We need an equipment for this present life which will hold us steady even when everything around us is disturbed; that will make us desire the good of every one, even those who are intent upon doing us evil; that will transform the humblest and most disagreeable task into one of real pleasure; that will enable us to see that we have set too high a value on the safety of life and property and too trifling an estimate on spiritual things; that will give us a proper estimate of our own importance in the general scheme of things, so that we will not think we are a worm in the dust, nor yet mistake ourselves for the President of the Company!

The work of the Church is to teach these ethical values to the people.  It must begin by teaching us to have more faith in each other, and more cooerdination.  We cannot live a day without each other, and every day we become more interdependent.  Times have changed since the cave-dwelling days when every man was his own butcher, baker, judge, jury, and executioner; when no man attempted more than he could do alone, and therefore regarded every other man as his natural enemy and rival, the killing of whom was good business.  Cooeperation began when men found that two men could hunt better than one, and so one drove the bear out of the cave and the other one killed him as he went past the gap, and then divided him, fifty-fifty.  That was the beginning of cooeperation, which is built on faith.  Strange, isn’t it, that at this time, when we need each other so badly, we are not kinder to each other?  Our national existence depends upon all of us—­we have pooled our interests, everything we have is in danger, everything we have must be mobilized for its defense.

Danger such as we are facing should drive the petty little meannesses out of us, one would think, and call out all the latent heroism of our people.  People talk about this being the Church’s day of opportunity.  So it is, for the war is teaching us ethical values, which has always been a difficult matter.  We like things that we can see, lay out, and count!  But the war has changed our appraisement of things, both of men and of nations.  A country may be rich in armies, ships, guns, and wealth, and yet poor, naked, and dishonored in the eyes of the world; a country may be broken, desolate, shell-riven, and yet have a name that is honorable in all the earth.  So with individuals.  We have set too high a value on property and wealth, too low an estimate on service.

Our ideas of labor have been wrong.  Labor to us has meant something disagreeable, which, if we endure patiently for a season, we may then be able to “chuck.”  Its highest reward is to be able to quit it—­to go on the retired list.

“Mary married well,” declared a proud mother, “and now she does not lift a hand to anything.”

Poor Mary!  What a slow time she must have!

The war is changing this; people are suddenly stripped of their possessions, whether they be railroad stock, houses, or lands, or, like that of a poor fellow recently tried for vagrancy here, whose assets were found to be a third interest in a bear.  It does not matter—­the wealthy slacker is no more admired than the poor one.  Money has lost its purchasing quality when it comes to immunity from responsibility.