Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-01-07
Sunday Morning Talk.
One More Year of Grace.

/ like the -honored phrase year of
grace" Let us ponder on it moment as
the new year stretches away from with
all its golden possibilities. Can we really
call it for ourselves and others a year of
grace, and can we make it that in very
truth, and can we take to heart the warn
ings and the inspirations conveyed by the
term?
year of grace means that we do not
own time as we do houses and barns, that
we have no guarantee of even one minute
beyond that during which we are now ex-
listing. Yes, every added day or month is
given not because we have earned it, or
have proprietary right to 1t, but because
of a power outside of ourselves who has
seen fit thus to prolong our lives. We some
times speak of the aged as living on Dor
rowed time" especially wien they have
passed the boundary of three score years
and ten, which Moses said was the natural
limit of mans life. But in certain
sense all OF us are living on borrowed
time, on time melted out to us according to
plan which we cannot fully understand.
We can go to the bank and draw out all
the money that lies there to our credit, but
no man can walk up to the gates of tomor-
row and demand a right to enter its por-
tails.
The phrase carries with it also the
thought of fresh and fascinating chance.
Phillips Brooks once said that the best
thing a man can do with his past is to get
q future out of 1t, and during these initial
days of 1866 it behooves us to think less
of the shortcomings and blunders of 1905,
and more of the opportunities which every
day that we live during the coming year
will afford US.
This year may bring us the best chance
Of our life. 1t probably will, for there is
no chance better than the chance Of today,
only we must seize it today, for some one
has said that opportunity has no back
hair. You cannot grasp and detain 1t when
1t has once gone by. Certainly you have
all the chance you need today to make
your life decent, honorable, effective in
useful ways. a comfort and pride to your
family, an ornament to your community
and a blessing to the world. AS Susan
Coolidge puts 1t:
Every day is a new beginning,
Every morn is a world made new
True of each of the 365 days of the year,
this couplet applies particularly to the first
few days of every new year.
And such a phrase as "a year of grace"
sets us thinking also of the forces outside
Of us that make human life a gracious
thing, that redeem 1t from the common
place, and stand as watchful sentinels and
helpful friends as we toll along our up
ward way. The old phrase grace as used
in the churches from the first century sig
mites the free extension of divine favor
and aid to the children of men.
You don't believe in any such idea? Be-
lief in it does not rest on argument only
but on the experience of multitudes. / like
to think for myself that the things I might
not be able to do this coming year in my
own strength can perform through the
helI Of another. That seems possible even
rational, when We think how the forces OF
nature cooperate with man on the mate
rial side of his life. Why should not the
forces of the spiritual realm co-opers 20
with him In his fight for character. in nis