Show As the years 1 fi a v f TT JT 4 0 1 I 4 fy arf E S I 1 41 1 1 the old fashioned sun dial after all was the true time piece that little pocket sun dial that we are told counted all the hours when the sun shone made the perfect record of human days the noisy clocks and re horseless mor seless calendars that told off the worst and weariest of time s move ments liter a 11 spoiled the reckon ing history began to build itself upon wretchedness of a people and all creation to take note of time by its loss instead of its golden gain in the hours of perfect sunlight but the reaction has set in it is the glad houis and not the sad ones that are to be made to count let us tarry awhile at the sign of the smile is the watchword which even pious pilgrims are sending out to upset the ancient reckoning let the smile bacon e the christian s rather than the devil s sign they cry in chorus and the joy of the spirit become the meas ure of its days good isaac barrow s picture of the child of heaven smil in alwa s with a never ending se of countenance and flourishing in an immortal youth has at last tak n hold of the christian world and spurred on by the new thought chap promises to turn back the cal andar of all our days counting time by heart throbs is no new method to be sure but the kind 0 heart throbs that always find man young and al ways keep him so were rather lost with the sun and nature worship of the early world when men went to nature foi their reckoning it was as wordsworth tells us they felt As if the moving ame had been A thing as as the scene on which they gazed themselves away cent iries oung were those children of he morning before even the sun dial had begun to tell them of the flight of time it remains true still that whether nature or the soul strikes the joy note in the human breast the poet s question rises in to the lips 0 what have I 1 to do with time for this the day was made man has his choice good or bad the years come out of the bosom of the infinite bearing some boon from the eternal tor man to lay hold of if he will to choose the per manent from out the mutable and fleeting is the life secret they carry and how much hangs upon the choice eternity alone can tell there are watchmen at the gates who assure us that each year brings gifts peculiar to itself and one year or one world does not restore the lost offerings of the other long after we have passed away out of men s sight and out of men s memory the world with some thing that we have left within it will be going on still says phillips brooks and long after the world has passed away we shall go on some where somehow the same beings still carrying into the depths of eter nit something that the world has done tor us that no other world could do there is something of goodness to get now that will be of value to us a million years hence that we never could get unless we got it in the short years of this earthly life of similar import is the good man s reflection I 1 shall pass this way but once and if there is any good that I 1 can do to a fellow being let me do it now it is the lost opportunities the mistaken choice that darkens the flight of years to purblind mortals and when to know stars from tapers from apples there 11 be less mourning over the dead years and less scorn under the solemn fillet of the departing day as in our wardens she passes us by each moment reclaimed Is a kingdom wherein to reign says stevenson and thus in truth the ancient earth summons man to dally birth to daily sovereignty with all the outcry against the times there were never such mighty voices of power and prom ise calling to man at every turn ot the way as at this very hour alexander mocked new worlds with each new year to conquer mock the cry of alexander and declare indeed a new kingdom wherein to reign closer and closer comes the promise of that awakening hour when man shall in truth become a living soul and with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep power of joy shall see into the life of things how many a rose of morning and ripe fruit of the golden noon shall then return to him the science of life which permits no lost good nor wasted atom even in all creation s bounds may gloriously de dare where are the snows of yes whispers the tender poet but the green of spring and the bloom of summer are nature s answer to his yearning cry and shall man be less blessed than nature in garnering the treasures of the yeara Is that evil genius that the ancients beheld standing at the door of the new year forever to give lethe to drink that he may wander blindly into the unknown way shorn of the best boons and talismans of the pasta ah the poets who try life and love know better each new year Is a leaf 0 our love s rose it falls but quick agoti er rose leal grows so Is the flower from year to year the same but riches tor the dead leaves feed the flame thus they read the riddle and the millian cen tuned sweetness that goes with it to day neither Is man drugged by any god or genius but the one within him that he may tell no tales and carry no tokens from the departing year what he tells to cheer or depress his comrades what he carries to help or hinder both them and himself is in the power of his own open eyed choice perhaps the best hint that was ever offered to guide him is the brief and pointed one given by the sage when he writes A man should make life and nature happier to us or he had better never bee i bo n it is the one pro eminent ly in the air at the present moment it would fill all the newspapers in the land and drive the quotation abhorring editors mad it one quarter of the stout maxims of this nature which the times offer should demand place in their col dumns already their humorous writ ers are arving to demoralize them and send some of the cheerful and cheer ing up people over to his satanic majesty where no doubt they are needed since the dry season set in L fe s log qua nt there be such a satanic monarch probably he loves the cheerful sinner 1 as heaven must love the cheerful saint yet the logic of life is against the smile is not legitimately the devil s s agn it is the pessimist who Is placing into bis hands treating his sovereignty as if it could overthrow heaven s and all the power of the eternal goodness to act as it they had a faith worth smili g over would seem to be the altitude of men who believed in a sovereign of love and omnipotence rather than one of mal ev olence and black art and it may be that the christian world is at last finding it out certainly the gospel eval gel rejo ce rejoice Is so ind ing anew through all tl e realms of christendom and becoming a part of culture and philosophy every where fuller s counsel be happy in the present moment and put not off being so to a time to come as though that time should be of another make from this prevails in the intel as re legious world and promises to show life whole to more than a handful of seers and sages |