[From the Boston Evening American, Massachusetts]

The thought of a new year thrills us through and through. What may be stands like a castle in the air, beautiful, sublime, tinted with the golden light of possibilities. Each January 1 brings visions to the mind of great things that could be reared by and for mankind. . . .

The late Charles P. Steinmetz, probably the leading electrical engineer of his time, has been quoted as having said . . . that the greatest discovery is to be made along apiritual lines. "Some day," he declared, "people will learn that material things do not bring happiness and are of little use in making men and women creative and powerful. It is now for the scientists of the world to turn their laboratories over to the study of God and prayer and the spiritual forces which as yet have hardly been scratched. When this day comes," declared Steinmetz, "the world will see more advancement in one generation than it has seen in the past four." The great engineer saw clearly, and his vision was surely true. He had watched mechanical science come, after centuries of painfully slow progress, to mountain slopes where gradual rise took a sudden leap into the skies of achievement. He saw the science of man's physical being running almost parallel with mechanical science, and then . . . he had the vision of the spiritual becoming the absorbing interest of the best minds of the earth. A realm "scarcely scratched," he claimed, but soon, possibly, to assume a prominence and upward movement that would be startling in its tremendous results in creating human beings . . . able to encompass in their minds a universal brotherhood of all mankind.

[Rev. Richard W. Abberley, as quoted in the Star-News, Pasadena, California]

To many this land [the "Land of Beginning Again"] means heaven, where the shadows flee away and earth's sorrows and tears and partings shall be no more; and it is well to remember that in reality every New Year is for us the "Land of Beginning Again." The New Year brings to all of us a new chance. I do not mean to imply that life is a mere game of chance. The whole universe is an illustration of the reign of law, but every New Year by the grace of God gives you and me a new opportunity to make good. Every life brings its defeats and mistakes, but it does not make so much difference what happens to you as the way you take it. We can make of our "dead selves" stepping-stones "to higher things." . . . If trouble has occurred in your home, resolve to be more patient, more kindly, and kindle anew the fires of love on the hearthstone and make this year the "Land of Beginning Again."

The New Year brings us new hope. Pope said, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." The greatest and most vital power for spiritual growth in ancient Israel was the Messianic hope. It saved the nation from despair and kept them true to God until the great Messiah came as the Saviour of the world. This New Year means to you and me new hope based on the promise of God's continual presence. Jehovah says, "Fear not. . . . When thou passest through the waters, . . . they shall not overflow thee. . . . For I am the Lord thy God, . . . thy Saviour." No man has a right to be a pessimist who believes in God. When the outlook is poor, then take the upward look. This is the "Land of Beginning Again" for a new effort. Jesus said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." God, the Almighty, is an ever present worker. Each dav we have a grand new sunrise. Every night the stars shine anew. Every spring brings a new crop of flowers, and the summer new fruits and harvest; and the marvel of it is, every snowflake and every dewdrop and every flower is just as perfect and lovely as on the dawn of creation. So with this New Year God gives us a new lease of life. Let us be resolved above all to get a new grip on God by prayer, by study of the Word, by work in His service, and by Christlike conduct.

[Editorial in the New Outlook, Toronto, Ontario, Canada]

The writer of the book of Revelation, in that haunting twenty-first chapter of his, pictures his strange and mystic figure seated on a throne and crying in the face of an assembled world, "Behold, I make all things new." How his readers were to think of that figure, and of the wonderful gift and power that were his, who of us can say? For was it not a gift and power beyond what anyone might dream of or hope for: the gift and power of making all things new? If anyone might have that gift and power to-day, what a wonderful godsend it would be!

For is not that one of the tragic things that is the matter with the world and all life—they have grown stale and full of ruts and sameness and are in such terrible need of freshening and renewing and making over? As they have grown fuller of things these things have grown stale, flat, and unprofitable, and apparently with so many have quite lost their power to please and satisfy. But may it not be that the gift and power to do this very thing is ours, and might be used in fruitful and very wonderful ways if only we had the grace and good sense to use them? There are three lines of a poem we have seen somewhere which read:

It is that "first glory" that we miss, and it is the missing of it that makes all of life stupid and commonplace for so many people. Life is not stupid and commonplace, save only to stupid and commonplace people; to the man with "the child sight in his breast" it is filled with wonder and beauty and glory every minute. The wonder and beauty and glory are all there; we do not need to hunt for them or to imagine them; all we have to do is just to open our eyes and see. One of the very severest condemnations of Scripture is directed against, those people who have eyes and never use them. And we need not think of that condemnation as leveled specially against some supposedly high moral failure; the Master had in mind quite as much as any other the man who did not see the glory in the sunsets, the sweetness in the flowers, the beauty of a noble deed, the freshness and joy and charm that crowd the opportunities and privileges of life as they come to us day after day through many years. Not only has every one of us the privilege of making all things in life new and fresh and full of beauty, but for failure to do that we shall condemn ourselves as for no other failure that our life shall have.

[From the Masonic Home Journal, Louisville, Kentucky]

A new beginning with the advent of the New Year, the opening of a new leaf in the book of life, with a resolution to write on its clean white page only that which is good, is the decision made each year by the great multitude. . . . A clean leaf may be turned over by choice on New Year's Day, but each one of us turns over a new leaf every day of the year, whether we choose to do it or not, and we must leave on that page the record of the day. If our ink is muddy, if our minds have been filled with envy, greed, hatred, and foulness, the writing on the page will disclose it in some way, however well educated the mind may be that directs the pen, however carefully it is held or steady the hand that writes; but when our thoughts soar to high things, our lives are ordered "with malice towards none, with charity for all," and our first object is to make the world better by reason of our living in it, then the record will be well worth reading though it is crudely written. Resolve this year to turn over a new leaf daily, and to make the record on each new page just a little better in some respect than it was on the one preceding, and then live up to your resolution.

[International Paper Monthly, as quoted in the Furniture Buyer and Decorator, New York, New York]

Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind. . . . It is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions. It is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite of adventure over love of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. . . .

Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love of wonder, the amazement at the stars and the starlike things and thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your selfconfidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. In the central place of your heart there is a wireless station. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage, and power from the earth from men and from the infinite so long are you young

[From the National Humane Review, Albany, New York]

Are we entering the New Year with eyes cast down and hearts heavy with doubt about the ability of the younger generation to fill the places we have so long held? Or are our faces radiant and souls singing the message of hope and confidence in its ability to take up the responsibilities of life and make the lot of mankind easier and happier? . . .

There must be moral courage accompanied with the ability to inspire faith in one's own strength if those who look to us for guidance are to be helped. Our boys and girls have tired of ranting. . . . They are not objecting to honest discipline; they are shying away from hypocrisy. Their souls are cleaner, perhaps, than ours, trained to hide our faults beneath cloaks of morality which we honestly were never able to fill. They are frank, wholesome, and intelligent. If we will but give them our confidence, as they in turn are willing to give theirs, we may face the New Year without misgiving as to their future usefulness.

[Dr. Louis Albert Banks, as quoted in the Signs of the Times, Mountain View, California]

Show me your to-day, and I can judge of your to-morrow. If to-morrow is to be strong and sweet and beautiful, then to-day must be devoted to the development of the graces desired. To-morrow must get to be to-day before it comes to its kingdom. To-day is the golden age of your life and mine. To-day "all things are possible to him that believeth."