The New Year's Promises

The years are ushered in one by one, and they go out again, eaeh in succesi sion, in obedienee to laws the icterpretation of which we ill-umderstand, al though savants write with assumed sageness concerning the reign of order in the universe arid the forces back of j these potencies. Of one thing, however, man is fully assured, and that in that j back of writte.n bistory, back of all the : evidences of the alleged "everlasting ; hills" and the rocks that form the base I of earth's strength - back of universal terresi rial flame and gases, and far anid nway into the endless sea of star-dust, j time was, just as time is. So in ail these eons there have been revolutions i of planets and satellitesand suns, which gïve in their order the periods that are termed seasons nnrl ypars. It is as easy to comprehend the beginning as the end of things, for ahead of us is the impenetrable and back of us the inimitable. Still mrn go on counting the coming and the going of "the 3Tears, touched with the chastened hand of regret at the dyingof the old and stirred to gladness at the birth of the new year. The "without beginning and without end," so far as the comprehension of man can grasp, rrfight suggesi, that the times and the seasons all count for nothing, save as they point the very grave moral that humanity, at least, ages and that each recurring rJatebrings the living nearer by so much to the shadows of the valley, entering which no man may retrace his steps. The dawn of the new year, however, Ruggests. and in somo way (man seems unable to efface the memory), with the matin prayer of the new there sound the vesper plaints of the old. Wending1 fo produce a petition for absolution from the sins that were and deliverance i frorrTtheemptations that may be. And not the shades of the gloaming only of the just dead year troop up before the mental visión, but all the deeds, the ' scènes and the incidents of the long-day that formed that year. The might-havebeens come up with their painful suggestiveness, aggravnting the shame that arises over the has-beens, each serving as a seourge to mar the back and the visage of all those wh.ose con; Bciences are quickened to discernment between what is g-ood and what is evil. Still, after all, man finds his solace in the happy song of the bird of hope, which, despite the storm that rages, perches in the windows of the heart ana gives forth notes of promise of g-ood things to be. In the pledge of redeeming the days to come men find forg-iveness for the evil they have done and the blunders they have made. Blees God for the bird - hope - and for the songs it sings to all troubled spirits, whether at the dawn of the New Year or at any period of their sorrowing. Ah! would that the g-ood resolves of the New Year day mig-ht be as lasting ' as the entire year and all the years that form the urn of each individual lite. ! The comfort that is found in a promise one makes to himself "to turn over a new leaf" is temptation tó hasty purposing-, and, alas, but too frequently, to just as quick recession from the : high ground that has been climbed. No vear can be free from the storm that fells the oak or the pestilence that i stalks at noonday, or the shadows that darken the soul of man. Heiswisewho learns well the lessoiv from the past ! year to avoid the pitfalls that surely lie in the path that is ahead of him and who takes courage in the fact that, if he trilla it so, as his days may demand so shall his strengt h ever be.