Commerce & Christianity (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV THE SIMPLE LIFE To anyone thoughtfully looking out upon society it must often appear that there is at least one respect in which all the currents of the modern world are running powerfully in opposition to Christianity. The one great characteristic of life as Christ would have had it was its profound simplicity, but all the movements of our time seem to be tending continually to make life profoundly complex. Life to Christ was the placid existence of the hills and plains of Palestine. It was the life of the village, of the open air, of the lakeside, of the cornfield and the vineyard. It was typified by the lilies of the field and by the sweetness and trustfulness of little children. It was leisurely and quiet and contemplative; its needs were extremely few and its tastes were simple. Life in our day looks to be necessarily the reverse of all this. Society is infinitely complex; individual existence seems to be partaking of its complexity and more and more so every year. In all civilised countries there is a tendency more or less decided for the village to empty itself into the town. Population grows denser; needs, or what are supposed to be needs, become more numerous and imperative; even pleasure-taking in many forms has become an exacting obligation; the organisation of industry grows more elaborate; education is higher; trade is on a vaster scale, and more intricate in its system, and the individual life seems every year to be further and further removed from the simple ideal that Christ held up to His followers, more and more complex, more burdensome, more artificial. Now how is this tendency to be regarded? There is no disputing its reality. Society is unquestionably growing more organic, more systematised, less natural, while the Christi...