ignorance of cause, the disease, which is the absence of ease, sweet joyous peace of the spirit reflected through the mind and body. Even accidents are avoidable by the correct mental attitude. Youth is the divinity within man; youth is the life spiritual—the life beautiful. The life that lives and loves—the one life eternal. Fear thoughts, pain thoughts and grief thoughts create the ugliness called old age. Joy thoughts, love thoughts and ideal thoughts create the beauty called youth. Age is a shell within which lies the gem of reality. Practice acquiring the consciousness of childhood.

” ‘Vizualize before falling asleep—I now have within me a spiritual joy-body ever young, ever beautiful, the body of the Divine child which is perfect! In the morning recognize the divine alchemist within. This inner alchemist has caused the dead and wornout cells to fall and the gold of new skin to appear in perpetual health and loveliness. Truly Divine Love in demonstra­tion is ETERNAL YOUTH.

” ‘Learn that to smile a joyous smile from the soul is spiritual relaxation. Think a kind thought for all the world. Make everything bright and beautiful about you. Cultivate a spirit of humor. Enjoy the sunshine.’ These are the teachings of the Siddha, the oldest teachers known. Their teaching antedates all history by thousands of years. The Siddha have preserved throughout the ages, the inspirational method of God expressing through men and through all creation. They have never deviated from the teaching that GOD IS ALL and He manifests through all. Thus they have preserved the great fundamental truth.”

The Masters of the Far East, like the Patriarchs of the Bible, lived to unbelievable ages. They are said to have retained health and strength and an ever-green youthfulness. Why should not we do the same? Why should not we follow the teachings which builded such mighty men of old, which enabled them to retain health and strength and vigor right up to the end of their days?

Why should we not live at least as long, comparatively, as the animals? The average animal lives to seven times its maturity and retains its vigor and virility until very near the end. Man matures at 18 or 20 years. If he lived as long, comparatively, as the animal, he could expect to reach an age of 126 to 140 years, and to retain much of his youthfulness until very near the end of his days. That much is promised him in the Scriptures. In Job, you find: “His flesh shall be fairer than a child’s. He shall return to the days of his youth.” Again in Genesis—”And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: Yet his days shall be 120 years.”

But how shall this be brought about? There are three methods advocated in the Bible—four, in fact—and each of the four is equally important.

“OLD MAN GRAVITY”

The first of the four is the one most often quoted and least understood. It is from the Psalms: “Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

Out in California, when you meet a man who feels “down in the mouth” and ask how it is with him, he doesn’t tell you that his digestion is bad or his liver off color, but—”Old Man Gravity’s got me.”

Sindbad the Sailor had the same idea away back in the times when the Arabian Nights were new. He called it The Old Man of the Sea, but it rode his shoulders just like “Old Man Gravity” does today. What is this Old Man?

When you lack ambition, when you feel discouraged and the world seems all awry, it isn’t the fault of your liver. It’s “Old Man Gravity.”

When your feet weigh a ton, when there doesn’t seem to be an ounce of energy left in your system, it isn’t a pill that you need. It’s some way of knocking “Old Man Gravity” off your shoulders.

Who is he? His full name is “Gravitation.” Properly cultivated, he can be made a power for good. But when ignored or wrongly used, he is just “Old Man Gravity,” weighing you down.

The Law of Gravity, you know, is the pull of the mass. It is the tendency of solid objects to draw to them every loose particle within their range of attraction. It is the constant struggle of inertia against ertia.

What has this to do with discouragement, lassitude and the like? Just this:

Your body is made up of solids and liquids. The solids are the mass of condensed energy. The liquids are the particles of “free” energy. The force of gravity in your body and in the earth is all towards attracting those free particles to the solid mass, and condensing them into a part of it.

But when those loose particles become congealed into one solid mass, you’re dead! So the life-giving forces within you are all for freedom. They are “ertia,” and from birth to death, they wage a constant fight against the forces of “inertia.”

How are you to keep “Old Man Gravity’s” hands off you? How are you to release his hold when he gets his clutches upon you? How do you release his hold on water? By turning it into steam, do you not? How do you release his hold upon coal or oil? By vaporizing it, by turning it into gas!

You can’t turn your body into steam or gas, but you can use the same idea. You know how martial music will put new life into soldiers who seem ready to drop. Why? Because stirring music wakes up the particles of “free” life in you and sets them whirling at a faster rate. It stimulates the glands, and sets them to pumping their powerful secretions into your blood stream.

You know: how a fragrant perfume will revive you when you are tired. Why? Because it, too, has the faculty of stirring up the life in you, whereas air obnoxious smell has just the opposite effect.

You know how a bright, sunshiny morning fills you with pep, whereas a gray, cloudy day gives you the blues. Why? Because sunshine wakens the life in you, and makes it expand.

Love, laughter, happiness, pleasure, all stimulate the “free” life in you—all make you feel better, regardless of what condition you may have been in before. Sorrow, hate, fear, worry, depress the life in you, and make it easy for “Old Man Gravity” to get in his work.

