Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1954-02-07
More Than Mere Matter

It is noteworthy, in this age of rampant
materialiSm, that President Eisenhower, Chief
Justice Warren, Vice President Nixon and
numerous outstanding members of Congress
took part here the other day in breakfast
prayer meeting.
In itself, of course, the meetng-sponsored
by the International Council of Christian Lead
ership-was not the sort of event that wins
big headlines. Still. the mere fact that it was
held may be interpreted as small but not
insignificant indication of a returning aware
ness among Americans-in high places and
low-that man is not just piece of perishable
flesh but creature endowed with soul and
spirit and an ultimate destiny that reaches
far beyond the grave.
This spiritual concept, which once held a
prime place in our society, will be stressed
again this afternoon at yet another event in
which the President, together with leading
figures OF the jewish Protestant and Catholic
faiths, will take part. Staged by the American
Legion to mark Four Chaplains' Day and to
promote continuing effort to combat the
dangers of excessive materialism, the event
will be Nationwide televison program center
ing on an appeal to peoples in all lands ito
seek divine guidance in their everyday actv-
tiles by regular church attendance. daily family
prayer, and religious training of youth"
There are certain individuals who may
take dim view of all this and dissent from 1t.
But they are people who seem entirely indiffer-
ent to the actual and potential evils inherent
in any philosophy that would wall off man
from his Creator or define him as nothing but
essentially meaningless matter in a world,
universe, cosmos that is purely materialistic
in origin-a mere mechanistic accident, not the
creation of a supreme supernatural intelligence,
not the wondrous .handiwork of the First Cause
Uncaused otherwise known as God, but simply
a purposeless thing without the slightest
Spiritual or metaphysical significance.
In an era when such thinking has come
to exercise marked influence on life every
where, there is surely more than coincidence
in the fact that we see all around us kind
of social and political decay. We see 1t in
widespread juvenile delinquency, in ever
increasing crimes of violence, in the growth Of
me-hrst selfishness among individuals and
pressure groups, in the ascendancy of tawdri-
ness and vulgarity in the entertainment and
other felds-in less and less spirituality and
more and more hedonism on a scale so big that
a popular book has flayed our generation as
generation of vipers" Perhaps the books
criticism is extravagant, but when men forget
that they are children of God, when they act
as if they had no higher purpose than merely
to live and die in this world, then they do indeed
equate themselves with the lower animals.
More than that, when human beings do this,
they place themselves on one of the roads to
enslavement. For the logical extreme Of mate
rialism-absoute materialism-is the develop
ment Of law-of -the-jungle anarchy-an an
archy and a tyranny unrestrained by any re-
ligious feeling that there is just and judging
Creator ruling over all
AS Paul has written, "Where the Spirit
of the Lord is, there is freedom" There, too,
is decency-and a measure of happiness and
peace of mind and soul that no man can
know who regards himself as mere matter
having no no5ler end than the lowliest beast
of the field or an insensible rock.