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]