Editorial December 31, 1955 Issue

THE NEW YEAR

Helen Wood Bauman

Each New Year's Day inspires the thoughtful comparison of last year's progress with a new year's hopes and purposes. Christian Science defines progress in terms of spiritual growth and teaches one how to increase his reflection of divine power. Mary Baker Eddy did not hesitate to consider a past year in order to improve a new one. She says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 330): "It is good to talk with our past hours, and learn what report they bear, and how they might have reported more spiritual growth. With each returning year, higher joys, holier aims, a purer peace and diviner energy, should freshen the fragrance of being."

Christian Science reveals progress to be in accord with God's will for man, His spiritual image. This truth regarding progress means that there are no static periods in the experience of the real man. His identity unfolds forever to express the infinitude of God's nature, which man reflects. As God's representative, spiritual man witnesses to the fact that there is no limit to the scope of the Father's activities or to the goodness of His character. All human growth Spiritward rests upon these truths; and an understanding of the expanding unfoldment of love and purity and intelligence through real identity breaks the mortal dream in which progress appears to be an uncertain element.

The Christian Scientist works to bring to light the true order of his being as God has ordained it. To accomplish this task he needs to consider the mortal self, which the corporeal senses represent him to be, and to do this with the utmost honesty. Blindness to evil's claim to have produced a mortal selfhood and then to be influencing it in ways contrary to the will of God only hinders the revelation of one's true identity. A straight look at the claims of the material sense of life, coupled with the ability to impersonalize them by recognizing them as aggressive mental suggestions, is a great step toward the demonstration of real progress. This step is vital to one's proving the nothingness of any passivity or sin or disease which is pretending to halt one's growth.

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