Why is it that sudden good news has often raised sufferers from their sick beds, sometimes after they had been given up as lost? Because joy frees the life-energy in your body. It breaks up the condensed particles and sends them merrily about their appointed work. It wakens the glands and stimulates their secretions.

Why is it that worry and fear bring so great a harvest of sickness and old age and death? Because worry and fear mean strain. And strain hardens—congeals—the life-energy in you. You hear of people being “scared stiff,” and the expression is literally true. You read of “the lame man leaping as an hart” for joy and again it is literally true.

Of course, sudden fright will sometimes loosen every particle of free energy, and enable a. weakling to perform prodigies of strength. Some years ago, for instance, I received a clipping from a Los Angeles paper, telling how “Frances Avita, frail and weighing only 100 pounds, lifted a heavy automobile off the head of her brother and saved his life after an auto accident. Summoning superhuman strength, the girl was able to lift over 900 pounds, a weight which no ordinary man could move.”

It is this sudden freeing of the life energy in him which make a badly scared man the most dangerous man on earth. It is like the sudden freeing of energy that takes place when you ignite any explosive. He has for the moment the strength of ten men, and he will use it in any way to escape the danger he fears. But continued fear, like any other continued nervous strain, dissipates that energy and makes one powerless as the rabbit “charmed” by its ancestral enemy, the snake.

How much of a hold has “Old Man Gravity” upon you? Has he marked you with graying hair, a drawn look about your eyes and mouth, ageing arteries? Has he supplanted the joy of achievement with worry about business or your job? Has he put debts and sickness into your home where happiness ought to dwell?

Then let’s see how we can throw him out. Let’s loosen up all that congealed life, get youth and “pep” into your looks, a new outlook and a new spirit into your business and your home.

“For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. saith the Lord; wherefore turn yourselves and live ye!”

Hundreds of years ago, Roger Bacon, the greatest mind the Middle Ages brought forth, wrote in his OPUS MAJUS—”Through the wisdom granted to the world through the first man, namely through Adam and his sons, who received from God Himself special knowledge on this subject, in order that they might prolong life, God the Most High and Glorious has prepared a means for preserving health and for combating the ills of old age and retarding them.”

The Scriptures claim that Adam lived 930 years. And others of the Patriarchs lived even longer. Many people have been inclined to doubt these figures, but in the light of modern experiments, the Biblical claims no longer sound so fantastic.

To begin with, scientists are agreed that biologically, there is no reason why we should not live forever. The cells of the body are potentially immortal. Scientists have watched single cells repro­ducing through 7,000 generations, and the 7,000th was as vigorous and virile as the first.

Everyone has heard of Dr. Alexis Carrel’s experiment with a fragment of chicken heart. It has now lived and reproduced for more than 25 years. It doubles in size every 24 hours, and has to be cut back to keep it from overflowing everything around it. It is just as much alive today, just as strongly pulsating with energy, as it was 25 years ago. And as far as anyone can see, if given the same care it will be alive and growing 2500 years from now!

Then why do we die? Because we fail to throw off the waste products set free by our cells. Because we fail to keep our system CLEAN. Our arteries harden, because of the deposits left in them. Our cells dry up, because their pores become so clogged with waste that they can no longer absorb the life-giving substances around them. Learn how to cleanse the cells of your body as thoroughly as Dr. Carrel did those of his chicken heart, and there is no reason why you cannot live to the 120 years definitely promised us in the Scriptures.

But how may this be brought about? We are told in the Scriptures that “Man shall renew his youth like the eagle.” And again—”Thou shalt be as the morning, having rebuilded thy body in the night.”

The eagle oftentimes lives to an age of 250 years. How does it renew its strength and youthfulness? What does it do that man does not? It flies WITH ITS HEAD LOWER THAN ITS HEART!

To realize what a difference that makes, just remember that if you hold a rabbit upright for two hours, it will die. Why? Because of the pull of gravity, causing a sagging and consequent crowding together of its vital organs. Man has been bred through hundreds of generations to withstand that pull of gravity, so it does not kill him quickly as it does a rabbit, but it does cause his vital organs to sag, it does in time make him pot-bellied, it does give him jowls like a turkey gobbler, and it puts a pressure upon his vital organs that crowds them together and makes it difficult for them to get rid of waste products, and thus it makes man an easy victim of disease and decay.

The Ancients seem to have understood this better than we do today. The Marathon runners of Greece, for instance, whose endurance amazed the world, used to rest themselves and renew their energies by throwing themselves down at the foot of a tree and propping their legs up against it as high as they could reach, letting their organs expand after the long pounding of a gruelling run, letting them get rid of the waste-products of fatigue, letting the blood get to each separate organ and run down to their head.

A dog or a horse, after a hard run, will rest with its head lower than its heart. Parrots live about as long as eagles, and you know how often you have seen a parrot hanging by its feet from its perch, its head down.

“Ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air and they shall tell thee.”

