[Illustration]
A Happy New Year!
Words repeated by how many myriads, in how many zones--tropic,
temperate, frigid, wherever the English tongue is spoken! Words said
commonly with more of meaning and sincerity than fall to the lot of
many almost-of-course salutations. Words in which there is a shade of
melancholy, and a gleam of gladness; a lingering of regret, with the
very new birth of anticipation. “A Happy New Year.”
Ah, but it is not unlike parting with an old friend, the saying
good-bye to the Old Year. And it seems unkind to turn from him who has
so long dwelt with us, and to take up too jauntily with a new friend.
He had his faults: but, at any rate, we know them; and those of the
new-comer have yet to be discovered. And his virtues seem to stand out
in bolder relief, now that we feel that we shall never see him again.
Such experiences, too, we have had together! we have been sad and merry
in company, and the days of our past society come with a warm rush to
our heart:--
“Though his eyes are waxing dim,
And though his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.”
And so we keep hold still of his hand, loth, very loth indeed to
part--as we sit in silence by the flickering fire, and listen to the
sudden bursts and sinking of the bells.
It is our habit--(I speak in the name of myself, and of many of my
readers)--it is an immemorial custom with us, to assemble, all that
can do so, in the old home, from which we have at different times
taken wing--to gather together there again, on the last night of
the Old Year. I have heard the plan objected to, but I never heard
any objections that to my mind seemed weighty ones. True, the gaps
that must come from time to time, are perhaps most of all brought
prominently, sadly before us, at such a gathering as this. We miss
the husband, the brother, the sweet girl-daughter, the little one’s
pattering feet--ah, sorely, sorely then! Last year the familiar face
was here, and now, now, far away, under the white sheet of snow. This
is sad, but it is not a mere unstarlit night of gloom. Nay, I maintain
that, to those who look at it rightly, more and brighter stars of
comfort shine out then than at other times to compensate for the
deepening dark. There is the comfort of sympathy, and of seeing in all
surrounding faces how the lost one was loved. But, especially, it seems
as though, when all are met again, he may not be far away from the
circle that was so unbroken upon earth:--
“Nor count me all to blame if I
Conjecture of a stiller guest,
Perchance, perchance, among the rest,
And, though in silence, wishing joy.”
And most of all, there is the old-fashioned, but ever new
comfort--balm, indeed, of Gilead, for every bereaved heart.
“I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them
which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have
no hope.
“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them
also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
And these home gatherings, yearly growing more incomplete, and yearly
increasing, lead the heart to glad thought of that reunion hereafter,
in that House of our Father in which the mansions are many, the Home,
one.
Well, you are gathered, my friend and reader, you and your dear ones,
about your father’s fireside on this last night of the Old Year. The
hours have stolen on: at ten o’clock the servants came in, and the
last family prayers have been offered up, and the last thanksgiving of
the assembled household for this year; and the chamber candlesticks
have been set out, and the father has drawn his chair near the fire,
and another log cast upon it crackles and flashes; and each and all
announce the intention of seeing the Old Year out and the New Year in.
Cheery talk, reminiscent talk, pensive talk, thankful talk; a little
silence. The wind flaps against the window, and throws against it a
handful of the Old Year’s cast-off leaves. The clock on the mantelpiece
gives eleven sharp, clear tings. The year has but an hour to live. And
now the wind brings up a clear ring of bells; and then sinks, that
the Old Year may die in peace, and his requiem be well heard over the
waking land.
But an hour to live! And the burden of depression that ever comes
with the exceeding sweetness of bells, loads, grain after grain, the
descending scale of your spirits. It is a solemn time, a time for
quiet: a time in which it is well to leave even the dear faces, and to
get you apart alone with God.
So you steal away from the fireside blaze; and ascend the creaking
stairs, and enter your own room; and close the door, even as a
dear Friend long ago advised; and offer the last worship of the
year--confessions, supplications, intercessions, praises. You go over
the dear names, sweet beads of the heart’s rosary, telling them one by
one to God, with their several wants and needs. You mention once more
the special blessings to them and to yourself of the past year. You
put, once more, all the future for them and for you into that kind,
wise Father’s hand; and you feel rested then, and at peace. A few words
read, for the last time this year, in the Book of books; and now there
is yet a little space for quiet thought about the dying year, before
his successor enters at the door.
