THE NEW YEAR AND THE NEW MONTH.

WE begin the year in mid-winter, in imitation of the Romans. It is an arbitrary time; but any time would be arbitrary. The year is a circle-it is the period which the earth spends in revolving around the sun. But there is no "break" in the circle-there is no moment in which the wheeling world stops, and starts again. Hence, we must select a point on the circle-a moment in the revolution. The Jews chose the spring; and with great propriety. For then the year seems, indeed, to be born, and to go forth, like a child, to play and prattle among the flowers. But sometimes spring is earlier, sometimes later, and it emerges so gradually from the cold embrace of winter, that you cannot fix the day and hour of its beginning. Hence, though we would prefer to have New Year's day when the earth is being renewed beneath the zephyrs and sunshine of spring, we would be obliged, even in that case, to select a day that might often be too early, and often too late.

Perhaps it is as well, then, to begin the year as we do. It teaches, at least, one important lesson. Our life is like the year. It flows on without any natural divisions, that begin and end at definite moments. It is a widening and deepening stream, from the head-spring of infancy to the ocean of eternity. We speak of youth, manhood, and old age; but our life-current does not pause at a certain period, and proclaim to us that our youth has gone, and then recommence its flow, to proclaim that manhood has begun; but imperceptibly we glide along. The changes in our physical and mental development are gradual. Hence, if we would change our characters-if we would give a new direction to our lives, we must exert the powers with which God has endowed us. We must pause;

we must consider; we must fix a moment, and say, "This shall be the beginning of a new year in my heart-from henceforth, I will recognize higher obligations, cherish higher impulses, sympathies, and hopes." No man must expect to be compelled to stop and think. He was created a free moral agent, that he might reflect, and decide upon his course. And if he will not wake up, and employ those noble, self-determining faculties which distinguish him from the brutes, he must expect to glide on, the sport of circumstances-the slave of appetites and lusts, until he dies like a brute.

Let us urge upon your attention, O reader, this lesson of the season: While the coldness and dreariness of winter drives you indoors-while its lengthening shadows creep over your soul, and sadden it, consider for what you are livingwhither you are going, and begin with this New Year a new life.

There is another lesson, that the name of the month suggests. Why did the Romans call it January? Because they had a god called Janus, with two faces, looking in opposite directions. They named the first month of the year after him, to teach that every man should be like Janus then-that he should look backward over the past, and forward to the future.

This is a time to remember our sins, and repent of them; to recall our errors, and profit by them; to form our resolutions of amendment and our plans of usefulness; to begin our better habits, to cultivate our better feelings, and to woo to our world-wearied spirits the hopes of a better life. Let us all, dear readers, pause, reflect, look back, until we learn penitence and wisdom from the pastthen go forward into the shadowy future with prayer and faith-with longings and endeavours after a purer and better life. Then shall this January be a turning-point in the soul's career, that it will bless God for throughout eternity.

OPPORTUNITY AND TIME.

OPPORTUNITY is the flower of time, and as the stalk may remain when the flower is cut off, so time may remain with us when opportunity is gone.

THE

PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY, 1856.

Miscellaneous Articles.

MORAL USES OF THE YEAR.

THE astronomical truth, affirmed obscurely perhaps to us in the words, "He appointed the moon for seasons," affords many a salutary thought. Let us bear in mind, that in the Jewish chronology, the revolutions of the moon measured the year-not those of the sun, as in ours. So, also, the Mohammedan, to this day, reckons time by lunar, not by solar years. Now, with the Jewish idea, one would infer from the passage, that the moon was ordained for the division of time into years. But why such an arrangement? Why the division? Why, except to secure succession of seasons? That is the very question, leaving out the physical side, which I propose to answer. My subject is the MORAL USES OF THE YEAR; of the year considered as a distinctive period of time, a period to which God has assigned limits by revolutions of the moon, as the Jew understood; but, as we, better learned in the physical theory of the universe, by the sun.