Crocodiles and tortoises, which are always in a prone position, and usually with the head a bit lower than the heart, have been known to live for hundreds of years. The elephant, which keeps its head down a goodly part of the time, will remain in full working power up to 80 years of age (if not overworked before reaching 20), and will then be capable of light work for another 20 years; after which he may enjoy some 20 years of quiet old age.

Li Ching-Yun, one of China’s oldest men, had four rules for long life: “Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog.” In other words, don’t worry, relax utterly when you rest, exhale with your diaphragm—pushing your chest up and out—when you walk, and sleep with your head a little lower than your heart.

In a series of experiments at Colgate University, Dr. Donald Laird showed that man’s brain functions 7% faster and 14% more accurately when the head is lower than the body, than when it is in the usual upright position. Teachers of physical culture find that they get better results, and far safer ones, from exercises taken in a prone position than when standing.

During the past several years, a beauty salon in New York has become famous for restoring youthful figures and even youthful contours of cheeks and chins to fat, middle-aged ladies by a system based primarily on exercises taken with the head lower than the rest of the body! They lie on inclined boards, their feet at the upper end, which is raised about eighteen inches higher than the lower end, where their head rests.

Why should this be? Principally because it gives the vital organs a chance to “uncrowd,” it lets them expand and open their pores and rid themselves of accumulated wastes; but also because of those all-important glands that are located in the head and neck.

Take the Pituitary Gland, for instance. It is located in the center of the head between the top of the ears. Its secretions are GROWTH secretions, their important function after maturity being to rebuild and repair the body through control of the other glands and organs. We call them the “constructive glands.” What chance has the Pituitary to secrete its vital juices if it has to fight for every drop of blood that comes to it?

Then there is the Pineal Gland, lying slightly behind and above the Pituitary. Its work is to stimulate certain nerve energy impulses necessary for the co-ordination of impressions and thoughts. This gland is directly responsible for memory. We would have no knowledge of past or future, but for the Pineal Gland. Do you wonder now why older people, who allow that Pineal Gland to almost dry up, find it difficult to remember things, become absent- minded and forgetful?

The Thyroid Gland is located in the neck astride the Adams apple. Thyroid and parathyroid are closely associated. The hormone which the Thyroid throws into the system is called thyroxin and is composed of iodine and hydrogen. Both are necessary for digestion and assimilation. People suffering from thyroid deficiencies are inclined to be lazy, indifferent, uninterested, unambitious and irritable. A man who feels too old for normal exertion, who is over-weight and has sagging jowls, is probably suffering from an inactive thyroid. So don’t blame your slowing down on your age. Put the blame where it belongs, on your failure to let the blood flow to your glands, to bring them the nourishment they need.

The Parathyroid Gland is to be found on either side of the Thyroid. Where the Thyroid affects the body largely through the digestion, causing overweight or underweight, the Parathyroid Gland manu­factures a substance which it circulates in the bloodstream and which tends to give you partial or complete immunity from contagious or infectious diseases.

That is why it is so important to send a full supply of blood now and then to nourish the glands of the head and neck. That is why in a real sense, it is possible to “renew your youth like the eagle.” For the secretions of the ductless glands are the real ELIXIR OF LIFE. Transplanted in the form of monkey glands, they have made men of sixty look and feel like youngsters. Injected as hormones, they have produced similarly miraculous results. But for the most lasting benefits, for true youthfulness and virility, it is necessary to stimulate them naturally. And that is now within the power of every man.

HE DIED OF OLD AGE AT SEVEN!

A hundred years ago, all of England was amazed at the strange case of Charles Charlesworth of Staffordshire.

Born of normal parents in March, 1829, he died seven years later of OLD AGE! According to Robert Ripley in his book “Believe It or Not” (and the facts are attested by Medical Text Books), his face was wizened with age, his hair white, his skin shriveled, his hands knotted with conspicuous veins and tendons, his voice piping, his gait and standing posture those of an old man.

What was the reason? According to present medical opinion, it was due to a lack of secretions from the ductless glands. This is borne out by the fact that eunochs, who are deprived of certain glands early in life, age early and show all the attributes of men twice their age when still in what should be the prime of life.

All over the world, sick, weak and devitalized men and women are searching for health and strength. By the hundreds of thousands, they drag their weary and aching bones around, or languish in sick beds, waiting for someone to bring health to them, corked up in a bottle.

But real, lasting health was never found in pill boxes or medicine bottles. There is one method, and only one, by which it can be gained and kept, and that is by assisting Nature to work in her own way in the cleansing and stimulating of each nerve and muscle, and thus enabling her marvelous recreating and rejuvenating forces to carry new life to them.

