The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1934. AT THE YEAR'S END.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 308, 29 December 1934, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1934. AT THE YEAR'S END.

For the cause that lucks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

It is not time that ilics, says the poet. Time stands still; it is we who pass. The idea Jinks poetry with-.science. More and more, ;i.s scirflce nnd history uncover tlio past and add aeons to the age of the earth and the universe, the conception lakes shape of time as a background immeasurably long, against which man passes as an almost infinitesimal shadow. Only this week research pushed knowledge further back by discovering remains of man who lived '200,(100 years ago in Palestine, yet what a trifle this period is compared with the stretches oi' astronomical time! illicit more than when the Psalmist sang them is the truth of his words evident: '"For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Man, however, is precluded by the demands o£ everyday life from brooding long ur,on the infinity that surrounds'him. Sufficient unto the day are the problems thereof. Besides, as with the man immortalised by his remark to Dr. Johnson, it is often a fact that lie tries to be a philosopher, but cheerfulness will break in. It has been said of Lamb, that great apostle of cheerfulness in adversity- whose centenary fell this week, that while Coleridge asked what is truth, he was content with a humbler question, what are trumps? Whichever question man asks, he uses the year as a measuring rod for his life and his pursuits. If he reflects, he realises that relatively it is so small a division of time as to be well-nigh invisible, but he does not allow the calculations of geologists or astronomers to overawe him. A year has gone, and his heart is beating funeral marches to the grave, and all that, but there is his life here, and he casts up a rough balance-sheet of the past year, and goes forward— perhaps cheerfully, perhaps cynically, perhaps stoically, but still forward. It is a question for debate how far the thoughts of the colonial in the southern hemisphere differ at this season from those of the Englishman in his own home. Does summer make one more confident, more buoyant, than winter? "Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, the flying cloud, the frosty light"—such are the associations of New Year's eve in England—a time for celebration by indoor fellowship. Our New Year is like our Christmas, a time of warm days and nights, of holiday-making out of doors. The soi7nd of our bells does not drift across the snow, but is sprinkled into the scented air of summer. Are Xew Year resolutions of much value? The subject is often treated as a joke. Certainly it could be contended that for a man to become serious about life only on New Year's Eve would be about as sensible as it would be if he took exercise only once a year. To be jogged into a social and religious sensitiveness by this annual reminder of the passing of time, and then to relapse into indifference, is little spiritual gain. Yet the coming of the New Year has its value as a i reminder. It tells us that our time is shorter, and that, if we wish to do anything in particular we should bestir ourselves. It should be the occasion for reasonable hope and confidence, and it should inculcate the wisdom of living in the present. There are some who brood on the past to the weakening of their enjoyment of the life they are living; there are others who are obsessed by fears of and arrangements for the future. Both types lack a sense of proportion, and New Year reflections should help to correct their fault. And as to the lesson of the bells, is it any different in the warm air of the South from what it is in the folded mist of the English countryside? If the New Year can ring in a better world, it can do it irrespective of latitude.