Editorial December 31, 1927 Issue

A New Outlook

Ella W. Hoag

The beginning of a new year is generally the signal for men to brighten their viewpoints, to start afresh on life's journey, to look with new vision towards better and holier things. Men always admire whatever prophesies fresh vigor, whatever predicts new possibilities. Freshness is a quality which all the world loves. Indeed, men are perpetually seeking something new, something which brings to them fresh inspiration, fresh hope, fresh courage; they ever desire that which presents to the human consciousness the thought of sweet renewal.

However difficult the problem, however adverse the circumstances, however trying the conditions, there comes a spontaneous sense of joy with the thought that one may begin anew. To the Christian Scientist the Scriptural statement that God's compassions "are now every morning" always comes with a sense of invigoration. Indeed, even that "good the past hath had," which "remains to make our own time glad," may be looked upon from the standpoint of the freshness of the now, and so help in the accumulated unfolding of good.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 259) Mrs. Eddy says, "The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration." In this statement of our beloved Leader there is presented a new outlook for all who would demonstrate true healing. The world at large in its efforts to accomplish through various material methods the healing of sickness has, because of its failures, been continually forced to seek something new. As a consequence, its methods have been perpetually changing for over four thousand years. What it has called a "new discovery" has soon disappeared in its own proved inadequacy to meet the human need. Because those presenting medical methods have fundamentally desired to help mankind, they have felt an ever recurring hope that something new would be discovered which could be invariably depended upon to effect the healing of the ills of men. Their efforts, however, have been based on a belief in the reality of both matter and evil, and the belief of good in matter, which has been accepted as a supposed antidote, has failed because of its lack of reality.

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