The Penn's Grove record., 1903-04-10

it is the latter course that is followed.
Home life is deliberately, yes and Grimm
ally, sacrificed for social life, and social life.
SO chosen, becomes the vestibule through
which many a young husband passes into
the prison house of debt. Unconsciously
often, such a man enters !. race with his
fashionable associates, and they, not his
own personal comforts, create his standard
of living. He must dress as well as they;
he must entertain as lavishly as they; he
must keep up the same pace as they. And
meanwhile these associates of his are COM
peting with another set just a little higher
in the social scale, until society becomes a
vulgar, ~feverish competition, in which
every bid for notoriety is pampered, and
every fine feeling is sacrificed. One has but
to read the so-called society columns of any
daily newspaper to witness the disgusting
spectacle. OF this competitive spirit in the
struggle for social supremacy. What place,
under such conditions, is there for "plain
living and high thinking"
A third cause for the elaboration of the
material side of life in our time is the I'M
due craving for pleasure. The emphatic
words are undue craving. I am not advo-
eating a sour puritanism or grabbed asceti-
cia.n. Pleasure has, of course, its essential
place in the scheme of right living, and to
deny that place creates a reaction which,
however ~ruinous. Is inevitable. But in our
time pleasure has become a tyranny. Its
despotism has invaded every day of the
week. 1t has no respect for time or sea-
sons. 1t appeals to every passion of the
soul, and by yelled suggestions it desecrates
the hottest emotions Of life. New York be-
comes every evening a vast Vanity Fair,
where irrational and too often degraded
pleasure lures men and women by the thou
sand to its gilded shrine. and before that
shrine "high thinking and plain living" are
nightly inundated.
These are some of the things which stand
in the way of the simple life here in New
York. What are some of the perils which
must inevitably result?
This life Of luxury and extravaganza in
tensifies class distinction. The poor man,
unable to share in these wanton e~xtrava-
hatred of his pampered betters bites at the
ropes of separation. In Europe, where a
certain hereditary distinction between the
rich and the poor is recognized, this class
bitterness is not SO keen, but in a republic
like ours, where every man feels himself as
good as another, these ostentatious displays
of luxurious extravaganza become a hotbed
of discomfort in which anarchy and COM
munish ferment. Some years ago a friend
Of mine was driving past one of the beauti.
full old homes in rural England, standing in
its stately park. He asked the driver who
lived there. "Oh," said the man, "we used
to nave lots of aristocratic company there.
They had plenty of money and they spent
it freely. We poor folks were well off
then. But now the place belongs to a
woman, and she is a Methodist, and every
thing is going to the bad" So spoke the
countryman, and from his little view this
loss of luxury and extravaganza was all
wrong. even for the poor man. But mean
while there was another side to the picture.
That estate also included a large tenement
district in one of the worst portions of
London. In wretched novels surrounded
by saloons and low resorts the miserable
people paid their rents, exorbitant for such
quarters, and these rents supplied the
the former owner. But now what has hap
pened? The lady who owns the estate to-
day is using her revenues, not for her own
luxury, but in lettering these homes, in
driving out these saloons, and in creating
a new spirit of respect and love between
her and her tenants. A few country yok-
els get less to spend for drink, but a great
city population has more real joy of living,
and the better class distinction between
wealth and poverty is at an end.
"A second penalty that we must pay for
our extravagant modes of life is that they
create unnatural appetites. The essence of
an unnatural appetite is that it demands a
constant stimulus. It needs to be pamp-
cred by new sensations, and in the effort
to satisfy this false and unnatural appetite,
we are %inventing forms of amusement so
foolish that even pagan Rome might. ex-
claim with wonder, Behold how these
conditions, who cares for the simple mamma
Of the wilderness, even though it come
down from God, if he can fill himself with
the fesh-pots of Egypt, even though he
make himself a slave to do so?
Once more, one other penalty must be
paid, and that is the heaviest of all. This
mode of life is absolutely at variance with
the spirit of the teaching of Jesus Christ.
1t is pagan, not Christian; it is barbaric,
his effort to follow in the footsteps of Jesus
Christ can live a life whose only thought
is to satisfy the merely sensuou desires.
What is the one dominant note in the ex-
ample of Him who when He walked this
earth had not where to lay His head, but
this: that we should live simply, that we
should deny ourselves daily, taking no
thought of what we shall eat or what we
shall drink or w~herewithal we shall be
clothed, for our heavenly Father knoweth.
The way of the cross is the way OF simple
life; not the way of self-indulgence and vul-
gar extravaganza, but the way which He
walked with bleeding feet is the path
along which we alone can find the joy of
plain living and high thinking.
For some of us this secret of the simple
life cannot be learned. We have dwelt too
long ia the cellar of our appetites, and the
reek of the kitchen is in our brains. We
must die as we have lived, in the tyranny
of those tastes which our surroundings
have stimulated. For such Of us, plain liv-
ing and high thinking are both alike impos-
sible. But there are our children. Please
God we need not, unless our imbecility
has become epidemic, condemn our off
spring to this nightmare of extravaganza
which has so shriveled our WI intelligence.
We can at least ask Gods grace to help US
to train the new generations in
''That homely beauty of the good old cause,
in simple innocence
And pure religion, breathing household
laws"
FOL them at least we can make the beauty
Of the simple life no poets dream, but a
divine evangel for the generation yet to
come.