You can be brisk, active, youthful, when your mates are gray and stiff. You can have abounding vitality, and the abundant vigor and energy that go with it. Life can begin anew for you at 40—or even 50 or 60. How? By waking up your glands, by using posture and position and temperate exercise, as well as sensible diet and sunshine and fresh air, to keep your glands pumping their “Life Ferments” into your blood. They will—if you hold them to it. But you have to do your part. Here are some simple exercises that should help:

  1. — Put a couple of cushions or a pillow on the floor if an inclined board is not available, and lie down on these, the cushions under your shoulders and buttocks, your head hanging back to touch the floor, your arms over your head, hands touching the floor. Bring your arms forward and up to help you sit up, bend forward and try to touch your toes with your fingers, exhaling as you come up, blowing out the air as strongly as you can. Don’t strain to actu­ally touch the toes. Just come as near to it as you comfortably can. Then swing back to original position. Do this five times, night and morning, for the first week. There­after, gradually increase the number until you get up to twenty.
  2. — Put your hands down at your sides, and still lying on your cushions with your head back against the floor, raise the left foot (knee stiff) as high as you can, lower it and raise the right foot. Alternate five times, increasing the number after the first week until you finally get to twenty.
  3. — Put your hands under your buttocks and raise both feet together, keeping the knees stiff and straight. As your feet come up, exhale with a violent “Whoosh!” Do this five times, increasing the number after the first week until eventually you get to twenty.
  4. — With your hands at your sides, raise your left knee and bring it as close to your chest as you can. Bring it up quickly and hard. Alternate with the right knee five times, increasing the number each week until you reach twenty.
  5. — With the hands under the buttocks, raise both knees hard up against the chest, exhaling violently, and down again with the legs flat against the floor. Do this five times the first week, increasing thereafter until you reach twenty.
  6. — With the hands under the buttocks, raise both legs, keeping feet together and knees straight, until you get them as high as you can, exhaling violently as you bring up the legs. Then separate the legs and bring them down as far apart as you can. Five times the first week, increasing gradually to twenty.
  7. — Remove the cushion under the buttocks, and bring your feet up under you to where you can touch them with your hands. Then raise your middle off the floor, resting your weight on your shoulder blades and feet, and swing your middle from side to side as far and as jerkily as you can. Do this twenty times to each side the first week, gradually increasing each week until you can do it fifty times.

Another good prone exercise that is highly recommended is to lie on your back as indicated in No. 1, raise your feet and go through the movements you would if you were bicycling. If you have one of these elastic hand exercisers, hold it in either hand, put your feet in the middle and go through the motions of pedaling a bicycle. The elastic furnishes the resistance needed to make the exercise more effective.

So much for the first method.

The second has to do with BREATHING.

There are four organs for purifying and cleansing the body, i.e. the lungs, the kidneys, the bowels and the pores of the skin. Of the four, the lungs are the most important. Just how important the Ancients regarded the power of breath may be judged from the quotation which follows, if you translate the Latin word “Spiritus” into “Breath” or power of breath. “The spirit (breath) of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly.” ‘

“OUT OF HIS NOSTRILS”

When Jesus sent His disciples out to carry His message to all the world, it is written that— “Jesus breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” Receive ye the Spirit of Life, of proper breathing, for out of your nostrils come life and strength, health and length of years. As the Scriptures put it—”The glory of his nostrils is terrific.”

Alone of all mankind of his day, Noah found health through grace (posture) by the Spirit (power of breath). Job testified—”The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.”

“Ten years ago,” wrote a San Francisco correspondent, “Doctors told me that my left side was paralyzed and I would never walk again. My left side was numb, but I did not believe what those Doctors said. My absolute faith in God’s guidance had me rid my system of all poisons by CHANGING MY WAY OF BREATH­ING!

“In less than a week, the same Doctors said, when I was leaving the Hospital with a grip in my left hand—’if all our patients had the determination to live that you have, 90% would be alive today.’

“I said—’Doctors, it was not determination. God’s NATURAL BREATHING made me whole.

Godfrey Rodriguer of New York, had an even more amazing recovery. He was discharged by the Dutch Army as tubercular. He was continually suffering with colds and coughs and sinus trouble. So after years of suffering, he sought the ancient Scriptures for relief.

Imagine his joy when he found in them what he regards as the real Key to Life . . . a secret of breathing so amazing, so effective, that he has never had a cold or cough or trace of sinus trouble since. And from a tubercular bag of bones, he has become one of the wonders of the world for vigor and vitality. At 58 years of age, he has a chest measurement of 46 inches, a waist of only 34 and his chest expansion is 9 inches!

What is his secret of health? Essentially, it is the same as that of our San Francisco correspondent—BREATHING OUT all the poisons that collect in the lungs!

EXHALE YOUR WAY TO HEALTH!

Heretofore we have always been told to breathe deeply, to inflate our lungs with all the air they will hold. But “Professor” Rodriguer says just the opposite. He tells us to EXHALE! Puff out all the air you can through your nose in three or four vigorous puffs, using your diaphragm to expel the air from your lungs, and you create a vacuum that just naturally draws the necessary oxygen back into the lungs.

