“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