Problems of Every-day Life: I–III

Problems of Every-day Life

Dealing with Religious, Social and Economic Questions and their

Solution. A Study for the Quorums and Classes

of the Melchizedek Priesthood

By Dr. Joseph M. Tanner

[Note. These lessons are from the text book for 1918, which, owing

to unforeseen difficulties in preparation and printing, has been delayed.

They are given in the Era, so that the classes may proceed with their studies

without interruption until the book may be published. If more copies of

the Era than now taken in any ward, are needed, new subscriptions may

b gin with the January number. — The Committee.]

Preface

I am asked to write on some of the vital problems of the age. At the

outset I anticipate a criticism that many of the chapters of this book will be

considered pessimistic. Problems are problems because they have two sides,

and because they presuppose, in our social and economic systems, a need

of reformation; they are problems also because they carry certain dangers

with them. If this were an age of optimism we should have few or no prob-

lems for discussion.

About the only real optimism which we can safely entertain is the op-

timism of hope that things somehow and sometime will come out all right.

It is our chief duty at present, however, to pursue remedies to thwart evils

which every thoughtful person must realize are threatening the social and ec-

onomic systems of the world.

War has its evils but war is also a revelation of a multitude of existing

evils that have brought it about. We are, therefore, on the threshold of a

period of reconstruction. As a people we believe sincerely that the wisdom

of this world is insufficient to meet the great demands of the future. Here-

after the world must take God into their confidence and consider seriously

the revelations which he has given for our guidance. Only a very few of

these revelations are referred to in this book because of the limitations put

upon it.

The contents of these chapters are not exhaustive. They are rather in-

tended as a basis for the discussion of present conditions of life which con-

stitute a problem for all thinking men. The classes for whom these chap-

ters are intended will have, therefore, from their own experience and read-

ing, abundant illustrations to supplement that which the author has written.

The problems contained in these discussions are the living issues; they are

very serious issues that confront us.

Furthermore, we live in an age when the most serious troubles confront

us, and as a people we may well begin the work of reconstruction that has

been prepared for us by revelation. It is time to set our houses in order

and prepare for the colossal work which peace will bring to us as a people

and to the world at large.

If I have drawn a dark picture of many aspects of the world today, I rest

in the consolation that nothing has been said in this book which, in my

thoughts, is not justified by the revelations which God has given through

the Prophet Joseph Smith to the world. The revelations in the book of Doc-

234 IMPROVEMENT ERA

trine and Covenants truly give us the most serious warnings of God's judg-

ments which are to come, and "come quickly," he has told us. If there are

those who think I have been excessively pessimistic, let them read the

words of God contained in the revelations printed in the Doctrine and Cov-

enants. They are my best defense. — J. M. Tanner.

I. — An Interpretation of the War

Definition. — The great conflict now raging in Europe represents two

great classes of wars. There are national wars, or what we might term the

ordinary war, and there are world-dominion wars. The latter take place only

at great intervals; they mark the end of the old and the beginning of a new

regime; they represent individual and national ambition for world-wide

dominion. Such wars are represented in the overthrow of the civilization

in the ancient nations inhabiting the valley of the Mesopotamia and the

banks of the Nile. Alexander wept, it is said, because there were no other

worlds to conquer. "In that day to be a Roman was greater than a king."

Rome, at the zenith of her career as conqueror of nations, began her down-

fall. Napoleon dreamed dreams, and today Germany is struggling for world

supremacy. The lesson that God is the ruler of this world has never been

learned. From ancient times, ambitions to overtop the heavens have been

thwarted amidbt confusion and decay.