And it is then, as you sit pensively before the dancing fire, alone in
your silent room--while the bell music now comes in bursts, and now
dies in whispers--that a sort of abstract of many thoughts that have
hovered about you all day is summoned up before your mind. It is the
hour of soft regret, helped, I say, by those merry, melancholy bells,
which
“Swell up and fail, as though a door
Were shut between you and the sound.”
You have had your sad times in the year that is so nearly dead; you
have shed your bitter tears; you have had your lonely hours, your
weariness of this unsatisfying, disappointing world. Unkindness,
estrangement, bereavement, intense solitariness of the spirit,
when it is conscious that not another being than the Creator can
ever understand, far less supply, its want, or heal its woe--these
experiences, these wearing, shaping, refining operations of the kind
Father are part of your memories of the dying year. While their
bitterness was present with you, you would have said that it was
impossible that you could ever regret to part with the year that
brought them. “Ring out,” you would have said, “ring out, wild bells,
this unkind and bitter year; this year that hath brought a blight over
my life; this year that hath dispelled the dreams of youth, and changed
into a wilderness that which did blossom as the rose. Ring out, and let
this hard year die. Fleet, hours and days and weeks and months, and set
a distance between me and what I long to call the _past_. Ring out,
wild bells, to the wild sky; gladly would I say now, even now, while I
listened to you--
“The year is dying--let it die!”
But those hours of bitterness are now, even now, of the past. That
sharp pain, or that weary ache, is dulled, perhaps removed. Perhaps you
have learned God’s lesson in it, and can thank Him, though the ache
still dwells in the heart’s heart; at any rate, the Old Year is passing
away; the sad Old Year, the glad Old Year; on the whole--yes, on the
whole, the _dear_ Old Year. He is with you but for a few minutes more;
he has come to say good-bye.
Who does not unbend at such a time? In all the friendships, in all
the ties of life, there comes up surely all the warmth, all the
kindly feeling of the heart, when the time comes which is to end that
connection for ever. There may have been some old grudges, discontents,
heart-burnings, jealousies, disappointments. But they are forgotten
now, and the eyes have a kindly light, and the lips a tender word, and
the hand a hearty shake, when it has indeed come to saying good-bye.
And so with the Old Year, whatever he has been to us, whatever little
disagreements we may have had, whatever heart-burnings, they are not
much remembered now.
It is a friend that is leaving you, you are not glad to part with him;
_good-bye, Old Year, good-bye_.
Another regretful thought, as the twilight flickers and dances on the
blind, and those bells still dance hand-in-hand, row after row, close
up to the window, and still pass away hardly perceived into the distant
fields. The dying Year brought some happiness, some love; this is now
warm and safe in the nest of the heart; the coming time may fledge it,
and it may, some summer day, take sudden wing and fly.
“He brought me a friend, and a true, true love,
And the New Year will take ’em away.”
Youth is especially the time, perhaps, for a sort of tender prophetic
hint of the evanescence and passing away of hopes, loves, dreams. It
is indeed but a rose-leaf weight on the heart, but a gossamer passing
across the sun; yet there it frequently is. The iron hand of real
crushing bereavement, of actual anguish, has never yet had the heart in
its gripe, to crush out all that more tender sentiment. Yet some soft,
faint shadows of darker hours do, unaccountably, fall early across the
daisy fields of youth. And thus in youth a certain foreshadowing, in
mature years a stern experience, brings into the heart at this time
a thoughtful dread of losing what we already have; an undefinable
apprehension of the future. This time next year, when the New Year
has become the Old, and its time has come round to say good-bye, what
changes may have come to us, to our circle, to our home! Will all be
then as it is now? Will love, perhaps newly-acquired, still nestle in
our heart, or will it have even taken wings like a dove, and have left
it--
“Like a forsaken bird’s nest filled with snow”?
Oh, who shall tell? Answer, quiet heart, that hast learned to trust in
God; and rest, rest peacefully, brightly, hopefully, on the answer that
God hath taught thee!
But a quarter of an hour left now of the Old Year’s life! and the wind
brings the bells in a sudden burst like rain against the window. Before
you join the group downstairs there is yet another, the saddest subject
for regretful thought. The past hours of the past days of the year
nearly past might have been better spent, oh, how much so, than they
have been!
“_Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might._” Has _that_
been the rule of the past year? Ah, if it had been, how different a
year to look back upon! How many opportunities neglected altogether!
