Greetings and good wishes! They are in the very air. We can not escape from their magic influence, for this season of the year is one of the heart's cycles and not even the most conventional and selfish are secure within the walls which they have built up around themselves.
What do these greetings mean? What can they mean? The whole world is full of unrest. Continually we hear of wars and rumors of wars, of men out of work, of suffering, wretchedness and vice. Yet even those ready to fight, even the poor and wretched, even too the criminal and evil say "Greeting, A Happy New Year!" and answer your greeting.
The heart speaks sometimes in spite of the outer man and the heart has ever, somewhere, deeply hidden maybe, a spark of love and faith and hope. And at the changing of the yearly cycle the darkest clouds break for a moment and the heart gives its greeting to the world as the dawn of the New Year breaks.
It has been said that the present time is a time of trial for all humanity. Perhaps some understand a little what this means. We are approaching the close of several great cycles, great "years," and shall soon enter upon new cycles. What will be our greeting then? The heart will try to make itself heard even as it does at each New Year. It is even now whispering its message and its greeting within the breast of each, calling to us to awake, to rise from our sleep that we may greet the rising of the Sun.
What is the trial which humanity is passing through? And if this be a time of trial for all humanity, how much more is it not so for those who have some little knowledge, who are striving to set their feet upon the Path? Surely it is a time of trial for them and surely too it is their great opportunity!
Does not our trial and the trial of humanity consist in this: that we shall listen to the greeting and the cry of the heart, that we shall follow the promptings of the heart? Our greatest trials and tests are in the little everyday things of life.
There has been much evil in the past lives of all of us. Who among us is without sin, who among us is pure? Yet if only for a moment we could forget the past and could do, untrammeled, that which the heart prompts! We are all hampered, hemmed in, by remembrance of the past and are afraid to live up to that which is highest and noblest in us. We neither trust the divine light in our own hearts nor the divine light in the hearts of others.
Are we not often afraid to do that which is heroic and noble — and many of the simplest acts of life need heroism — not merely because of our own memories of the past but because of the memories of others? Then too, do we not ourselves hamper our brothers in the same way?
It may be that the trial of humanity is simply a trial of brotherhood. Can we be brothers, shall we strive to live our highest, our best; and, what is harder for many, shall we permit our brothers to live their highest, their best, shall we give our brothers the credit of having high and noble purposes, shall we recognize that they are seeking the light and to live according to the light?
We all ask for freedom for ourselves, but let us rather be slaves if thereby our brothers may be free. We seek to work for humanity, let us also be willing that others shall work for humanity and let us give them our love, our sympathy, our support.
The trial will be safely past if only we will give to each the right to act divinely. Let us strive to act divinely ourselves according to our birthright.
Then shall the dawn of the new year and the new cycle break with the radiant glow of joy and goodwill, and the night of our toiling be past.
A New Year's Greeting to you, my comrades!