The Decadence of the Old and the Birth of the New. — The fact that

nations come and go is not so important as the changes in civilization. The

process of disintegration goes on rapidly while from beneath a new order,

of things is springing up. The old regime was as blind to its fading glory

as it was to the eternal truth of God's omnipotence. We come thus to speak

of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations, each supplanting the other in

the order named. These changes have been a part of the progress of the

world from the earliest times. At these periodical changes in civilization,

some distant and "contemptible" power has come into the new life of the

world as a dominating factor. Such world-dominion wars have not only

become characterized by the unexpected which happened in them, but by

the unexpected results that grew out of them. The great war now on has

been noted for the sudden appearance of the unexpected, and according to

past epochs of history, we may reasonably expect that its effects will be the

unexpected changes and conditions of the new life which will follow. The

ground beneath our feet is giving way, and we must support ourselves by a

new and different hold upon the shifting conditions of another civilization.

The Fading Glories. — In all these past break-ups in civilization, men

have deceived themselves by their prattle about imperishable glories. They

professed to believe that their age had fastened itself upon the life of the

world forever. The fading processes became obscure to them, not because

they were not visible, but because men were blind. Today we see but do

not comprehend — a form of blindness. The world is therefore full of sur-

prises for which we are not prepared. Under such conditions men cannot

comprehend a change because the end and the beginning are not abrupt, but

the one grows gradually out of the other. The key to the mystery of it all

is locked up in the word "unexpected." If we would form some idea of

the unexpected things that await us, we must count the unexpected things

that have happened. The sure sign of the new age is "surprise."

After the Breakup. — What will happen after the disintegrating processes

have done their work? That is God's mystery, a part of his revelations. It

will be the new glory of another age. As time goes on, it will become a

field for speculation. Economists will stand amid the ruins of their the-

ories, and explain by "if's" why they were not everlastingly right. Politi-

cians will grope in the dark. The business world will begin the work of

readjustment. Community life will take on a new aspect. Customs, man-

ners, and methods will be changed to suit the needs of the new life.

PROBLEMS OF EVERYDAY LIFE 235

Changes may not Le rapid. In the past they have appeared gradually as

generation after generation passed on. This, however, is an electric age, 'and

who can say that the new life may not come with the speed which is draw-

ing the world to its new destiny. Life at such a crisis is bewildering, but it

is interesting, it is even comforting because it reveals some divine purpose

which calls for a new hope and a profounder faith.

Is Disintegration Anarchy?— Leading minds of England are in a world

of doubt. Lloyd George has recently appointed a commission to examine

industrial unrest. The president of the Corpus Christi College of Oxford

does not believe that a revolution can be averted even to the end of the

present war. In this country Andrew D. White sees the coming of anarchy.

Whether the change will be a simple distintegration or anarchy depends up-

on the question of violence. Violence comes from hatred and hatred is

inflamed by hunger. Will famine follow war? It has often been its com-

panion. Brooks Adams, in his Theory of Social Revolutions, says: "Now,

although the optimist contends that since men cannot foresee the future,

worry about the future is futile, and that everything, in the best possible of

worlds, is inevitably for the best. I think it clear that within recent years

an uneasy suspicion has come into being that the principle of authority has

been dangerously impaired, and that the social system, if it is to cohere,

must be reorganized. If capital insists upon continuing to exercise sov-

ereign powers, without accepting responsibility for a trust, the revolt against

the existing order must probably continue, and the revolt can only be dealt

with by physical force."

Government is always representative, whether it be democratic or mo-

narchial; but it represents the dominating force of the age and community.

It will hardly be gainsaid that the greater force in our country today is

capital, and that our government is primarily capitalistic, just as in Ger-

many the government is militaristic, because the greatest force in that coun-

try is military power.

We have ceased to look to the Government at Washington as our sole

protector. In the city of New York the lives of millions are dependent not

upon Congress or upon the president of the United States, but upon the

great transportation companies that hourly transport the daily bread of the

people. If it be said that state and federal governments may control these

transportation companies, it will be admitted that capital is after all the

primary power, and the government's only secondary. Some captains of

industry have set up a divine right to rule as the stewards of the people's

needs. What Mr. Adams here writes was given out before the war. The

war emphasizes the weaknesses, vices, and dangers of our national life. As

the evils of governments become more pronounced, they invite all opposing

forces in opposition to them, and hence we see the menace of capital and

labor to the present standards of life.

