In these modern times we have tended to develop an attitude of self-sufficiency as we make plans and determine our course of action. The spirit of the age frowns its disapprobation upon the childish inferiority of the mind that dares not trust its own human judgment, formulate its own plans, and arrive at its ultimate decisions out of its own wealth of intelligence. It is urged that since we possess intelligence, reason, and will power, we should expect to use them and depend upon them; to depend upon an Intelligence, or a guiding Power, outside of or above ourselves, is to hark back to "primitive" man, an evidence of ancestral limitations and superstition, and one of the marks of an "inferiority complex." The attitude of the "modern man" with his "superior mind" has influenced many religious and conservative people more than we have realized. Material prosperity, with its lavish supply of conveniences, comforts, and luxuries, has played its part in taking away even from us a sense of need. And so we have to a greater or less degree drifted with the age in which we live, away from a personal, direct, and detailed dependence upon the heavenly Father in our daily and individual affairs; and too often this has been carried into the discharge of duties even in the Lord's work.
College Place, Wash.
