The Spirit of the Age by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · May 9, 1912

The Spirit of the Age

By Editor

Of the wild, mad rush for wealth which characterizes the world to-day, Rev. R. J. Campbell, of London, according to the Lutheran Witness of April 25, 1912, bears this testimony:—

My recent visit to America has made plainer to me the nature and direction of some of the characteristic tendencies of our time, which are more accentuated up to the present in the New World than in the Old. In the mad race for money, the scramble to excel one's fellows, the cruel, merciless competition between man and man for the possession of worldly good, the claims of the soul are ignored and trampled upon. Again and again, in the course of my travels, I was thrown into the company of men whose general quality could be summed up in one word—"soullessness." There was only that one word for it. It was plainly to be seen that they lived for nothing, thought for nothing, wrought for nothing, but dollars; they could imagine no good that could not be expressed in terms of dollars. Their higher faculties were atrophied; spiritual susceptibility, they had none; all their ideals and aims were utilitarian, materialistic, mundane. Do not imagine that I am describing the character of the American people as a whole; I am not; I am merely indicating a spirit which is so wide-spread among them, and exercises an influence so great, as to be a menace to their national future. And, more or less, the same spirit of temper of mind is observable everywhere throughout Christendom, though in older countries it expresses itself in some other forms than the tireless pursuit of money.

As Dr. Campbell observes, this spirit is not characteristic of America alone. It is the spirit of the age,—the spirit which forgets God, which seeks the gratification of every selfish endeavor. In the midst of this spirit, which prevails everywhere, the children of God are to show that they are possessed by different aims and purposes. They can not manifest a sordid or mercenary spirit. It is for them to show that they regard the riches of heaven of greater value than all this world can give.