How many but weakly and slackly employed! Opportunities that can never
come again, that, employed or neglected, are past now. The word that
might have done infinite good, but that was not spoken--cowardice,
weak complaisance, in a word, _worldliness_, God’s enemy, fettered
the tongue: excuses were ready, though the heart did not believe
them, and God’s soldier failed, and the devil had the better of that
field. Again, actions, that sloth or love of worldly ease caused to
die out into smoke when they should have been eager leaping fire. An
opportunity came, once and again, of doing something for God. The duty
was a laborious one, a painful one; nevertheless, however painful, it
must be done; you had resolved that it should be done; you had even
sought help upon your knees for the work. But mark the carnal coward
spirit creeping over the spiritual manly resolve: a friend came in,
a persuasion turned you; your heart, alas! hardly really in earnest,
did not set itself as a flint to its purpose; too willing to be turned
aside, it basely accepted the tempting excuse, and laboured thereupon
to believe itself really acquitted from the duty. Those opportunities
passed away, the noble action was not done, the faithful word was
never spoken, the heart’s reproaches became dull, and the duty ceased
its ceaseless gnawing at the conscience. But amid the fitful sinking
and falling of the firelight and the bells as you sit on the rug,
hand-shading your eyes--the neglected opportunity comes back, with
all its reproach, even newer and keener than at the first; back again
to accuse your faint-heartedness, to upbraid your lukewarm love; to
tell you of One who died for you, and yet for whom you shirk the least
distasteful labour, the least taking up the cross, and denying yourself
to follow Him.
And, besides all this, when you think of the whole past year, even
of its hours (how few, and how grudged!) when you have tried to do
the work which the Master put into your power to perform for Him, how
conscious you are of the want of heart in even your best endeavours;
you cannot but feel how hard the world’s votaries have been working for
their master, and how slackly you have been labouring for your Master
and only Saviour--how they have been running, with eyes fixed on the
goal; and how you have been hobbling and limping, looking behind, and
on this side and on that, not with single purpose, pressing towards the
mark--ah, no!
And you think, then, what this life might have been--might be. A life
that looked straight forward, that turned not to the right hand nor to
the left, that paused for no alluring of pleasure, for no constraining
of business--
“This way and that dividing the swift mind,”
and wasting its energy and powers. A life that set God first, utterly
first; that shouldered aside the world’s jostling, distracting
importunities; that left the little concerns, the little loves, the
little jealousies of this brief life, staring after its eager, swift,
stedfast advance, whenever they would have interposed to hinder
it. A life that really and in good earnest, not half-heartedly and
in pretence, should leave all to follow Christ. Something of the
unflinching, unswerving, unpausing persistency of those old Jesuits;
only in the service of Christ, and not in that of the Pope and the
Inquisition. You think of a St. Paul, and his onward, onward still, “in
weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings often, in cold and nakedness,” and you think of your lagging,
loitering----!
Ah, well, that is best: on your knees once more, for pardon and for
grace--grace to love Him more and serve Him better in the year so near
at hand! God shall wipe away all those tears that love for Him made to
flow, and the blessed Saviour’s perfect righteousness shall hide all
our vile and miserable rags; yet even the saved, we can almost fancy,
will wish with a feeling akin to regret, to have loved the blessed Lord
more; and he who has gained but five pounds will surely wish that it
had been ten. For our opportunities, it often seems to me, are such as
angels might long to have. Where all are serving God, and we have no
longer a sinful nature dragging us back, nor a glittering world around
us, nor a subtle tempter at our ear--it will seem little, methinks,
to serve God then and there. But now, and here, in a world lying in
wickedness, where the more part are not on Christ’s side, but rather
leagued with or deserters to the devil, the world, and the flesh--oh,
what an Abdiel opportunity to stand up, a speaking, living protest
in life’s least and greatest thought, word, and act; a burning and a
shining light, reflecting the beams of the Sun of Righteousness in a
dark and naughty world!
Ah, may this quiet hour of thought, of regretful meditation, by
God’s grace, be the point on which you have collected your powers
and energies for a forward spring, that shall not grow slack through
eternity!
[Illustration]
Five minutes to twelve now. The hour of Regret is near its close. The
hour of Anticipation is close at hand. The Old Year’s bells are running
down, and the Old Year’s life is passing with them. Five minutes more.
