The New Year
Lead us gently, Father Time, as you take us to the portals of the New Year.
We know not what may be within; and our souls are burdened with fear as we stand here at the door.
Lost, forever lost, is the Confidence with which we used to go bounding into the New Year—as revellers hasten to the feast.
We have met the Unforeseen so often, have mourned where we thought to rejoice, been trampled upon amid the horrors of panic and defeat where we had so stoutly fought for victory and reward, that our hearts are sadly subdued, Father Time.
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We did not SEEK this awful life-woe, Father Time.
Thrust, from some great outer darkness, into the hurly burly called Life, we gaze upward at the stars in helpless ignorance of what it all may mean; and some Irresistable Force pushes us, pushes us, swiftly, inexorably, onward to another outer darkness that fills us with speechless awe.
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Have mercy on us, Father Time. We have been beaten with many stripes, and are covered with many wounds.
God! How we have suffered!
We knew nothing at the beginning, and we know but little now; and, for every lesson that we have learned, we have been made to pay in heart-aches and scalding tears.
Always struggling, often down, always anxious for the Morrow, often in torture Today, we have stumbled forward, Father Time, still looking for the smooth road and the sunny sky and the bright Companionship of Success and Peace.
Shall we NEVER see Carcassonne, Father Time?
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We shudder when we think of what you did to us during the Old Year, Father Time.
Ah, but you were hard on us—bitter hard. Our little ones panted for a breath of fresh air, Father Time; and they died like flies, in noisome, reeking, crowded tenements, because there was not, in all God’s Universe—where there’s light and air for every flower that flecks the field—a breath of fresh air for the little children of the slums.
Ah, it was pitiful, Father Time!
Our feeble ones, young and old, perished miserably of cold and hunger, in the midst of a land that worships the Good God, and amid such an accumulation of wealth as was never known before since the Morning stars looked down upon a newly-made world.
Poverty, Crime, Vice, Drunkenness, Riot, War, Famine, Pestilence, Earthquake, Conflagration have glutted their awful appetites upon us during the Old Year, Father Time. To WHAT are you leading us in the New?
Will the heart of the world grow harder and harder, Father Time?
Will the greed of human avarice demand still larger sacrifice of human lives?
Will the Selfishness of Class gorge itself still further upon ravenous conquest, and remorseless exploitation?
Shall the cry of the White Slave NEVER reach Heaven, Father Time?
Shall the song of the angels who hung over the infant Christ, NEVER throb, a living principle, in man’s government of man?
Is the Reformer always to be the Martyr, Father Time?
Is Wrong NEVER to be dethroned?
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Oh, Father Time! We tremble as we feel you leading us toward the door of the New Year. Beyond that portal we cannot see, and we dread it—as children dread the dark.
Deal gently with us in the New Year, Father Time.
Give us strength to bear the Cross—for we know that we must bear it.
Give us courage for the battle, for we know that we must fight it.
Give us patience to endure, for we know that we shall need it.
Give us Charity that thinks not evil of the Just, and which will stretch forth the helpful hand to lift our weaker Brother out of the mire, rather than the cruel scorn which passes him by, or thrusts him further down.
Give us Faith in the Right which no defeat can disturb, no discouragement undermine.
Give us the Love of Truth which no temptation can seduce and no menace intimidate.
Give us the Fortitude which, through the cloud and the gloom and the sorrow of apparent Failure, can see the distant pinnacles upon which the everlasting sunlight rests.
Give us the Pride which will suffer no contamination, no compromise of self-respect, no wilful desertion of honest conviction.
Give us the Purpose that never turns and the Hope that never dies.
And, Father Time, should the New Year, into which you are taking us, have upon its calendar that day in which the few who love us shall be bowed down in sackcloth and ashes, let THAT day, like all the other days, find us ON DUTY—faithful unto the end.