Puff out some more, and you expel the poisons from the system, at the same time exercising and reducing the abdomen, which tends to improve the digestion and correct constipation and similar evils. The life-line, physicians now tell us, is the waist-line. This vital region is your real zone of youth. Keep your waist strong and healthy, and it will keep you. Let it get flabby—and your whole body will soon be soft and sluggish.

According to the Public Health Service in Washington, figures show a direct link between overweight and disease. As they put it: “Overweight people have the worst of it in an analysis of the death rate from fifteen causes.”

Dr. Olive M. McCay and other experimenters at Cornell University have been experimenting on rats for the past eight years, in an effort to determine the effects of diet upon length of life. According to the New York Sun they have found one outstanding variable—a factor that can be changed with the certainty of giving important results.

This variable is FATNESS. Holding down fatness definitely lengthens the lives of the middle-aged animals. Letting them get fat by eating as much as they want shortens their lives.

The quickest way we know to improve the waist-line is to use the EXHALING methods of “Professor” Rodriguer, drawing in the diaphragm and expanding the chest with each exhalation.

It is much the same movement that you get when you laugh. Notice when you laugh how you use the diaphragm to exhale. Laughter, as you know, has always been considered one of the most healthy and invigorating things you could do. Perhaps the diaphragmatic exhalations caused by laughter account for much of the good that laughter does you. If so, why not continue that good by making a practice of exhaling in that same way, whenever the thought occurs to you throughout the day?

Many physicians have contended that there is only one disease . . . SELF-POISONING from the waste-matter thrown off by the cells . . . and not eliminated quickly enough by the lungs, kidneys, skin or bowels.

There is no better way, we believe, of ridding the system of these poisons than by Rodriguer’s method of breathing. “For thousands of years,” he says, “man has tried to come to the secret of health and physical well being and today he is right where he started. But the prediction of the prophets states: ‘I show you a mystery. We shall be changed in the wink of an eye.’ And this prediction is about to come true by the simple process of correct breathing, through exhaling which has never before been expounded.

LIKE A RUBBER BALL

“Your nose was never intended to inhale through consciously. It is an exhaust to rid the body of its impurities and waste. Watch your nostrils when you inhale forcibly. Note how they contract. Watch the nostrils of any animal, they expand when it exhales.

“Of course air returns to the lungs through the nose. But do not forget that air will fill every cavity. Think of your diaphragm as a rubber ball with a tiny hole in it. When you squeeze the ball, you force the air out. Release the pressure, and the air rushes in making the ball round again. Do this under water. See how you empty the ball by squeezing.

“Your body contains carbon, wastes and poisons, because ordin­arily you do not empty them when you exhale. On the contrary when you inhale deeply and exhale lightly you keep adding to the poisonous residue.

“When you exhale you lift your chest and you actually squeeze the tummy and thus force out the impurities making room for fresh, pure air to rush in.

“The air will rush in all by itself without any effort on your part. Not only will it come in from nose or mouth but every pore in your body.

“Nature hates a vacuum and as soon as you release yourself nature has provided a way for that vacuum to be filled with air.”

Dr. Francis N. Loughran, well-known writer on medical subjects and author of “Twentieth Century Health Science,” quotes a high medical authority as saying that a single generation of correct breathers would regenerate the human race.

“Most suggestions about breathing stress the angle of inhalation,” writes Dr. Loughran, “neglecting the matter of full and complete expiration of the residual air in the lungs.

“Practiced for a few minutes daily, the routine of full exhalation very rapidly re-chemicalizes the blood, increasing its ability to carry oxygen. Conscientious daily attention to this simple breath­ing suggestion will cut respiratory troubles at least in half.”

“I will take sickness from the midst of thee,” we are promised in Exodus, and Rodriguer claims that this method of exhalation has taken sickness from him and kept it from him for years.

After EXERCISE and BREATHING comes FOOD. And that food was regarded as an important subject is easy to be seen from the number of references to special foods in the Bible.

In Genesis we are told to take of the best fruits in the land, a little honey, spices, a little balm, myrrh and nuts and almonds.

In Deuteronomy, certain other foods are recommended—”Butter of kine and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys, and wheat.”

In his book on “Mysterious Catalytic Foods,” Dr. Brown Landone recommends most of these same foods today as being those containing elements that nourish the important ductless glands and thus tend to long and healthy life. Honey, for instance, and almonds, and goats’ milk, and kidney, and the germ of wheat—all are strongly recommended, as are all the glandular foods such as liver, brains, sweetbreads, etc.

The fat of kidney, or kidney suet, as it is now called, is found to be especially good to relieve constipation.

Butter and honey, in the proportion of two parts butter (melted) and one part honey, have been a favorite food in the East for thousands of years. In India they call it “Ghee” and believe it to be a veritable Elixir of Life, tending to rejuvenate the glands and renew their activity. John the Baptist, a giant of a man, used it and it was recommended by Isaiah: “Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.”

YOU CANNOT MAKE BRICKS WITHOUT STRAW

2000 years before Christ, the Israelites slaved under the hot sun of Egypt, making bricks for the pyramids and temples of Pharaoh.

