New Year's Reflections.
By E. S. Brooks
As we enter upon another year, solemn thoughts come rushing to my mind, and sad feelings gather around my heart. Another year, with all its load of good and evil, joy and sorrow, smiles and tears, hopes and despairs, has rolled away, and its history is written on the pages of the heavenly record. As I look over the past, and fain would peer into the dark, dark future, I think of the eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans. There comes to mind the sufferings of “this present time” compared with the glory that shall be revealed in the sons of God, and the solemn thought of old creation groaning for nearly six thousand by-gone years. She has just groaned away another year, and begun a new year of travail. Soon, oh! soon, will her last and deepest throes shake the earth from pole to pole and from shore to shore. Long, long has the creature in earnest expectation waited for the manifestation of the sons of God. But the story will soon be told. “This present time” will soon be numbered with the things that were, and the voice of sin be hushed in the silence of death. A few more days of humiliation, and the hope of the saints of all ages will find a bright fruition in the “world to come.” Oh! what will then our portion be? “Oh! to resolve one doubt
That tears my anxious breast!
Shall I be with the lost cast out?
Or numbered with the blest?”