The complexity, the artificiality, the profusion of our belongings absorbs the larger part of our interest. The energies of invention are mainly directed to the creation of new wants. As the resources of the earth are developed, life takes on an accumulating burden of cares and conventions and superfluities. We read, with a wonder which is a thinly disguised admiration, the stories of the extravagances of the people of the whirlpool, but most of us are jogging along after them, wishing that we could get into the swim ourselves. Our houses are cluttered with adornments; our social functions are spending matches; our feasts invite to satiation; our funerals are exhibitions of extravagance. This thing has been growing by leaps and bounds, and the time has come when we are fairly swamped by the abundance of the things which we possess. Nay, it can hardly be said that we possess this abundance; it possesses us:-- "Things are in the saddle And ride mankind." In recent years the cry has been rising for a simpler life. It is a voice in the wilderness; in the din and clatter of our complex civilization it seems faint and far off, but it is making itself heard; it begins to be evident to all thoughtful people that we must somehow manage to get away from these entanglements of sense and live a freer life. In these artificialities and extravagances the soul is enfeebled and belittled, and the national vigor is lost. If we want to save our nation from decay we must learn to live a simpler life. And this change will not be wrought out by evolutionary processes; it means revolution rather; not by violence, we may trust, but certainly by choice, by effort, by struggle and resistance we shall turn back these tides of materialism, and lead the current of our national life into safer channels. We are not going to strip our lives bare of beauty, or to consign ourselves to the meagreness of the anchoretic regimen; we shall have beautiful homes and abundant pleasures; but we must learn to make our spiritual interests supreme, and not suffer our thought to be blurred and our faith enfeebled and our love stifled in the atmosphere of modern materialism.