--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Newell Dwight Hillis collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 7 number: 10 published: 1904-08 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Newell Dwight Hillis, "Living for Things that Count," *Improvement Era* 7, no. 10 (August 1904): 766.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0710unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0710unse start_page: 766 end_page: 766 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1904-08) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0710unse publication_year: 1904 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1904, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Living for Things that Count today, is a problem the solution of which the human understanding may well give up in hopeless despair. It is even so with "Mormonism." Granting that we can point out many things that have contributed to its development, it does not by any means follow that we can "explain" what it is that has caused all this fruit in power and good that we see on every hand. Truth has somehow an influence over the mind and human action that we cannot fathom, and no amount of prying into the condi- tions surrounding its inception and development will help towards explaining this miracle of power. LIVING FOR THINGS THAT COUNT. "Man seems not to know how to live for the things that abide. Ours is a world in which a single hour availed for Peter and John to form a new friendship, that changed all their life. One hour availed for Gough to form a new resolution, that opened up a new career for his activity and genius. In a single hour young Gar- field formed the resolution that swept him on to fame and fortune. What possibilities of excellence are involved in the brief space of time measured between the rising of the sun and the setting thereof. Meanwhile, men go through the years, wasting days many and long, living for things that pass away. They build some structure that is to be as permanent as the hills, and, lo! the structure melts like snow. They lay the foundations of some en- terprise whose walls hold neither crack nor fissure, and, lo! it dis- solves like the cloud mist, that melts before a puff of wind. "The seasons change. The winds, they shift and veer; The grass of yesteryear Is dead. The birds depart, the groves decay; Empires dissolve, and peoples disappear; Song passes not away. Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, And kings a dubious legend of their reign; The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust: Tho poet doth remain. Dead is Augustus. Maro is alive. "Meanwhile the things that count remain after these transient things have passed away. For he that doeth the will of God abideth forever."— Rev. Hillis.