The approach of the first day of a new calendar year stimulates hope and invites gratitude. The year 1918 registered great victories. Retreat was turned into advance; the forces of so-called physical might were put to flight by the operation of Principle; after more than a thousand years, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem are once more protected from the spoiler, and the restoration of Israel goes forward apace. Though much still remains to be done before Antichrist is crushed under the heel of the Christ, Truth, the first day of the new year shines brilliantly for those who walk in the light, bringing a clearer understanding of that God's day of which Peter wrote, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
In the Bible account of the first day we read that "God divided the light from the darkness," and in human experience this first day keeps repeating itself, as spiritual progress calls for the rejection of evil by the light of Truth. Time is a human concept and has no place in eternity. For the sake of convenience solar days and years and lunar months have been adopted as measurements of time, but when reduced to the last analysis these computations of time are based upon the motion of the heavenly bodies, although motion is one of the most illusive and unstable of human concepts. Eternity is based upon established fact, upon the self existence of God as original cause; therefore eternity is apodictical and axiomatic, whereas time is a convention which exists solely by agreement among men and nations. Among the by-products of good which the world war has forced upon popular attention is also the uncertain nature of calculations of time. By legislative enactment time has been shifted forward and backward, although the rising and setting of the sun has remained unaltered, and that which was popularly supposed to be fixed forever has been changed by a mere stroke of an executive pen.
Every day of the seven in the order of creation has its special illumination. Of the third day -Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 509): "This period corresponds to the resurrection, when Spirit is discerned to be the Life of all, and the deathless Life, or Mind, dependent upon no material organization. Our Master reappeared to his students,—to their apprehension he rose from the grave, —on the third day of his ascending thought, and so presented to them the certain sense of eternal Life." The moment inevitably arrives in the history of every right endeavor when the full radiance of demonstration bursts upon glorified consciousness. That which was only believed is now understood; faith is fulfilled by Science; the day is at hand, the night of doubt and disappointment, of timid hope and mere expectation has passed. Scientific certainty brings the proof of the allness of light and the nothingness of darkness; thought has risen from the grave. The seventh day, the Sabbath, crowns the achievements of the other six. The allness of good no longer seems to cast a shadow which calls itself real evil, for good is the only reality. There is no counterfeit, no supposition or opposition, no argument, no claim of evil. God has made everything, and this everything is very good; there is no loophole for any dispute or question about the omnipotence and omnipresence of good. Spiritual satisfaction reigns because there is no accuser, no slanderer, no liar, in the Sabbath shadow of the Most High. When every day is a seventh day the kingdom of heaven will always be present as a day of salvation at hand, a festal day of full fruition, the great day of our Lord.
