Life and its faculties are not measured by calendars.

    Never record ages. Chronological data are no part 18of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are Undesirable recordsso many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood. ... Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty, and holiness.

27    Life is eternal. We should find this out, and begin the demonstration thereof. Life and goodness are immortal. True life eternalLet us then shape our views of existence into 30loveliness, freshness, and continuity, rather than into age and blight.

    Man in Science is neither young nor old. He has 24neither birth nor death. ... Even Shakespeare’s poetry pictures age as infancy, as 30helplessness and decadence, instead of assigning to man the everlasting grandeur and immortality of development, power, and prestige.

245:1    The error of thinking that we are growing old, and the benefits of destroying that illusion, are illustrated in a 3sketch from the history of an English woman, published in the London medical magazine called The Lancet.

    Disappointed in love in her early years, she became 6insane and lost all account of time. Believing that she Perpetual youthwas still living in the same hour which parted her from her lover, taking no note of years, 9she stood daily before the window watching for her lover’s coming. In this mental state she remained young. Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no 12older. Some American travellers saw her when she was seventy-four, and supposed her to be a young woman. She had no care-lined face, no wrinkles nor gray hair, but 15youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her age, those unacquainted with her history conjectured that she must be under twenty.

Years had not made her old, because she had taken no cognizance of passing time nor thought of herself as growing old. The bodily results of her belief 24that she was young manifested the influence of such a be-lief. She could not age while believing herself young, for the mental state governed the physical.

27    Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four; and the primary of that illustration makes it plain that 30decrepitude is not according to law, nor is it a necessity of nature, but an illusion.

Men and women of riper 6years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom.

    The sculptor turns from the marble to his model in order to perfect his conception. We are all sculptors, Mental sculptureworking at various forms, moulding and chisel-15ing thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you repro-18ducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding 21it before your gaze continually. The result is that you are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your life-work, and adopt into your experience the angular outline 24and deformity of matter models.

    To remedy this, we must first turn our gaze in the right direction, and then walk that way. We must form perfect 27Perfect modelsmodels in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives.

Hold thought steadfastly to the endur-ing, the good, and the true, and you will bring these 6into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts.