Pupile received at all times. A thorough course in the principles and practice of Christian Mental Science given by study of Lessons and recitation, with lectures and drills. Prepares student for active work. THE ELEMENTARY COURSE covers two weeks' time. Charge, including board and room, with treatments when required, $35.00 for all. The drill is thorough and the Home influence helpful. Write and engage a place before you come. Only students taken in our Home, those who come to This Course is also given by correspondence, for $25, payable by easy installments if desirable to pupile, includ- ing two weeks' treatment free when needed. NORMAL COURSE, for the purpose of preparing stu- dents for lecturing and teaching, 18 lessons, $50.00. Board 318076 JANUARY, 1906 Some New Year Choughts W E KNOW that artificial divisions of time are only fanciful and that there are really no begin nings ncr endings in duration. The year is as new in December as it is in January, for our planet sweeps on and on forever in its elliptical path around the sun, neither stopping nor turning aside at any point. For the convenience of business etc., we have mapped out the sweep of time into divisions, past, present, future. But, really, there is no time but the Now, and it is eternity. Yet the influence of the changing calendar, of the renewing of dates, is strong upon us. And this influence is not always bad. The counting of birth-days, looking backward with regrets, or forward with fear and anxiety and the dissipation of periods, are bad in their effect upon our human existence. But when, at a season like this, we review ourselves, take an inventory of our stock in trade, check up wrong tendencies, stop leakages, strengthen weak places and cut off redundencies, we are preparing for better results during the incoming year. It is true that New Year resolutions are not often kept. But this is not because it is wrong to form good resolutions, nor because the persons forming them are insincere. It is because they are usually founded in self-condemnation. You first say to yourself, "You have been bad and weak. Now I am going to stop this sort of thing. Square off and turn over a new leaf." Who is going to do this? Why, that bad, weak person, the very one that began it and kept it up until now. Of course he will not stop now of his own accord, since he has been tried and condemned. If you would say this, "That which has enacted all these follies of the past is not I. I am too wise and strong to tolerate such things. I am above that plane. I know and declare my power," and hold to that attitude, you would not lapse from your good New Year's Start. There are some follies that we of the New Thought are growing above. I have just read a communication from a friend in California in which he says, speaking of so-called New Thought people: "Generally there is a saving sense of humor; but cross crankiness, whimsical idiocy and incipient insan ity constantly appear. The beautiful I Am idea is manifested in repulsive egotism; the sweet thought of living the simple life and being as a little child, is represented by a crop of big babies, and the healthy reaction against prudery runs into a morbid desire to go naked....... "As a shrewd and charitable guess, I should say that the main guys of frenzied metaphysics are practi cal jokers, who deal out hunks of sublimated humbug because that is what people want and will pay for. The restless, hungry people really want bread, but, instead of being crushed in with staves, their heads are blown up with balloon juice, and the teaching tends to make them helpless and useless in 'this world of delusions,' or any other world. It is even crowed over as a metaphysical victory when people go out of business and quit their jobs in scorn of impending starvation for themselves and their families. I wonder sometimes if Poetic Justice will absorb the bump of humor in these jobbers of frenzied axioms and leave them to seriously accept their own 'self-evident truths'. There is too much truth in my friend s criticisms. This is not the fault of the beautiful Science we teach, but of people who get into it, partially, to make money, to break away from old bonds and have not ballast enough on board to keep from floundering. There are too many of these. It is not sincere, not honest, and all such chaff will be winnowed out ere long. Let this New Year complete the process now going on in this direction. I knew one editor of a New Thought paper who wrote beautiful, glowing, uplifting things for her Journal, and at the same time was writing to me, "I am sick and tired of pumping brains. Buy me out and let me quit." This was simulating one thing while being another. Following I quote and comment upon some recent editorial utterances selected from so-called New Thought periodicals. I do not give names, as I do not care to criticise anyone personally: "Gladly do I leave my responsibilities; gladly do I yield all choice." That would be inane, deadness, nothingness. I am responsible for my thoughts and deeds and would not yield my prerogative of choice which God has given me. It would be suicide. Again: "When differences arise between those who are seeking the absolute life, it shows that either one or all are wrong, that they are in their private opinion and not in the absolute life. The solution is to let the absolute life appear, which means not to put your will into the matter." Now if the "absolute life" puts people all on a dead level without differences of opinion, really with no opinions at all, and destroys the will, then the less of it we have the better. The fact is, integration and differentation are essential to individuality, and the will is one of the highest endowments of the mind. If you wish to de-individualize and become re-distributed into the universal, then get after this "absolute life," whatever that may be. Another:-"Deep breathing cures fear." Deep breathing is good when you do it naturally. But forced deep breathing exercises, so many deeps at a time will soon kill any one. And it is not the remedy for fear. The only cure for fear is to develop a strong individuality with a powerful will, self-confidence and consciousness of the presence of Infinite Goodness. I know this is the opposite of that Hindu dream of the "absolute life," but it is the correct attitude for live people, just the same. |