I. One of the moral uses of the year, is to make men realize that TIME IS RAPIDLY PASSING AND WILL SOON BE OVER. By time here, I mean the time of an individual life. I am unable to overcome the impression, that one design of this arbitrary division of time, is to make men feel this. Without it the current of life might flow on ceaselessly, until it reached the dread ocean beyond; yet unobservedly, as ceaselessly. The sands of mortal existence might run down with constant gliding motion, until the glass were emptied and broken; even it might be known that they were moving; they might be seen to fall; but it is questionable whether the continued, life-long, unbroken monotony of their fall, might not fail to attract the attention given to the termination of each successive

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period which now breaks that monotony. Were there no such period as a year, no such period which, multiplied a few times into itself, would infallibly make up the sum of our lives, men would probably be less thoughtful than they now are. To most, the reflection that the end of another year has come, is, in their soberer moods, a solemn one. The contemplation of it makes life as a whole seem shorter. "I have one year less to live," they say. "How short these years seem! How short they are! How shorter they are becoming as I grow older! The measure of mine, at this rate, will

soon be filled!"

Every one has observed how much shorter a journey of any extent seems, to one who can constantly measure his progress by milestones, set up every here and there all along the road; shorter, not really, but seemingly, than if it were through a forest, or over a prairie, or across a barren and sandy waste. So, in human life, which has all along its course signs set up, to remind one how far he has come; and that by a steady, unresting progress he is approaching his end; signs, set up not by mortal hands, nor agreed upon by human arrangement, but appointed of God; and marked off upon the great dial of the universe-signals tolled by a bell swinging high in heaven. These years of ours are such signs. Nor are gray hairs, or faltering limbs, or eyes dimmed with age, more impressive or solemn monitors than they.

It should be remarked, also, that the purpose so contemplated is so much better subserved by the year, than it would be by any smaller division of time, as into weeks and months; so much better, as the number of those, multiplied into themselves, being so much greater, would make life seem longer than it really is; or their end occurring so frequently, men would become oblivious of the fact, and so its use would be overlooked and lost.

II. The termination of each successive period of a year reminds us anew, that TIME PAST, IS TIME GONE FOREVER. It does not acquaint us for the first time with the fact, but serves the purpose of a perpetually recurring remembrance of it. The beginning of each new year seems to stamp afresh all the past with the seal of irrevocableness. The heavy toll of the bell in the steeple announcing the hour, the striking of the clock upon the wall at midnight of the last day of December, seemed to us, as it were, to come and bend at the closing tomb of the departed year, and mourn for what can never be again. And to me there seems to be something exceedingly appropriate in the custom which prevails, as I am told, among the followers of Wesley, of keeping what is called by them "Watch Night," waiting in silent prayer for the end; and then when

"The bell hath ceased with its iron tongue

To ring on the startled ear;

The dirge o'er the grave of the lost one is rung

to speak their welcome, though perhaps in other words:

to sing their welcome, and to pray God to have them in his holy keeping, until it too shall end.

I question much whether the termination of these yearly periods fail to deepen the impressions of the irrecoverableness of time once passed, in the mind of any really contemplative person. This "note of time" at least is taken by its loss. Thus too is deepened, in the mind of the thoughtful, the impression in respect of the past, that what is done, so far as our accountability is concerned, can never be undone, or what is left undone, can never be done; in other words, that any portion of our time wasted, will be checked upon the record of the past, as forever wasted; or if well employed, so marked upon the record. So one's past hours or years, filled with deeds of his own doing, stand as waymarks no longer; but as eternal instruments of his glory, or his shame: stand as lights to guide, or beacons to warn him, as he presses his way on, unto the dim and uncertain future; stand thus, so long as he lives; and when the mortal hour rounds and finishes the period of his probationary existence, to stand, still, but neither as waymarks or monuments, neither as lights or beacons; but as witnesses, as witnesses which cannot lie, to testify for, or against him. And this, to the thoughtful, is a profitable use of the year.

III. Another use of the year is, TO MAKE MEN REFLECTIVE. This, however, it should be remarked, is not so strictly a use by itself, as it is a sequence of the two already named. And yet it does, aside from those, excite reflection upon many points not immediately connected with them. Indeed it could scarcely be otherwise, if the mind be not preoccupied with care, or if it be not hardened by sinful indulgence into indifference, or terrified by any thought of a review into neglect; if a man's moral sensibilities are not all benumbed by atheism, or his heart petrified into flint!

The close of a year is a most favourable opportunity—indeed there is none more favourable-for one to review that portion of his life which is bounded by the period about to be completed. May not this be one design of it? It would be no marvel if it

were.

There is a kind of watch, constructed with a spring, by which its holder can easily arrest the motion of its wheels and hands, until he reckons the amount of time they have measured between given parts. This stop-watch, for so it is called, is in many cases ex