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The New Year

The New Year image
Parent Issue
Day
5
Month
January
Year
1846
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The New Year This is the season of good wishes - of friendly greetings and compliments, and the renewal of social intimacies. We would participate in this general state of friendly intercourse and salute our readers in the cities and the villages, on the farm or in the workshop, in the forests or on the prairies, with the expression of our cordial wishes for a happy New Year. And how is a year to be happily spent? Is there any recipe by which every day can be passed without sorrow and without grief or disappointment? all experience answers there is not! No amount of intellectual greatness, and of moral worth - no heighth of station, no degree of holiness of heart - no philosophical rules of action or depth of fervent piety, can exclude all unpleasant feelings from the human mind. We have the example of our Divine Master who was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief'; and he has warned us that his disciples cannot expect to attain a state of exemption from the evils of humanity which he himself did not possess. But though a total exemption from evil cannot be attained by man, much can be done to make each year pass happily away. He who will patiently devote his energies for the welfare of his fellow men will reap a rich reward at every step of his progress. Next to the possession of a pure conscience, is the pleasure of benefiting others. The consciousness of having done any thing, however little, to diminish the sum of human misery and vice, is a feeling that no man will spurn when he comes to the close of his mortal career. The Anti Slavery man has a province of his own in the wide field of human wretchedness, where his efforts may be made to tell upon the best interests, not only of these millions of his oppressed countrymen, but upon the welfare of his whole country, and of the world. This is the cause not only of Patriotism, but of philanthropy and Christianity; and every step in its progress is a step towards the full accomplishment of the glad tidings by messengers from the celestial world, eightenn hundred years ago - 'Peace on Earth and Good will to men'! As a means of securing a happy New Year to our Anti Slavery readers, we venture to suggest that each of them during the year Eighteen hundred and forty shall do something in behalf of the cause. If each of the four thousand Liberty men of Michigan would only be sure to vote at the polls at every Election, & labor to dispel the prejudices of his neighbors, and to disseminate right principles and purposes, the Liberty party would be immediately doubled in numbers and influence, and the cause would be triumphant in the State in two or three years. Steady, unremitting, consistent efforts, put forth by men of even ordinary abilities, will accomplish much for any good enterprize. 'Not enjoyment and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow. Find us farther than to day. Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant, Lel the dead Past, bury its dead; Act, act for the glorious Present, Heart within, and God o'er head! Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait."