The Law of Proper
Beginning
(New Year's Resolutions)
Excerpt from a sermon
by:
Rev. W. John Murray
(Unknown date)
Reprinted from The Truth
Vol. XVI, No. 1, January 1927.
The beauty
of a New Year's resolution is that it
always has something ahead of it,
something to lure us on. We may not
attain, without falling occasionally, the
height of the right direction, and there
is no reason why we cannot resolve again
the same thing, even if we should slip
once in a while. Many a man fails to keep
his good resolutions because when he
stumbles he asks: "What's the use?" If
"the just man falls seven times a day" it
is because he refuses to stay down. As
often as he falls he picks himself up
again, on the principle that "a man may
be down but he is never out."
Many a man
refuses to think that the new year is
going to be an improvement on the old
one. "All years look alike to me," says
he, and he neither resolves nor improves.
He considers New Year's resolutions all
"bunk," but if he never makes one he is
no criterion. He is always looking back.
Consequently he stands still, like Lot's
wife, but she turned to salt, and that
was some advantage. As far as many people
can see into the future there is not much
to hope for, but this is not because the
future holds nothing of worth -- it is
because they have no prophetic vision,
and this is a calamity. In the early days
it never seemed as if New York would
extend itself above Fourteenth Street,
but a certain Catholic bishop felt it
would, and he bought a piece of property
in the country for a future church. That
church stands at Fiftieth Street and
Fifth Avenue. It is St. Patrick's
Cathedral, and its value is enormous. All
progress and prosperity come from looking
to the future and resolving to make the
present a fit preparation for it.
There is one
thing we must remember at the
commencement of a new year and that is to
forget the old one as soon as it is
possible. Let us have no regrets, and no
remorse for the things we did or the
things we failed to do. As the new year
comes, and a mother's face is absent from
the family table, a son or daughter is
apt to say: "If I had been kinder to her
I could bear her passing with greater
fortitude." Don't spoil next year by
thinking of your meanness of last year.
Pick yourself up and be kind to some
other person's mother. Otherwise you will
be so full of regret that you will not be
able to be kind to anybody. Say to your
soul what the Prophet said to his: "If I
have sinned, I will do so no more." And
if you should sin again, repeat the
saying and presently your resolution will
incorporate itself in your life and
conduct as a persistent habit tends to
become automatic.
I read in
one of my Christmas presents this week a
little sentiment entitled: "Start Where
You Stand." It was a poem, really based
on an experience which Mr. Berton Braley
quotes as follows: "When a man who had
been in prison applied to Henry Ford for
employment he started to tell Mr. Ford
his story. 'Never mind,' said Mr. Ford.
'I don't care about the past. Start where
you are.'"
Start where you stand and never
mind the past;
The
past won't help you in beginning
anew,
If you have left it all behind,
at last,
Why,
that's enough, you're done with it,
you're through.
This is another chapter in the
book,
This
is another race that you have
planned;
Don't give the vanished days a
backward look,
Start
where you stand.