New Problems.— As a result of the present world catastrophe a new

order of life will come into being, old institutions will give way to new

organizations brought forward to meet the demands of the new age. Our

social, industrial, and religious life must undergo pronounced changes in the

reconstruction of a new age.

It is not easy to establish a new order of things without some prepara-

tion, some experience. Has God permitted this debacle to come into the

world without some revelation of the needs of the new life to which people

will be subjected? Is there no one to point the way, no institution given to

some delegated authority as a guide to the life of the new world, lhe

crumbling processes are already felt, but an easy-going world has not yet

become serious enough to think of substitutions. It will be the aim ot the

writer to point out in the chapters to follow some of the important and

already established methods of dealing with the new age, revealed methods

that have 3Veady found their wav into the daily lives of comparatively

236 , IMPROVEMENT ERA

small communities, but yet suited for the largest of human aggregations.

The world is being thrown into a vast caldron, the melting pot of human

institutions. What the moulding processes will be it is not easy to deter-

mine, but out of the incoherent mass of activities will come a new earth,

if not a new heaven. One may readily believe that this is God's day, that he

is speaking through those calamities which the world is bringing upon itself.

The history of the past proves that more than once it has been easier for the

voice of God to penetrate the world through the roar of cannon and the

shrieks of famine than through the vices, oppressions, and luxuries of life.

Out of great calamities have been born many divine institutions that brought

alleviation from the sorrows of life. Too bad, one may say, that we must

suffer so much that we may learn so little, learn what we might know and

practice if only our lives were turned to the will and purposes of God; but

we have our free agencies, the freest of all human institutions. It is not

agencies that make us free, but the truth which is learned only in obedience

to divine purposes. We have not the strength to say "not my will, but

thine be done." What we vainly imagine is the strength of our will is the

weakness of our selfishness and vain ambitions.

Revealed Causes. — The peace of the world is God-ordained and God-sus-

tained. If men will not acknowledge God in all things, and prefer the exer-

cise of their free agencies, desires, and lusts, they may have their own way

that they may try themselves and test divine truth. Such a test lies before

us. In a revelation of God to Joseph Smith, the Lord says, Doc. and Cov.

1:31-35:

"And he that repents not, from him shall be taken even the light which

he has received, for my Spirit shall not always strive with man, saith the

Lord of Hosts. And again, verily I say unto you, O inhabitants of the

earth, I the Lord am willing to make these things known unto all flesh.

For I am no respecter of persons, and will that all men should know that

the day speedily cometh; the hour is not yet, but is nigh at hand, when

peace shall be taken from the earth, and the devil shall have power over

his own dominion."

Again, Doc. and Cov. 101:8:

"In the day of their peace they esteemed lightly my counsel; but in the

day of their trouble, of necessity they feel after me."

See also Doc. and Cov. 43:33 and all of section 87.

// — The Ashes of the World's Conflagration

The Elements of Destruction. — When the ashes of the great conflagra-

tion are removed, they will reveal the elements that burned so fiercely and

destructively during the conflict. They will contain the same elements that

have been the moving factors in the world's great upheavals of the past-

hatred, ambition, pride, vice, luxury, idleness, and infidelity. These sins have

worked themselves into the lives of nations, by the contagious influence of

the individuals composing the social structure of civilization. There de-

velops a national spirit, a national instinct that we are compelled to yield

to for the so-called national good. When national disintegration sets in,

society is compelled anew to build up a new life out of the new spirit which

has always followed the overthrow of a passing civilization. Greece and

Rome could not conceive that their civilizations were unstable and incom-

plete, that they must pass away in order that a higher and better life might

take their place. We may see the place where others stand, but it is diffi-

cult to look at ourselves while moving forward in the course of human

events.

