The age-herald., 1900-12-30

"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
 The flying clouds, the frosty light:
 The year is dying in the night: Ring out wild bells, and let him. die. Ring out the old ring in the new,
 Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
 The year is going, let him go;
 Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind.
 For those that here we see no more;
 Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind.
 Ring out 6 slowly dying cause,
 And ancient forms of party strife;
 Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care the sin,
 The faithless coldness of the times;
 Ring out ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in.
 Ring out false pride in place and blood,
 The civic islander and the spite;
 Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease
 Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
 Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free,
 The larger heart the kindlier hand:
 Ring out the darkness of the land Ring in the Christ that is to be-"
 Having come to the top of our time, 1t IS well that we take counsel of our hopes and purposes and measurement of our joys and griefs, my beloved.
 Within few hours the old year will have passed finally, and with it the old century,
 4I..a oI1 of e shall experience again; for when time shall have rolled another century down the backward way every one of today will have long answered the last call
 There is a vast solemnity in this hour in the life of the world that should give even the lightest-hearted maiden and the most splendidly hopeful youth in civilizations garden something of calm reflection
 The church made the calendar in accord ance with the laws fixed for the earths government in nature, and that calendar governs the faithful and unfaithful alike, the pious soul and the idle-tongued scoffer; and we are come to the time when all mankind may take its reckoning.
 In the material concerns of our lives the change from one date to another is ordi- narily of little moment: but in the emo tional and spiritual sense there is some thing in passing from one century into an- other that Is immeasurably splendid and awful in its mystery.
 At the door of the new century. born out of the fullness of time, the dullard and the wise, the maiden and the grandam, youth and old age, vice and virtue, piety and sin, the holy and the wicked, are impelled to pause and make the sign of the cross, the signal of the worlds plan of redemption and salvation, the only sign given under heaven whereby man may be saved!
 
 This is not the place nor the hour for the preacher, my beloved: it is the hour for prayer. if ever that hour is to strike with dearest note in your lives. It is time for retrospection, for looking backward along the way, long or short, which you have come; and following that way, from the first step of your unsteady feet in child hoods time of grief or joy, all the winding course in sunlight and in shadow, in gold en day and paradisiacal night, power of | remembrance brings you unto yourself at | last and you have the inestimable prvi- | lege of introspection.
 Know yourself now as indexed in the | things of your own past, and, so knowing, l ask not of the morrow, of the new year, | the new century, but face the unknown in resolute reliance upon the saving grace of | goodness of uprightness, of love and of 1 laughter!
 The fool and the babbler, and all the | apostles of unrighteousness and unrest | are making a mighty din with their sophis- | tries and basphemies, their cant and phar- | isaism, their idle deductions and vain l prophecies; but they are as the cracking | of thorns under pot. Miscalled doctors ol divinity are crying for new or revised | creeds dogmas, faith--even a new Bible l and a new God; are discoursing unlearned | ly upon the shortcomings of the old le | ligions and foretelling of new religions oi the new century, and yet none of these pit