"Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains?
When shows break up, what but one's self is sure?"
One has this sure self only in proportion as he relates his life to the divine life. The only permanence is to be found in the currents of divine energy, infinite and exhaustless.
There are many ways of watching the New Year in; but the somewhat unique personal experience of welcoming it on that eve of 1902, gazing at the vast expanse of the brilliant skies through the windows of a sleeping-car, had its claim to beauty and sacredness. The rush of the train gave a sense of almost floating out into the ethereal spaces. There was a detachment from earth that hardly comes even in the sacred service of the church on that mystic midnight of a New Year. One seemed alone with the infinite Powers, and a new and deeper trust in the Giver of all Good was inspired. The beautiful lines of Whittier came to memory:—
"I know not what the future hath
Of marvel and surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies."
Thus might one remember and dream while flying on under the New Year's skies, and realize anew that any trend of thought is inevitably creating its future. Auto-suggestion is the most potent of forces, and the assertion that "as a man thinketh so is he," is literally true. As he thinketh, so he shall be, also; and he can thus think himself into new conditions and attract to himself new forces. He has the power to keep his feet set in this upward pathway, and so sure as is the destiny of the stars and the constellations on their course through the heavenly spaces, so sure is his own arrival at the point toward which he is moving, and his achievement of the supreme end he holds steadfastly in view. Thus life will be to him no period of mere "quicksand years," but, instead, a series of advancing realization and beautiful states. Ideals may be swiftly realized by the accelerated energy of concentration and prayer, and the secret of transformation from defeat and denial to the perfect hour of triumph and happiness lies, for each one, within his own keeping.
"One's self must never give way—that is the final substance."
"Do we not all wish that we could live our lives over again in the light of our present experience?" remarked Rev. Doctor Charles Gordon Ames; "but this is just what God lets us do."
Here, in a word, was that divine panorama of the completeness of life revealed; the part of it lived in this present phase of experience being infinitely less in its relation, compared to the whole, than is one day in its relation to the longest life possible on earth. One day out of seventy, eighty, ninety years, would not seem so much; yet this entire period of even the longest life on earth, in its relative proportion to the life of all the eternities, is far less than is one day out of a lifetime in its proportional relation to Immortality. This spiritual panorama suggests its infinite energy of hope; it reinforces courage; it reveals in the most impressive manner the significance of living. For it is the tendency which always determines the result.