Hatred. — A passing examination of the destructive forces of the present

age will better help us to appreciate how the old must be substituted by the

new, how the mistakes of the past must be avoided, if we are to build with

any degree of permanence for the future.

PROBLEMS OF EVERYDAY LIFE 237

The most deadly force in the powers of destruction is hatred, the cause

of nearly all calamities to national and individual life. Wherever this de-

structive force manifests itself there will be found grave dangers to our peace

and progress. It provokes wars and wrecks all the social institutions in-

tended for man's preservation and happiness. When there is an alliance

of hatreds, armed conflict is virtually inevitable. Present world combina-

tions furnish a striking illustration. For decades England, France, Russia,

and Japan were, through jealousy and hatred, on the brink of war or actu-

ally engaged in war. There gradually arose a still greater hatred, filled by

evil ambitions. Germany drove these nations by hatred and autocratic

contempt for others into one another's arms. They not only became allied

powers, but they brought with them an alliance of hatred with which Ger-

many must now reckon. These alliances are not merely political or mili-

tary maneuvers, they are deep-seated, ingrained hatreds as deadly as they

are universal. What created these cruel hatreds? They are the outgrowth

of social vices and individual sins. Nothing makes man so great a hater

as sinful conduct.

Ambition. — A tolerably good definition of modern ambition is to get

something that does not rightfully belong to one. The word itself has fal-

len greatly into disuse in recent years. It is sometimes referred to as the

sin by which the angels fell. But the old spirit of ambition is still present,

clothed in modern raiment. Nowadays we speak more of ideals, purposes,

aims, etc., in life. We are less satisfied with a humble station in which we

may be useful. Utility is an old style brand that makes our wares hard to

sell. People are not so much concerned about what useful thing they are

doing as they are about the place they occupy — a standing. They foolishly

imagine that a standing lifts them out of obscurity. To get a standing they

must jostle and crowd one another. Then ambition begins its ignoble

ascent. There is plenty of vacant space in this world, but nations and in-

dividuals would sooner step on some one's toes than move aside. Such a

treading process sooner or later ends in conflict, with its growing hatreds.

Pride. — Pride, the insidious poison of the imagination, has blinded the

world to the calamities awaiting it. The nations are boasting of their

glories, all the while ignoring the fundamental virtues which make endur-

ance and growth possible. Some Germans talk of the superman as superior

to God. Why not? God to them is the combined effect of the forces of

nature. Man is bringing these forces, and therefore God, more and more

under his command. But the Germans act out the arrogant insolence of

their pride more than they speak it. Let the traveler stop to think. Did he

ever witness in any other country of Europe such a display of vain pride

as the Prussian officers manifest on the streets of Berlin? Yet the whole

world is filled with pride. It is not a national characteristic. However,

in Germany, vain boastings helped to bring on a war.

Vice. — The self-satisfaction of pride leads people to exclaim, "Whynot

let good enough alone?" The old contention to support royalty, that "the

king can do no wrong," has its counterpart in the masses who vainly imagine

they "can do no wrong." If the false assumption cost monarchy its throne,

it will be none the less dangerous to the whole of mankind. Our boastful

"crowning age of glory" is not working out to our satisfaction. We are

compelled to stop by the great highways of life to witness the possible base-

ness of human nature. No, not human nature, depraved nature. Men are

no fairer to their fellow-men than they are to their God. If God is excluded

from the counsels of the nations, his mercy and love will not be felt in the

conduct of men. Vice begins in the heart, or with the motives, if you pre-

fer, and answers the call of self-indulgence. The prosperity of the times

a luxurious age, is more than man can endure. It not only satisfies old

appetites, but it creates new ones. Our impatience with every form of re-

straint gives evidence of the decadence of the times.

