Article January 3, 1920 Issue

Beginning Anew

ELISHA B. SEELEY

No single act is perhaps more indicative of the human heart's belief in opportunity for mending its ways than is expressed in the prevalent habit of making good resolutions each recurring New Year. The very fact that individuals believe in the possibility of putting away the tendencies and indulgencies which all regard as evil, and of having the privilege of starting over again with a clean page, is an evidence of humanity's faith in God's goodness and of man's possibilities as a child of God in overcoming whatever is unlike good.

To the Christian Scientist every day is a new day and offers the same opportunity for overcoming evil and expressing more of good as does the recurrence of a New Year, but there is a vast difference between the process of overcoming evil as attempted by the human mind and that which is based upon the teachings of Christian Science. Since the evil exists only in the human mind, it is seldom that one's good resolutions are fulfilled unless there is a higher motive for overcoming it than merely to satisfy the human sense of wishing to please some person or to benefit one's self in some material or selfish way; and until thought is awakened to more spiritual desires, the determination of the human mind to discontinue some evil indulgence has no better method for doing this than through human will.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 39) Mrs. Eddy has written: "Who will stop the practice of sin so long as he believes in the pleasures of sin? When mortals once admit that evil confers no pleasure, they turn from it." The truth of these statements finds response in the thought of all who have experienced in any degree the regenerating and redemptive influence of Christian Science. The "swearing off" method is a struggle to refrain from doing the thing that it is believed would confer pleasure, at least temporarily, if indulged. The spiritually scientific process inspires the purpose to express the ideal, to express more of love, purity, and helpfulness in one's life, to bring to those with whom one is associated enough of Christlikeness so that they may see something of God's goodness in reflection.

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