Editorial January 1, 1921 Issue

The New Year and Good Intentions

Frederick Dixon

The first of January might quite legitimately be termed the day of good intentions. But though the morning may find the world full of hope, the evening is apt to be the evening of disappointment. Paul himself provided the motto for the almanacs of the first century, and, for that matter, of every succeeding century, when he wrote, "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." The reason of this is very simple, if the world in its hurry would only stay to think. It is that mankind in general has no scientific standard of right and wrong. It is guided by its emotions, and its emotions are bound to play it false, for they are themselves nothing but a product of the material senses. Thus the individual attempts to approach Spirit through the avenue of the senses; and he ends, as Mrs. Eddy says, on page 360 of Science and Health, in the hopeless effort of endeavoring to follow two models: "If you try to have two models, then you practically have none. Like a pendulum in a clock, you will be thrown back and forth, striking the ribs of matter and swinging between the real and the unreal."

There is the solution of the whole problem. When a man has once grasped the very simple fact that Spirit is the only reality, he has placed his hands upon the clue which will guide him in safety amidst all the windings of the human labyrinth. He will have acquired that power of right reasoning or righteous judgment which will enable him to distinguish infallibly between good and evil. There on one side of him will lie the narrow road of sensual restriction which leads upward to the spiritual goal, and, on the other, the broad road of self-indulgence winding down into the valley of the shadow of death. And in the bitterness of the struggle the meaning of another saying of Paul's will become extremely clear to him, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Paul, however, had fought the fight long enough and honestly enough to know that Principle helps those who help themselves, so that he was one day to strike a note of triumph in his struggle. "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."

To any one who really understands what this means, the good intentions of New Year's day become just the same as the good intentions of any other day of the year. Real good intentions are those taken at a moment when Truth has become visible, however mistily, and they have nothing whatever to do with some fleeting emotion stirred by the human senses. Such good intentions have no special virtue because they are taken on some particular day; being scientific they are true intentions, and belong not to an hour, but exist until they are fulfilled. The good intentions, in other words, which are scientific, are spiritual and are lasting; those which are destroyed through the disappointment of the failure of the moment are purely sensuous, they are of the flesh, and are of the stock of those carnal beliefs of which Mrs. Eddy writes on page 263 of Science and Health, where she says, "Carnal beliefs defraud us. They make man an involuntary hypocrite,—producing evil when he would create good, forming deformity when he would outline grace and beauty, injuring those whom he would bless."

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