THE backward view is not always pleasant. The year just gone had its days full of evil. Black deeds of wickedness and violence marred its every page. Crime and Corruption stalked boldly forth and claimed their myriads of victims. Famine and Pestilence in some of the fairest of earth’s lands slew young and old, cruelly, pitilessly. War preparations have gone on apace, but the war dogs have been restrained almost unexpectedly everywhere. Fatalities by earthquake, tornado, tempest, and fire have been great and numerous. Mad mob vengeance has glutted its insane revenge, and race hatred—not alone between white and black—is increasing. States and nations, statesmen and rulers, are in perplexity over mighty and unknown and unsolvable problems which face them. All these and many other features do not invite the retrospective view; and yet in all the checkered landscape the thoughtful student of history who is acquainted with God can discern His mighty, masterful workings among the sons of men and their puny governments. The divine Hand has guided the wheels within wheels to His own wise purpose. He has restrained the high and unholy ambitions of kings and rulers. He has opened hitherto almost double-locked doors of hostile lands to the heralds of the Gospel. It is yet true, notwithstanding all the selfishness of men and the plotting of demons, that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men.” Let the vision come closer home. How has it been with your own soul? “Disastrous”? Let it be counted temporary. “Discouraging”? Perhaps so, from a human point of view. “Defeat upon defeat”? Let it be so. Still there are blessings. Look them over. Hunt up the Ebenezers, or the places where these ought to have been raised, if they were not, stones of help, and where the soul should have said in gratitude to the great Father, “Hitherto hath God helped us.” How much worse it all might have been! You do not know how many times the divine Hand swept away the darts of destruction you did not see, and saved your wavering feet from the pitfalls into which they would have strayed. Count up His abundant mercies, and be grateful. But of the sins, the defeats, the discouragements, the pitfalls, the bruises, leave them all with the great Burden-bearer, who bore them for you. Take for the New Year the splendid motto Paul gives us: “FORGETTING THE THINGS WHICH ARE BEHIND, AND STRETCHING FORWARD TO THE THINGS WHICH ARE BEFORE, I PRESS ON TOWARD THE GOAL UNTO THE PRIZE OF THE HIGH CALLING OF GOD IN CHRIST JESUS.” Good things are there behind? Doubtless. Little victories in which we would boast ourselves, triumphs which we seemed to win, blessings which were truly great, and under whose shadow we would abide, as the Arab desert wanderer would tarry under the shadow of the great rock by the cooling spring. But we may not stay. Thank God for the rock, the spring, the unnumbered blessings. But the journey is not yet ended. There are yet trackless spaces to cross. The race is not run. There are hills and rocks, sloughs and streams, storm and tempest, to meet us on our way. Every blessing of the past is God’s earnest of greater future blessings; pledges that He will remove the obstacle or give strength to surmount it; bridge the chasm or enable you to go down into the Valley of Humiliation and up the Hill of Difficulty. Press on! There are greater blessings before. Do not narrow your soul by satisfaction with past achievements. Do not imagine that your heart can grow with an unused blessing. “I will bless thee; and be thou a blessing,” was God’s call to Abraham. It is God’s call to every one who would become an heir to Abraham. Turn not back to the empty sepulcher. The body of Jesus is not there; “He is risen.” Ever He goeth before, out into the great needy fields of earth. There shall you see Him. There shall you find Him if your own soul is given to the salvation of others, if you are yielded to Him as a channel of blessing. O the prospect before, at the opening of this new year! Trouble, trial, storm, tempest, aye, death perhaps; but with us in all these will be the Master if we wish His presence. It is awful to be without Him. With Him, in the year to come—service with the trial is a joy, the tempest and storm a calm, the very night of death is lighted by His presence. There is work for Him, with Him, in the year to come—service with the King, yoke-fellows with Jesus! Beyond, still beyond, toward which goal the pilgrim of earth shall forever press, are “the unfenced fields” of God’s glorious kingdom of eternal progress and increasing joy. Leave the sin; let Him wash it away. He died to do it. Be clothed with His righteousness. He waits to clothe you with it. Let Him do it. He invites you; then press on to the infinite goal. Thus ever shall all years be useful and happy.