238 IMPROVEMENT ERA

Luxury.— We speak of our luxuries as if they were the special favors

of God. We even measure our success by them. Luxuries are not only

evidence of our national decline, they are potent causes of the domestic

struggles awaiting us. Awaiting us? War is only one phase of the great

break-up. The glare of the heavens reveals the sorrows of revolutions and

anarchy to come. There is going on in the world today the growth of a.

class hatred that stifles every hopeful breath. The cleavage between the

rich and the poor is not only wider, but is deeper. To this pronounced

danger to the security of our social institutions the newspapers in their

social columns are lending the most efficient aid. They picture the display

of wealth and its wicked extravagance. They write up "my lady's $25,000

cat house." Banquets in honor of favorite dogs are pictured by artists in

glowing colors. Wealth not only seeks but demands display. To outdo,

to outshine, is the motto of the age. Fortunately, all of the poor do not

read these human follies depicted in our newspapers. The submerged nine-

tenths are not told of them, and poverty, disappointment and reverses make

the contrast all the more difficult to bear. Such a condition of life simply

amasses a hatred which awaits only a spark of hunger to touch off. Neither

this country nor Europe could endure a famine; law and social order would

be cast to the winds.

Idleness. — Idleness is the mother of discontent, whether it be the idle-

ness of the poor or the idleness of the rich. Idleness has become fashionable

in all kinds of amusements. It is a pleasure-seeking age, but it will be a

calamity-finding age. And who is to blame for these dangers which threaten

our existence? These evil forces are the companions of our higher civiliza-

tion. They are sweeping on with an irresistible power of destruction. Is it

fate? No. We have simply allowed the momentum to get beyond our con-

trol. Like ancient Israel, we can at most simply "wait upon the Lord" who

"hath spoken in the righteousness of his anger." Why speak of the inevit-

able? Why dwell upon the sorrows that await mankind? In them we have

a duty to perform. A period of reconstruction will follow. Men in sorrow

and contrition will listen. God will deliver them a message, as he has

delivered messages in the past.

Infidelity. — Can even a democracy, if Godless, exist? Infidelity is more

than a simple disbelief in God and in religious institutions. If history is

pronounced upon any one question, it is the companionship of infidelity

and vice. It was 50 in ancient Greece and Rome when pagan gods were

overthrown. In the French revolution the unity of the two forces was very

marked. Deny it as man may, it is characteristic of men to throw off re-

sponsibility with the profession of infidelity. Can justice be reached through

purely intellectual processes. Without religion conscience is merelv an in-

tellectual quality. When President Wilson declared that "the world must

be made safe for democracy," the Governor of Massachusetts added that

"democracy must also be made safe for the world." The safety of dem-

ocracy has been taken too much for granted. There have been unsafe dem-

ocracies, democracies which have fallen into decay. They are not invulner-

able, not incorruptible. Some years ago when Herbert Spencer visited the

United States, he was asked if he did not think education would correct cer-

tain flagrant evils in our great commonwealth. He immediately answered,

"No. It is a question of morals and not education." Morals are more pro-

nounced in religion than in any other social function of life. Religion and

morals are today interdependent in all civilized nations. The growing in-

difference to religious life throughout the civilized world portend no good

to our present social and political institutions, whose endurance has already

been thrown into the balance of our changing civilization. Is not all this

merely pessimism? I wish it were; and yet, if the decadent old is to be

supplanted by a better and holier new, why should we not be optimistic

about divine purposes?

PROBLEMS OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 239

We err if we imagine that war is making the world better and is there-

fore the end of the old and the beginning of the new. It simply empha-

sizes the evils which brought it on. Internal revolutions, which have al-

ready begun to becloud the horizon of our present civilized condition, warn

us that there is going to be a general overthrow, and we need not be sur-

prised to discover about us the debris of the past.