First you bow your head, and adore the Almighty and the All-loving--God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost--for the Past, for the
Present, and for the Future. Then you go downstairs, according to old
custom, to join the rest of the dear circle at the open window, and to
listen for the ceasing of the bells.
They are gathered at the window, standing quietly and thoughtfully;
those that are nearest and dearest linked with loving arms; they are
silent, or speak in a subdued tone. You might almost think that they
were indeed standing by some bedside, watching the last breathing of a
friend; for a solemn thing it is, the passing from one to another of
these stepping-stones in the brook of life, and seeing the other shore
seem to gather a more distinct shape through the mist of the future.
You join the group. A cold, moist air, full of films of snow, comes out
of the dark night into the warm, bright room. The bells are running
away; you might almost fancy them the sands, the last few grains of the
Old Year’s life. Suddenly they stop, and in the breathing silence a
deep clang falls from the church tower,--another,--ten more yet,--and
the Old Year is dead.
“A happy New Year!--a happy New Year!” Warm kisses, and hearty shakes
of the hand, and, like the crash of a great breaker that has seemed to
pause for a moment in the air, down bursts the glad, the melancholy
ring of bells again, and floods the bare shore of silence,--still
lingering, seething, receding, gathering into new bursts again, and yet
again.
A happy New Year! The Past is past, the Old Year is dead, the hour of
Regret is gone by, the time of Anticipation is here; not good-bye now,
but welcome; not lingering retrospect, but earnest advance. Life is too
short for long mourning; not much time can be spared to meditate by the
fresh grave of the past. Forward, towards the unknown future: grasp its
opportunities, its sorrows, its joys, to be woven into some fabric for
the Master’s use! On, towards the untried future, bravely, trustfully,
hopefully, cheerfully; but remember you can never overtake it. It
changes into the present even as you come up with it; and it is now, or
never, that you must be serving God.
“Trust no future, howe’er pleasant,
Let the dead past bury its dead;
Act, act in the living present,
Heart within, and God o’erhead.”
But good night to all, or good morning--which?--and then upstairs, and
tired, to bed. When you wake, things will go on much as usual, though
the Old Year be dead, and sentry January have relieved sentry December.
Only for a time you will find yourself dating still 18--, and, if
untidy, you will have to smear, if tidy, to erase, the last figure, and
substitute the number of your new friend.
* * * * *
Anticipation. This is especially the dower of the young, if Regret
be often the possession of the old. What a strange, glorious thing
a New Year is to the child! Little of the feelings that I have been
describing find place in the breast of the boy and girl, that were
fast asleep and warm in their beds, while you and the bells were at
conference: little of such musings trouble them, as they bound out
of bed in the morning, and scuttle off in their night-gowns, patter
patter, in a race, to be the first to wish father and mother a happy
New Year. They are growing out of childhood: _that_ is the joy for
them: another of those vast periods has passed. Happy Spring, that
does but long to shed and cast away her myriad white blossoms; and to
rush on towards the full-grown Summer:--unknowing in the least, of the
sober, misty, tear-strung, if fruitful, Autumn boughs! A happy New
Year, little ones! Far be it from me to strip Spring boughs in order to
imitate the Autumn which they cannot know! God keep you, my children;
God teach you, and God bless you!
* * * * *
A little farther on. Anticipation is glowing warmly in the heart of the
young man and the young woman. The time of childhood is left behind.
The time of independence, the time of manhood, is drawing near: that
time which shall transform into realities the great things,--the noble,
world-stirring deeds, that have hitherto been only schemes. That time
when the loves that are budding in the heart shall burst into exquisite
blossoms, and never a frost nip them, and never a rude wind carry at
unawares a loose petal away.
A happy New Year. The heart accepts this wish, fearlessly, without
doubt, before the strife; before the rough work of a field or two in
the scarce-tried warfare of life has smirched the glittering armour,
and shorn the gay plumes, and changed the song before the battle
into hard labouring sobs, in the stern hand-to-hand tussle with sin
and with sorrow, with disappointment and dismay. Before many a scheme
overturned, many a brave effort fallen dead as bullets against a stone
wall, many a seeming hopeful struggle forced back by the sheer dead
weight of evil, has made the heart sick and the knees to tremble,
and brought an early weariness and hint of despair over the amazed
Recruit; a touch of that felt by the Sage of old: “It is enough: evil
is too strong for me: I can do no more than others have done before: my
schemes have come to nothing, my bubbles have burst: now let me die.”
