LET us be glad and thankful for our holidays! They come to us variously laden with the sentiment of patriotism, gratitude, or devotion. But whatever their special mission, they each and all call a halt upon the world's mad chase for gold, for fame, for fashion, and give tired humanity a moment for rest and reflection.
Perhaps none is more peculiarly significant than New Year's Day, for it is fraught with suggestions of the New Birth. Further, it is a season for introspection. We cannot silence the insistent query: "Self, where art thou? Art thou coming consciously into fuller recognition of the omnipotence of Good? Art thou dwelling in the secret place of the Most High? Do happiness and harmony and joy spring up when thou hast gone in and out among the sick and sorrowing? Morally, where art thou, self? Is thy charity greater, thy self-love less? Does thy fire warm the shelterless, does thy plenty feed the famishing? Are honesty, justice, and purity crowned? and hypocrisy. greed, and ambition scourged at thy gate? Has gossip lost its charm for thee, so that its most seductive appeal finds silence on thy lips? Where art thou physically? Art thou learning to follow less and less after the ignis fatuus of sensuous pleasures, and to fear less the beliefs of material pain?"
"A Happy New Year," indeed, is it to him who can answer these queries with assurance of progress, assurance that old beliefs, opinions, limitations are being outgrown, and a purer, higher, holier life is manifesting itself. Blessed, indeed, is he to whom the new year brings thus the gladness of growth. To him also who is dwelling in the shadow of discouragement, Christian Science extends a hope of happiness,— happiness in the possible assurance of a present comforter, in a fuller sense for him of health and holiness.
