WHEN this article reaches the eyes of our readers the last few sands of 1907 will be swiftly running out, and the year will be gone forever. Yet not wholly so. The year will forever live with many in the seeds they have sown, in the habits they have formed, in the purposes wrought into their lives. Its golden moments are gone, never to return; yet Memory will recall them again and again. We will mourn again its sorrows and weep by its buried dead. We will regret its mistakes and bemoan its failures. We shall long for a continuance of its blessings and joys, and rejoice over its triumphs.
To many indeed who stood upon the threshold of the opening year twelve months ago, endeavoring to pierce the clouds which veiled its unfolding portals and read its yet hidden secrets, the year has not been a happy one. They saw in their dreams many bright visions of glory. They painted on the clouds in rainbow hues magnificent palaces, filled with rare and costly creations of ingenious mind and deft hand, of factory and mill and loom; they wove into the misty haze which overhung the open portals bright visions of prosperity and great wealth and happiness. All this and more they saw in the changing, hazy twilight of the New Year's morning.
But their bright dreams changed to dark and impenetrable clouds which the eye could not pierce. The visions of glory fell in tears of sorrow. The stately palaces of hoped-for repose and enjoyment crumbled to ashes, or revealed in their cold and cheerless rooms the ghastly skeletons of unhappiness and misery. Many homes have lost sunshine by the vacant chair. Sickness and death have blasted high hopes, removed loved ones, and written deep lines of care and sorrow on the faces of those left behind. The year 1907 will to them never bring pleasant memories.
To others the year has been beautiful. New associations have brought happiness. Prosperity in business has brought joy to him who seeks the gold that perishes. Well has it been for him if the sordid gold has not hardened his heart against the miseries and wants of others to whom each day of the year brought barely sufficient means to maintain existence. Others have found in other spheres the growing fame and applause for which their hearts have hungered. The world's many-sided picture presents sad contrasts of poverty and riches, of age and youth, of misery and happiness, of sorrow and joy. It is an earth-year—filled with its mighty burdens of human wo.
Among the nations it has been a year of perplexity, developing in its closing month into an almost financial panic, the suffering from which will be felt by the poor. Greed still feeds fat at the public cribs, while honesty and frugality barely exist. Disintegration of government still goes on. Europe slumbers on a volcano of war, which may break out at any time. Famine in China and Russia has left millions pinched and pale. Earthquakes have destroyed millions in property and thousands of lives; and thousands more have perished in famine and flood, in war and pestilence.
The wave of "liberalism" in religion has rolled on in ever-increasing volume, undermining the faith of many and sweeping them out into the great sea of doubt or infidelity. As the churches have lost faith in God, they have sought the power of civil authority to enforce religious dogmas, and, more and more, as in the fourth century, the governments are yielding to ecclesiastical influence. The end will be the persecution of man for conscience' sake and the ruin of both church and state. Even so has the more sure word of prophecy predicted, and this paper has proclaimed the warning message for more than thirty years.
1908.
with its fair and white pages, lies before. The old world will go on much the same. It is the lesson of all history that no people or nation ever reformed itself from sources of power within itself. Thruout the world, there are many portions of the church seeking reform; but they will never find it where they are seeking it; and the tide of evil will roll on, as God has declared, to the night of despair and utter darkness.
Yet the year 1908 has within its unrolling days happiness for every soul. That happiness will come in seeking God's glory and others' good. There is no other way. Seeking happiness for ourselves, we shall never find it. The selfishness in the seeking will corrupt all we grasp and poison the cup of pleasure we press to our lips. But forgetting self in seeking others' good, finding and doing duty to God, our hearts will enlarge, and every blessing we bestow upon others will bring greater gladness to our own lives. Such happiness as this—the only true happiness—we wish our readers in the year 1908.