Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 152, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1917 — HIGH COST OF LIFE [ARTICLE]

HIGH COST OF LIFE

As Life Becomes More Complex It Calls for Greater Giving on Our Part. Text —“I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.”—John 10 JlO. Every time you take up a newspaper or visit a grocery or department store you are fairly staggered at the Increasing cost of living. Prices for the physical necessities of life havemounted almost beyond our reach and they continue to climb. • But the high cost of living, says Rev. Charles L.. Goodell of New York city, is a secondary matter to the high coSt of life. By life I mean the higher life, the life which Is really the man. When bus did men were boys almost anyone could have the satisfaction of being a good citizen. All he had to do was to pay his debts and keep within the law. There was no League for Social Service that he must join, and he knew little or nothing of a hundred philanthropies which are pressed upon our attention. Since that day life hasbecome infinitely more complex. Thesimple life is as much a thing of the past In morals as it is in economics. The cost of life is increasing faster than the cost of living. Conscience of the Community.

The conscience of the community of today is quite another thing from theconscience of a hundred years ago, or even a generation ago. If you ask why, the answer is: The new conscience la one which the life and teaching of Jesus Christ is developing. His words are sublimely true. One cannot take his little loaf and go off Into a corner and eat It alone. One cannot run his business as he wills to run it without regard to others. He cannot see men swept by on the awful tides of destruction without feeling that he is his brother’s keeper. One’s pulses beat fast. Eternal destinies are in the balance. We are no longer “cabin’d, crlbb’d, confined.” The low celling is lifted until it reaches the vaulted sky, and we can adopt Holmes*' familiar figure:

Leave thy low-vaulted past, Let each new temple, nobler than the last. Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast TOI thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell By Life’s unresting sea. Since the cost of life is so great and Its avenues so manifold, there must be a choice ofvalues. It is not enough to go on one ceaseless round of either business or pleasure and call that life. More Life and Fuller. “’Tls life whereof our nerves are scant." “More life and fuller,” is the cry of the soul. Jesus came to introduce us to that life and to remind us that we must develop Its highest function. We can imagine a farmer cultivating the surface of his ground, his fields laughing into ample harvests as he tickles their furrows with his hoe. But some day a mining expert comes his way and tells him that underneath fhere are great deposits of coal. If he throws down his shafts and brings the black diamonds to the surface the results will be ten times more helpful to him and to the world. We can imagine that some day another engineer tells him that deep under the coal are great, veins of gold-bearing quartz, one load of which is richer than a thousand loads of carbon dust. This is an imperfect illustration of the physical, intellectual and spiritual nature which each man possesses. While the first two are cared for,, the third will pay far the greatest dividends. Jesus never’ hesitated to say that it was a costly thing to develop the noblest powers. But for every self-denial there is glorious recompense. Take heart, the Waster builds again, A. charmed life old Goodness hath. The tares may perish, but the grain Is not for death.

Learn the High Coat of Life. As a nation we are to learn the high tost of Hfe by self-denials of which we are yet not quite aware. The blood-red sacrifices of ’76 and ’Ol may be duplicated or surpassed by 1917, but who Jan doubt that whatever the price of national life may be it will be worth to the world far more than it cost. For the pacifist and the slacker the curse of Meroz comes blistering out of the heaven: “Curse ye the Inhabitants thereof bitterly, because they came not up to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” It is the highest life for which we plead. The soul is no sailor bound by shallow seas or limited by narrow coasts. It is a deep-sea voyager. Lowly, faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near. And "every wave is charmed.