Editorial December 30, 1922 Issue

"Happy New Year!"

Ella W. Hoag

It is scarcely extravagant to say that on every first day of January millions of men, women, and children voice the glad greeting of "Happy New Year!" Rarely, if ever, are these words uttered that they do not carry with them a sense of fresh hope, of courage, of joy. To be sure, their tone may not always have the truest ring, but even a lack of sincerity cannot wholly rob them of their intent of good. Friend hastens to anticipate friend in being the first to express the beautiful wish that the new year may prove a happy one; and the joy of this greeting may always be reciprocal. It is ever a pleasant custom, and back of it are innumerable wishes for good. It almost invariably presents a vision of new opportunities, new possibilities, of old mistakes corrected, of new purposes enthroned.

Men are always longing for more happiness, are always hoping that each new year, new day, new hour, may bring them a fuller understanding of how to understand happiness, of how to attain and retain it; for happiness is so apt to seem illusive. Won to-day, it may appear to be gone to-morrow. Now the experiences of men through the ages have proved beyond a doubt that happiness, as well as every other sense of good, unless based on divine Principle, will be but transitory, and can never do more than please for a short moment, disappearing in a sense of unsatisfied longing.

The wiseman of long ago glimpsed the basic truth of real happiness when he wrote: "Whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he;" "He that keepeth the law, happy is he." Then it is trust in God and obedience to the law of God which alone can produce lasting happiness,—the happiness which is born of God and can never cease. Our beloved Leader defined it most perfectly when she wrote in her Message for 1902 (p. 17), "Happiness consists in being and in doing good; only what God gives, and what we give ourselves and others through His tenure, confers happiness: conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart, and nothing else can." And she also says: "When mortals learn to love aright; when they learn that man's highest happiness, that which has most of heaven in it, is in blessing others, and self-immolation—they will obey both the old and the new commandment, and receive the reward of obedience."

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