. I doubt whether it is common for rich men to think any better of
themselves merely because they are rich; but if they can make their
riches, and their financial skill, available to save the State, they
will think better of themselves, and they will have a right to do so.
There is a natural jealousy of wealth, especially when it takes the
form of a passion for accumulation, which demagogues and fanatics know
how to use for bad ends. One of the incidental benefits resulting from
a great national struggle is, that all these social misunderstandings
and heart-burnings are suspended, are healed. The people see and feel
and acknowledge that a real title to nobility is found, not in wealth
itself, but in wealth generously and nobly bestowed.

Others are manifesting their public spirit by sacrifices of _time_ and
_labor_. And here I wish I could find fit terms in which to
acknowledge the services and sufferings of women. You have heard of
the Spartan mother equipping her son for battle, and giving him, last
of all, the shield, with the brief and stern farewell, "With it or on
it." We expect no such stoicism now, but we expect what is better. We
expect that Christian mothers, with hearts bleeding for their country,
and bleeding for their children, will say, "It is the will of God that
they should go," and, furthermore, that they will go, having always
been taught at home that there are many things worse than death. And
then how many fingers are busily at work in all classes, rich and poor
alike, to provide for the comfort of those who go? They even ask for
the privilege of tending the sick and wounded. How many, brought up in
ease and affluence, would follow in the steps of her whose tender
voice, the very rustle of whose dress by the bedside of the dying
soldier was as a glimpse of heaven. I have heard men call this
"romance." But is it well, or right, or tolerable, in times like
these, to look round for side motives, when the motive avowed is
reasonable and probable? I believe, as I believe I live, that many who
never knew what it is to work before, are ready to thank God for the
chance they now have to live to some purpose.

But will our men _fight_? There is no denying that this word sounds
disagreeably in a Christian discourse; still, I have no misgivings in
respect to it,--no extravagances to take back; not the beginning of a
doubt but that there are wars which, on one side at least, are
necessary, and just, and holy. T