Goldsboro weekly argus. [volume] (Goldsboro, N.C.) 1885-1909, 1894-01-04
NEW YEARS EVE.

| Thoughts On the New Year-A
Chance to Begin Again.
Some time or other, in the life of
every adult human being, comes a
day when all prayers are merged in
the one prayer unavaling-"Oh, God,
for the chance to rub out the past
and begin again!''
Perhaps, even, we try to divert our
minds from present grief by day
dreams of what our life would be
could we turn back to cur strong,
fair youth, and, with present knowl-
edge, live the years again. How we
would guard against the blunder or
the sin which has made-or which
we fear has made-shipwreck of our
life!
How Kind, how nercifu1, how
truthful, honorable, industrious, self
denying we would be, if only we
could turn back the hand on the dial
and start fresh How true to the
practice of our religious convictions,
if last week or last year could be as
if they had never been, and we could
begin again!
Then the dream passes, we are face
to face with our error and its conse-
quences, and we know we have been
making only what Father Faber calls
the bankrupt's calculation of gain
and loss.
If we could. begin again! But
why not make fresh start now?
That would not be so hard, if it
only meant to turn our backs on the
error, and get away from the MEM
ory of it as fast as possible.
But there are the consequences!
They block our way! We can't
go on under the weight of the cross
we have to carry-heaviest, because
our own hands have made it.
These consequences are not mere
ly remorse. They are very visible
and tangible. They may be worldly
position forfeited, or wealth lost, or
love estranged, or friendship broken.
How can we make a fresh start
without those things to help us on
the way? We would begin again?
| Yes-but we would turn back and
start as if nothing had happened.
At such dismal hours-and who
has not known them?-it is hard
to find comfort in the optimistic
thought Of the poet
EVERY day is new beginning
\ 81, nd
| Yet they are true words and will
bear thinking about,
We think there are few braver, more
pathetic and appealing things in
Heavens sight than the man or wo-
man who breaks resolutely with the
vain dreams of an impossible new
beginning; faces humbly but reso-
lutely the errors of his past and their
consequences, and starts out strong
in his confidence in God to repara-
ton and reconquest. Don't mind
the pessimistic utterances of agnos-
tical poets and novelists.
You can live down anything, if
God gives you but few years of life
and strong will, with His strength
behind it.
"Children may be strangled,'' says
George Eliot, "but deeds never"
AS the poet has it:
"Our deeds still travel with us from afar
And what we have been makes us what
we are"
This may be true in a glad and
glorious sense even for him whose
past holds most cause for regret.
Have you never known of men and
women driven to the heights of lvir-
tue and honor by the goad of re-
morse for some past misdeed or
sighted trust? S.
A man famous for his scrupulons
regard for the time and rights of
others-who was proyerb for his
fidelity to the smallest trust-who
was never known to break even the
least engagement-walked all his life
in the memery of neglected trust
of his youth which caused the death
| of his little sister.
/ Another, whose example and Ia