But the Recruit becomes the Veteran, and is content to wait, where he
was once ready to despair. He does not hope so much, and therefore is
not so much dismayed; he relies now not so much on earthquake efforts,
as on the still small voice uttered to the world by the life which is
given to God. He is content to labour,--and to leave it to the Master
to give the increase.
Yes, the young heart, even when lit with heavenly love, and full of
great designs for God, must submit to the overthrow of the bright
visions that anticipation set before it. How much more, when its fire
was lit from earth; and earth’s loves, or fame, or pleasure, or power,
were the prizes for which life’s battle was to be fought. Vanity and
vexation of spirit, disappointment, dismay, despair; these are the
ruins that shall be won for Moscows, if that battle be fought to the
end!
A happy New Year. That glad wish of youth may come to sound, to the
man, nothing but bitter irony. But much of the early hope, and more
than the early peace, comes back to the veteran worker for God.
“Who, but the Christian, through all life
That blessing may prolong?
Who, through the world’s sad day of strife,
Still chant his morning song?”
A happy New Year, young man and young woman! God grant it you, in the
one true sense of the word. It need not be a freedom from sorrow: this
is an ennobling, useful discipline, that I may not wish you to avoid.
But, to be happy, it must be free from sloth and wilful sin.
[Illustration]
Look out from your window again, at the snow sheet which has silently,
deeply, fallen upon the earth. Let it be very early in the morning,
while the world is asleep and the broad moon and the glittering stars
watch alone over the smooth, sparkling, white face of the land. Not
a footstep, so far as you see, has impressed the smooth, pure snow;
not a dark cart-track has yet left a long stain on the spotless road.
No thawing penitential drippings have made dark wells in it here and
there; no rude sweeping has piled the snow in stained heaps hither and
thither by the path. All is yet pure, untouched, undefiled.
This is the New Year upon which we have entered, as we look at it from
the casement of the Old Year, before yet one step has been placed on
its first moment. All as yet unstained, and white, and calm.
For how short a time to remain so! Can we set our first step upon it
without somewhat marring its virgin beauty? And then the traffic, the
hurrying of many feet, the crushing of many wheels; thought, word, and
deed, too often unwatched and unsanctified by prayer; oh, what a change
soon, and how short a time that purity and calm has lasted!
New Year; clean New Year; how dark, how defiled, how changed will you
be, when you also are now waxing old, and ready to vanish away! The
white virgin opportunity all passed by, leaving dark, dreary, sodden
fields, and roads churned up into yellow mud. The clinging spotless
moments--flakes that, in innumerable combination, made up the great
stainless carpet of the untrodden New Year; for them there will be
many a trickling rivulet of penitential tears; and the steam and mist
of heavy sighs that go up to God because of life’s work too faintly,
slackly done. Well then, that is well. Better, of course, if this
could have been, that the pure year had remained unstained.
“My little children, these things write I unto you, _that
ye sin not_.”
But well, if we are indeed humbly striving, and if hearty repentance,
and a true, lively, cleansing faith follow upon our many, many sad
failings, faults, and shortcomings. For, sweet words!--
“_If any man sin_, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins.”
And, glorious thought! if we are indeed loving and seeking after
purity and holiness, striving because of the hope within us, to purify
ourselves, even as He is pure--then know this, we shall not love, and
seek, and strive in vain.
“When He shall appear, _we shall be like Him_.”
Think of that! So that, when our last hour comes, and the bellringers
are ready for us, to ring out the Old Year of this life, and to ring in
the New Year of the next; and we are looking (our near and dear ones
still by us) out of the casement of the Old Year of TIME, what may
we then see? There shall be stretched out before us the immeasurable
unstained tract of the New Year of ETERNITY, unsullied, spotless, pure
and white; and we need not then be afraid to enter upon that. The blood
of Jesus, which cleanseth from all sin, will have so cleansed us, that
even _our_ footprints will not stain nor mar it. The spots and the
defilements, the tears and the sighs, they will lie all behind us then,
in the Old Year which is dead. Ring out, oh, ringers, then--toll not,
but ring out the year of sadness and of sin, of weak strivings, cold
hearts, and dull love! Ring out the year of partings and estrangements,
of death and tears! And ring in--oh, that it might be so for every
reader of this chapter!--ring with none but joy-notes, ring in that
everlastingly HAPPY NEW YEAR!
[Illustration]