The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1904-01-07
New Years Resolves
Better TO Make and Break Them
Than Not to Make Them at All

GONE facetious individual has de-
y fined New Years day as "a time
when men make good resolutions
IN the confidence of breaking them as
soon as possible" But he has much
to learn to his own profit who sneers
at good resolutions because some men
break them. To resolve to do right
does not mean necessarily that one
Will keep the promise, but such pur-
pose, whether outwardly expressed or
lnwardly understood, is proof that the
individual is conscious of abiding sin
of some sort
II is the self-righteous individual
who Is in danger. Good resolutions
are born of repentance; and repent
ance when genuine is a cardinal vir-
tue. The self-righteous fellow does
not resolve to do better because his
vanity tells him there is nothing
wrong in his makeup. He may go
along committing plumbers every day
and doing no end of mischief Such a
fellow is beyond redemption. Like
Ephraim of old, he is joined to his
idols and should be left alone.
Doubtless there are many thought
less and some insincere good resolves
made on New Years day. Neverthe-
less it is good thing that many
men do begin the new year with re-
solves to strive after what is higher
and better. 1t is a marked and glori-
fed improvement upon the custom
once so general but now, thank God,
obsolete, of men going from house to
house paying calls and guzzling wine
or stronger drink until before the
round was completed they were hope
lessly drunken.
1t is a great deal better for a man
to resolve hundred times and fail
in each resolve than to go along con-
tented with his lot of sin and shame.
There is hope for a man just as long
as there abides in him desire for what
is better. 1t is well to enter into argu-
ment with ones self only after due
deliberatioG, but broken pledge 20 do
right is far better than no pledge
at all.
There is nothing strange in associa-
ton of good resolves with the dawn of
new year. On the contrary, the oc-
casion is one that suggests just such
ge1eral practice. The old year has
ended. It's memories suggest Sins
committed while conscience slept"
practices that degraded the moral man.
follies that brought shame and vices
that weakened body and brain. But
memory is not all. Body and mind tell
the sensible man that such practices
end in physical wreck and moral de-
cay.
The year is new and clean The sun,
just risen, looks upon it for the first
time. Men of business close up their
pages for the year ended and begin
new and fresh ones for the new year
that has dawned. They figure out ac-
curately their losses and their gains in
the old year, subtracting one from the
other.
AS the merchant begins his year
anew, why may not the moral nature
of man be renewed if the memories
of the past year and the physical
of the present suggest
the need of a striving after what is
higher and better?
That the practice has been abused
is no argument against its use. That
some men have made good resolutions
only to break them is not evidence
that reform is impossible Striving
after what is right is Godlike. One
may raise his standard so high as not
to be able to attain it, but there is
virtue in every attempt to make better
ones life. Indeed one may find at the
closing of long life that he has tried .