art of hearts
said, "Lord haste the day!"
The parents passed on in the fullness of time. Some of the children
went before them. Those who were left fell heir to the big house and
the beautiful grounds, but they were mature men and women then, and
they had lost the art of enjoyment. The habit of saving and grubbing
was upon them, and their aspirations for better things had long ago
died out. Everything had been saved for the future, and now, when it
came, they found out that it was all too late. The time for learning
and enjoyment had gone by. A few dollars spent on them when they were
young would have done so much.
If that is a poor policy for earthly parents to follow, I believe it
is not a good line for a Heavenly Parent to take.
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.
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