Use the Old Preachers!

"In 1868 Elder Vaughan fell and crushed his hip. Being in his eighty-fourth year he was permanently disabled, but he had preached constantly up to that time. His remarkable activity at that great age, and his powerful preaching for the twenty-five years preceding, proves that the fad of "laying on the shelf" all preachers at the age of sixty is superlative nonsense. A preacher is really not at his best until he reaches fifty, and for twenty years after that he should do, and generally does, his best work. After the age of seventy we may look for a decline, but many [p. 69] remain effective and strong to eighty or ninety years of age. For instance, there is the subject of this sketch and Dr. A. D. Sears, who in his ninety-sixth year preached every Sunday acceptably for the church in Clarksville, Tenn.; and there is S. H. Ford, who at the age of eighty-one preaches with great power. J. M. Pendleton did the best year's work of his life, judging from the results, when he was seventy-one years old. It was his last year at Up­land, Penn. The author calls attention to this be­cause of the pernicious idea that our old men should step aside just when they are strongest mentally and spiritually and give place to young men with but little to commend them besides their energy. The author is himself a young man, just thirty-one years old, but he hereby enters a protest against the mis­chievous practice of pushing out of the ministry our strongest and most experienced preachers.

During the last years of his life he lived with his son, Eld. T. M. Vaughan. He was a student to the last, and occasionally preached a sermon while he sat in his easy arm-chair, being unable to stand. On February 25, 1877, at the advanced age of ninety-three years, he preached his last sermon in the church house at Danville, Ky. On the 31st day of March, a few days over a month thereafter, he fell asleep in Jesus, and was laid to rest in the Bloomfield (Ky.) cemetery, near the pulpit where he had preached for over thirty years." ("Elder William Vaughan" By Ben M. Bogard)

http://www.geocities.com/baptist_documents/vaughan.william.by.bogard.html