As we leave behind a troubled year, and move forward into “new views of divine goodness and love”, I am reminded of a poem which Britain’s King George VI quoted in his first wartime broadcast towards the end of December, 1939. The poem was written by Minnie Louise Haskins, and it reads in part:
“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’
So I went forth, and finding the hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me forth towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone east”.
Mary Baker Eddy defines YEAR in part as “a solar measurement of time; mortality; space for repentance. Eternity is God’s measurement of Soul-filled years”.
When thinking of the New Year, I came across a poem written by Mrs.Eddy on January 1, 1910. We read in Miscellany that “the lines of the poem were written extemporaneously by Mrs. Eddy on New Year’s morning. The members of her household were with her at the time, and it was gratifying to them, as it will be to the field, to see in her spiritualised thought and mental vigour a symbol of the glad New Year on which we have just entered”. This was our Leader’s poem:
“O blessings infinite!
O glad New Year!
Sweet sign and substance
Of God’s presence here.
Give us not only angels’ songs,
But Science vast, to which belongs
The tongue of angels
And the song of songs”.