But Pharaoh was not content. He must make their work harder for them. So he stopped furnishing them the straw that bound together the mud in those clay bricks of theirs.

The result? Bricks that broke as soon as handled. Bricks that crumbled into powder at the touch. Bricks with nothing to bind them together—bricks with no strength in them—bricks without straw!

The Israelites of old found it impossible to make bricks without straw. And man today is finding it just as impossible to build a strong body, a healthy, vigorous, vitally alive organism, without first putting into it the essential elements out of which such bodies are made.

And of all the essential elements that enter into the building of the body, the most important are the Vitamins. Without them, life is impossible. It is they that ignite the chemical elements in the food you eat, and furnish vital nutrition to very cell. Without them, you would die at once. And yet, many people are so nearly without them that theirs is not much better than a living death—weak and anemic and the easy victims of every germ of sickness that comes their way. As Dr. Loughran tells us—

“Entirely without vitamins, human life would cease. Partially without them, which is true of the majority of civilized people, life processes burn with a fitful flame, sickness more or less serious is the general rule, and real health is known and recognized by but few people.”

Fortunately for us, the first four vitamins are to be found in most of the vegetables we ordinarily eat, and vitamins are plentiful in milk, butter and eggs.

The difficulty lies in the fact that modern processing methods have removed essential elements from so many of our common foods. Ordinary white bread, for instance, has little of the nutritive value of the original wheat grain. Sugar is denatured of practically every­thing but starch.

“Practically the entire gamut of disease known to man,” says Dr. Loughran, “from defective teeth to cancer, is due to improper food, food that causes disease principally because of deficiency of the essential elements that the body must have or die.

“Sunlight and the very air we breathe, both of such essential importance to life, are not completely available to the body unless the bloodstream has an adequate supply of the vital minerals in order that the energies of both sun and air can be retained within each cell.

“These chemicals, found only in food, are the magnets that attract and hold the energies of sun and air within the cells, for without iron in the blood, the oxygen we breathe would not be retained in the body.”

Suffice it here to say that in experiments conducted at Cornell University, Doctors Maynard, Asdell and McCoy discovered that certain foods appeared to retard the changes which attend old age and senility.

Dr. Brown Landone, experimenting with the same idea in mind, came to the conclusion that the shoots of young, growing plants contain certain “growth” elements which induce new life in the cells. Fresh scallions, for instance, are rich in these elements which tend to induce the growth of new and youthful cells in the body. All of which would lead one to the conclusion that King Nebuchadnezzar was not as mad as his people believed when he took to eating “grass,” and was shortly cured of his ailments.

“There are herbs for the healing of all diseases,” the Scriptures assure us, and apparently there are herbs for the relief of old age as well.

The body requires only a moderate amount of food, provided that small amount be rich in the elements needed for rebuilding and growth. Away back in the 16th century, Luigi Cornaro, former Doge of Venice and author of “The Temperate Life,” lived for 60 years on one pound of food a day, and from a physical wreck at 40, he became one of the wonders of the world for health and longevity, living to the ripe old age of 102 years.

Many of the desert tribes of Biblical days lived largely on soured milk, cheese made from the milk of sheep and goats, dried fruits and vegetables. And that this may help to account for the great age of many of the Patriarchs of old is indicated by the researches of

Dr. Sadowein, Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Kiev.

Dr. Sadowein located a small village in the mountains near the city of Tamir Kahn Sura, capital of the Turkestan Republic, where 18- males out of a total population of 120 had reached the age of 100 years. Investigation revealed that they ate soured cow’s milk, cheese made from sheep’s milk, and dried vegetables.

Sour milk is the basis of Metchnikov’s famous “Bacillus of Long Life.” Ilya Metchnikov, you remember, was Nobel prize-winner in medicine, and successor to Louis Pasteur at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. In the course of his studies on longevity, he found that the peasants of the Rodope mountain region in southern Bulgaria were the hardiest, healthiest and longest-lived in all of Europe. More of them reached the age of 100 than any other civilized people.

And the reason? According to Professor Metchnikov, it is, that part of their daily diet is sour milk—”Yogurt,” as they call it—and sour milk contains a lactic-acid germ which has the amazing power to destroy the harmful microbes that breed in the intestines.

Which brings us back again to Dr. Carrel’s experiment with the chicken heart. Only two things he did to that chicken heart— cleansed the cells thoroughly, and then immersed them in nutriment containing the elements needed for cell growth.

This would seem to be all that any cell organism needs to remain ever young and virile . . . a thorough riddance of all cast-off cells and impurities, and the foods essential for growth.

In many countries of the world today, the problem is to get food. Over here we are more fortunate. Our biggest trouble is to get rid of the waste matter and cast-off cells. We are like a complicated electric machine . . . our wires and contact points are continually getting so coated with dirt that the electrical energy cannot get through. With unlimited power available, our machine runs slug­gishly, frequently breaks down, and at best does only a tenth of what it is capable.

