"Here you stand at the parting of the ways; some road you are to take; and as you stand here, consider and know how it is that you intend to live. Carry no bad habits, no corrupting associations, no enmities and strifes into this New Year. Leave these behind, and let the Dead Past bury its Dead; leave them behind, and thank God that you are able to leave them."
Ephraim Peabody.
"Would'st shape a noble life? Then cast
No backward glances toward the past,
And though somewhat be lost and gone,
Yet do thou act as one new-born;
What each day needs, that shalt thou ask,
Each day will set its proper task."
Goethe.
"No aim is too high, no task too great, no sin too strong, no trial too hard for those who patiently and humbly rest upon God's grace: who wait on Him that He may renew their strength."
Faculties and Difficulties for Belief and Disbelief,
Bishop Paget.
JANUARY 2
"You did not come into this world by chance, you were not born by accident. You all came charged with a mission to use your best efforts to extend the frontier of your Master's Kingdom by purifying your own hearts and leavening for good the hearts of all who come within the sphere of your influence. Your business here is not to enjoy yourselves in those fleeting pleasures which perish in the using; not to sip as many dainties as you can from the moments as they fly; not to gather as many flowers as you can pluck from the garden of this perishing earth; not even to rest in the enjoyment of those nobler delights which come from the exercise of the intellect in the investigation of the works of God and man; but rather to do your best to fit yourselves and others for the new heavens and new earth, which God has prepared for those who love Him."
Life Here and Hereafter, Canon MacColl.