Editorial January 1, 1903 Issue

From the Old to the New

W.

He who has not acquired the gentle art of turning his back upon the things of yesterday, has missed one of the most practical ways of enriching the joys of to-day, for while maintaining due regard for all the good, beautiful, and true it has embraced, we may still say that altogether the best thing about human history is this: that we can let it remain a thing "that was and is not." Real progress means that we shall let the dead past bury its dead, and leave both the bones and the bad thinking, of our earthly ancestry, in Egypt.

The crustacean habit of annually escaping from the fetters of an unyielding self, is highly commendable, for, as all know, to cling to disabling limitations is to forego the possibility of growth, and we are less wise than these little children of the sea if we hesitate to part with those personal accretions, ideas, opinions, habits, etc., which, if they ever rendered us a service, no longer conduce to either our intellectual or spiritual advancement.

If we were to undertake to enumerate these heritages of our past which are to our present disadvantage, and which remain with us because we have made no intelligent effort to dismiss them, we would be astonished at their number and realize more clearly how great the folly of their retention.

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The Bells
January 1, 1903
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