We are just so much electrical energy, you know. Every cell in our bodies can be reduced to protons and electrons . . . whirling bits of energy that should have us so full of pep and vigor that nothing could hold us down.

Why don’t they? Because we don’t give them a chance. We leave them clogged with waste, we cover them with fat, we poison them with the secretions of anger, worry and fear. When all the while, if we would just LET them go, they would keep us feeling like a million dollars.

Some say that people sleep better when they are lying north and south, i.e. their heads to the north, their feet to the south. This better sleep has to do with the magnetic flow in the direction of the north pole, and the flow of human nerve energy during the hours of sleep.

Instruments have been developed to measure and register the quantity of nerve force flow through the human body under varying conditions, and through these instruments it was shown that it takes nineteen times as much energy to sleep with the body lying east and west as it does north and south.

The reason is said to be that during sleep the body energy flows from head to feet, then back to the head. Thus, when the head and feet extend from north to south, there is no opposition to the flow of polar energy moving in the same direction. Otherwise, if a person sleeps east and west, the flow of energy is in opposition to the direction of the magnetic flow, making it more difficult to sleep.

Steel companies have long stacked steel rail and bars in a north- south direction, because they find that it reduces rusting.

Relax, eat and drink with those elements in mind that your cells need for growth and youthfulness, and help those cells to rid them­selves of waste-matter and poisons by proper breathing, by exercise, by using fresh air and water as Nature intended them to be used.

Some physician has said that the only disease is congestion, that all other ailments are but an intensification of congestion. Congestion means overcrowding, such as happens when the pull of gravity causes your vital organs to sag and crowd together.

When your lungs are congested, they are overcrowded with foreign matter and cannot breathe easily. When your bowels are congested, they are overcrowded with waste matter and cannot function.

Assume a position once or twice a day that will stop the overcrowding caused by the pull of gravity. Breathe in such a manner that you will exhale the poisons from the lungs. Eat foods that will tend to cleanse the bowels and provide material for cell growth and renewal.

Above all, have faith in the Intelligence that governs the growth and functioning of the body, for more than all else, this is responsible for health and strength.

As Plato said a couple of thousand years ago: “If the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul.” And the Hebrew of old observed that “a merry heart causeth good healing, but a broken spirit drieth up the bones.”

“What we call the curing of disease results primarily from the innate biological powers of the organism,” wrote Dr. Raymond

Pearl of Johns Hopkins University, “and that fact is the basis of both the philosophy and the success of the Christian Science faith. The followers of that cult give the vis medicatrix naturae a freer and fairer chance to do its extremely superior best than do any other large body of people.”

Dr. Richard C. Cabot of the Harvard Medical School pointed out some time ago that— “The body has a super wisdom and force which are biased in favor of life rather than death. What is this force? It is God, the healing power which supplies 90% of recovery.”

On another occasion, Dr. Cabot declared that—”Three quarters of all illnesses are cured without the victims even knowing they have had them.

“Proof of this contention is to be found in post-mortem examin­ations, which time after time reveal indelible and unmistakable traces of diseases which the subject has conquered all unknowingly. Ninety percent of all typhoid cures itself, as does 75% of all pneumonia. In fact, out of a total of 215 diseases known to medical science, there are only about eight or nine which doctors conquer, the rest conquer themselves.

“If nature, assisted by the proper mental and emotional moods, is capable of curing an ulcer in three or four weeks, why isn’t it possible for the same force to heal a similar ulcer in a few minutes, when the curative processes have been speeded up abnormally?”

That it is possible is attested by Dr. Alexis Carrel, who in his book “Man, the Unknown,” tells of having personally seen a cancerous growth on a man’s hand dry up and disappear in a matter of minutes, at a religious shrine.

So, when next you are troubled by a pain in some organ, try BLESSING it instead of worrying about it. Remember the Scriptures— “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse.” Whatever you name a thing, that is what it will be to you . . . good if you name it good, evil if you regard it as evil. Whatever your dominant thought of it may be, that is what it will become to you.

Have a little faith in your Creator. If He could plan a universe that is self-sustaining and self-renewing, each unit keeping to its ap­pointed orbit through millions of years, don’t you suppose He planned your body-organism just as skillfully, so that it could renew itself, adjust itself to different conditions, overcome any difficulty of disease or accident? “The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that He cannot save.”

Enlightened medical opinion will be with you in this, as you can judge by the following, quoted from Dr. Cabot’s Art of Ministering to the Sick:

“The powers which carry on the work of our body are not neutral in the battle between us and the enemies of our health. A great healing power fights on our side and wins most of our battles for us. When we look around at ‘nature’ in the mountains, the forest, the plains or the sea, we see no evidence of powers that care about us. Nature seems indifferent to our welfare. But if we look at that portion of nature which concerns us most, our own bodies, we see no indifference, no neutrality, but an extraordinary bias in our favor. On the basis of these healing powers our intelligence and our will get their opportunity.”

