And changing empires wane and wax;
Are founded, flourish, and decay.
Redeem mine hours, the space is brief,
While in my glass the sand grains shiver;
And measureless thy joy or grief,
When time and thou shalt part forever.”
Walter Scott.
The waning year is, to most minds, a season of reflection. And it is good to pause and think, occasionally; to glance along the receding vista of months, and review our actions ere too great a distance makes their memory indistinct. Time seems to linger on his journey, to pause by the crumbling ruins of earthly things, and point us to the past, that we may gather therefrom lessons of wisdom for the future.
And now, as we stand on the verge of the parting year—as the last line in its record of events is about being written, it is but to obey the dictate of reason to let our thoughts run back. Time we cannot recall, nor change the past. What we have done is done forever. Then, why, it may be asked, turn our thoughts thitherward? Why not look in hope to the future? It is that we may look to the future with brighter hopes, made more certain through repentance and good resolutions.
What we are is of more, far more importance to us than what we seem to others, or what we have gained in worldly goods. Our thoughts, then, as we review the days and weeks in the closing circle of months, should linger rather upon the purposes and acts of our moral life, than upon the impression we have made upon others, or the amount of earthly treasure we have gathered in from the harvest-fields of the world. A good reputation may be lost through slander; riches may take to themselves wings and fly away; but of the heart’s conscious rectitude no event external to ourselves can rob us. It is true gold, which neither moth nor rust can corrupt, and of which not even death itself can rob us.