Nothing new can be said about a New Year. It is the time to take account of the old, repent of our sins, carry mistakes to profit and loss, and transform their crude ore to golden wisdom. It brings little that is new beside itself, and we only exchange the irretrievable past for the hopeful future, the dead certainty for the living uncertainty. The conquests of intelligence have not perceptibly reduced the area of the unknown. The guides of life are not demonstrations, but opinions, judgments, probabilities and faith. New contingencies arise with new discoveries, and every new fact has a group of new unfixed circumstances. The future event is as uncertain to-day as it ever was. The only certainty is principle; as new as to-day, and as old as the universe. -Horatio Stebbins. If I cannot realize my Ideal, I can at least idealize my Real. -W. C. Gannett. "Beware of the common error; let self-reliance be the rule, and reliance on others the exception." "For right too rigid hardens into wrong." We are too busy, too encumbered, too much occupied, too active! We read too much! The one thing needful is to throw off all one's load of cares, and to become again young, living happily and gracefully in the present hour. We must know how to put occupation aside, which does not mean that we must be idle. -Translation--Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Out of the shadows of night The world rolls into light; It is daybreak everywhere. (Last words from his pen.) -Longfellow. Every evil thought or deed has sentence against it speedily executed in the character. -Marion D. Shutter. SOMETIME. Sometime when all life's lessons have been learned, And sun and stars forever more have set, The thing which our weak judgments here have spurned, The things o'er which we grieved with lashes wet, As stars shine most in deeper tints of blue; But not to-day. Then be content, poor heart, And if, through patient toil, we reach the land -M. R. Smith. Think when our one soul understands The great word which makes all things new, When earth breaks up, and heaven expands, How will the change strike me and you In the house not made with hands? -Browning. Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong,— And all I fail of win. What matter I or they, So the right word be said, And life the sweeter made. -Whittier. God's goodness hath been great to thee; -Shakespeare. 87 |