If it is youthfulness you want, pep and vigor and vitality, bless the glands that have it in their power to secrete substances beside which an injection of cocaine or any other drug is as nothing. Say to them: “Glands of my body, wonder-stations of service, purification, supply and control, I now behold the perfect work of Spirit carried on through you. God has blessed you every one with His intelligence. I know you are all working together for my good, and I am working with you in the wisdom and harmony of the Spirit. Everything I need is now supplied. Every gland is functioning perfectly because it is established in Divine order and directed by Divine Intelligence. Every one is clean, harmonious and healthy.”

Repeat some such affirmation aloud—and BELIEVE in it! Believe in the innate power of each cell and organism. Believe in the In­telligence guiding them and directing them. Only believe, and it will be said of you as Jesus said of so many He healed—”Thy faith has made thee whole.”

To sum up:

There are four methods taught in the Bible for maintaining health and strength to a ripe old age.

  1. — Letting the blood run DOWN to the head occasionally, thus stimulating the important ductless glands, and at the same time giving the vital organs a chance to “uncrowd” and rid themselves of their waste matter and poisons.
  2. — Exhaling vigorously, ridding the lungs of their accumulations of carbon and waste, and purifying the blood stream.
  3. — Eating those foods that contain the elements essential for cell growth and reproduction.
  4. — FAITH in the ability of the Creator to foresee every difficulty your body-organism would be called upon to face, and to provide a means of overcoming it.

FAITH that you have in you the power to withstand any disease.

FAITH, therefore, to face the world smilingly, confidently, with a thankful heart.

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth up the bones.” —Proverbs.

LOOKING FORWARD

“Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of Jehovah sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land,” says Caleb in the Scrip­tures. “And now, behold, Jehovah hath kept me alive, as He spake, these forty and five years . . . and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me; as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, and to go out and to come in.”

Dr. Hornell Hart of Bryn Mawr, in an address before the American Sociological Society some years ago, predicted that—”Babies born in the year 2,000 will have something like 200 years of life ahead of them, and men and women of 100 years will be quite the normal thing. But instead of being wrinkled and crippled, these centen­arians will be in their vigorous prime.”

In these two quotations, we see that religion and science are agreed that man SHOULD live to a ripe old age, that biologically and physiologically there is no reason why he should not attain to the length of years of the ancients of Biblical days.

Perhaps one reason most men today do not live beyond three score is in the way they look at life. In youth, we are GROWING. We know that we have not yet reached our prime, we know we can expect to continually improve. So we LOOK FORWARD to ever- increasing powers. We look for a finer, more perfect physique. We look for greater mental ability. We have been educated to expect all these, therefore we believe we shall receive them—and we get them.

But what happens after we reach forty or fifty years of age? We think we have passed our prime. We have been taught that we can no longer look forward to greater growth—that all we can hope for is to hold our own for a little while, and then start swiftly downward to old age and decay.

History shows that no nation, no institution and no individual can continue for any length of time to merely “hold his own.” We must go forward—or backward. Ours is the choice. If we realize that there is never any end to GROWTH . . . that our bodies are constantly being rebuilt . . . that perfection is still so far ahead of us that we can continue GROWING towards it indefinitely . . . we need never know age. We can keep on growing more perfect, mentally and physically, every day. Every minute is a minute of conception and rebirth.

Remember, God never holds on to the old. He forever is creating all things anew. That is the secret of the abundant increase of all He creates. And there is nothing you cannot attain, if you become God-like . . . continually letting go of the old, continually putting on the new.

Several years ago, Prof. Oscar E. Schotte of Amherst College described an “elemental clay of life” by which heads were made to grow on the tails of adult tadpoles. His conclusion was that within the body of man is a mysterious material out of which new bodies can be made of old, and the individual renovated and regenerated over and over again.

Throughout life we mould new tissues—skin, nails, hair. Dr. Schotte reported that he had succeeded in making eyes, ears and a mouth, where a tadpole’s tail ought to be. And he concluded that the same sculpture medium could start the process of organ- building in the human.

So it is not too late . . . it is NEVER too late. The human organism has powers undreamed of by most of us. Give it a chance . . . have faith . . . and you will be amazed at the regeneration it can bring about in you.

SUCCESS

Success in childhood I was told,
Meant laying up vast stores of gold;
A rich man was my hero then,
Although he landed in the pen.

In youth, my idea of Success
Had altered somewhat, more or less,
And I thought one who reached the heights,
Like Lincoln, studied hard of nights,
And dreamed vast dreams beside a fire
If to success he did aspire,
And some day, without accident,
He’d be the nation’s president.

In young manhood, my thought had changed,
And up and down life’s ladder ranged;
To be an actor, author—yes,
A doctor, banker—spelled Success.

The years slipped by . . . time turned the page,
And found me close to middle age;
I’d won renown, and garnered wealth,
But now to me, Success meant health.
I traveled everywhere to find
That boon of youth I’d left behind,
And now, as toward old age I plod,
To me Success means finding God.

—James Edward Hungerford

 

The End