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Show Stressing Need of External Things Draws Soul Near to Danger Line By DR. HALVORD E. LUCCOCK, Yale Divinity School. The chief trouble with America today is not so much commercialism commercial-ism and materialism, despite the remarks of foreign lecturers and writers, but cxternalism the habit of thinking too much of the outside world and not enough of the spirit. It is this current American feeling of reverence for external bigness that is our biggest fault. The first lesson of Jesus in the curriculum of life is to keep from being smothered in a multitude of external things. Do not let the spirit be crowded out by over-emphasis on the life about us. Life, it seems, has become a parade down a vast street of brilliantly lighted show-windows filled with thousands of articles, each crying out their necessity to our happiness, and ready to spring at us. How can we even approximate what used to be called the simple life when apparently there is such an increase in the number of things we must have to get along? How can we maintain an inner light in this constant parade? We are not only urged to buy, but our pride and vanity is appealed to and our envy is aroused in the modern advertisements which urge us to get ahead of our fellows, to own something better than our neighbors. Pride and envy and all things that are in deadly opposition to the spirit of Jesus seem to be the basis of it all. There is a danger to our souls in putting too much stress on the clutter of outside things. Fortify yourself your-self against an inner emptiness with an outer fullness. Have something inside yourself to show to God. |