A Call to Repentance. — For more than eighty years the elders of the

Church have been calling the world to repentance, and obedience to the gos-

pel of Jesus Christ, and declaring the coming of such calamities as are now

visiting the earth. To escape such a visitation the Saints are required to

gather to the Zion of God— the pure in heart. A prophecy of Joseph Smith,

in 1831, reads:

"For after today cometh the burning; this is spoken after the manner of

the Lord; for verily I say, that all the proud and they that do wickedly

shall be as stubble; and I will burn them up, for I am the Lord of hosts;

and I will not spare any that remain in Babylon."

/// — The World's Leveling Processes

Individualities. — The fact that men enjoy separate and independent

agencies, that to every man is given an individuality, presupposes, of course,

a striking difference in men's capabilities. Again, men are born into differ-

ent environments which in themselves offer a multitude of opportunities

by which men make progress in the financial and intellectual world. These

environments we sometimes call the accidents of birth; but we may never

know to what extent the distribution of the spirits of God in this world is

the result of divine agency.

Men also move from place to place. They are thrown into different

environments by reason of their activities, and these again tell either ad-

vantageously or disadvantageously their future welfare. But even where

men do not move about from one locality to another so as to change their

environments, it often happens that an inrush of population makes a differ-

ence in their opportunities. It is easy, therefore, to understand that we are

not exclusively the architects of our own fortune, that we are creatures of

circumstances, of environment, of birth, as well as creatures of different

capabilities.

Luck. — Man is ever prone to figure out causes for certain effects which

come under his observation. Whenever it lends color to his superiority,

he is quick to discard every reason for his advanced place in the world

except that of his sheer ability. Such reasoning, of course, is in a large

measure the result of individual pride. But is there, we ask, such a thing

as luck? Luck has come to be a rather unsatisfactory word; but if it is

said that luck consists of those agencies over which we ourselves have no

control, it must be said that there is such a thing as luck,— decidedly so.

But it is impossible to say just what chance has to do with the individual

fortunes or misfortunes of men. It is true that some have the spirit of fore-

sight; they can see what is likely to happen; they figure on probabilities,

and of course take their chances, although the^ may have been so very care-

ful in their estimates that they really have few chances to take. For example :

A man has a small tract of land in a small town, or near a small town. He

has no reason in the world to believe that in such a place land values are

likely to be very great. His land can be made useful to him in a small

way, and he decides to keep it. While he is performing the individual

duties of his life, unconscious of what is going on in some great city, a

board of directors meets in a distant city, and votes on a railroad policy

that is sure to make the town in which the man lives a very populous one.

The railroad policy is carried out, thousands of people rush into the place,

land values rise rapidly, and the result is a personal fortune for the man

240 IMPROVEMENT ERA

who had nothing whatever to do with the railroad policy which made him

rich, and who even knew nothing about it. Was it the man's foresight, or

was it a circumstance over which he had no control? Call it a good

chance, or call it luck, whichever you care to do, the fact remains that be-

tween that man and his neighbor, who formerly were comparatively on

equal terms in their material standing, there is constantly arising a great

financial inequality.

Rising Values. — As a rule land values, if the land has a certain degree

of production in it, are what we might call stable values in ordinary times,

but in extraordinary times, rising values. There are those who will remem-

ber that in early days the people among the Latter-day Saints were warned

against parting with their land. Their attention was called to these rising

values which men of wisdom and more perfect insight foresaw, and the peo-

ple were given an opportunity to take it, which with rare exceptions they

threw away.

Thrift. — As men differ in other qualities of life, so they differ in thrift.

Some are economical, and have the power and industry to earn much more

than others, and the difference in thrift, of course, always creates a difference

in wealth. Some of these differences which men enjoy are the results of their

superior wisdom, and they therefore reap a rich financial reward for those

principles of progress which we call thrift. Indeed, we speak of them as

virtues. Rut all the superior advantages which certain men enjoy in a ma-

terial way over their fellow men are not advantages which have accrued

to them as a result of their wisdom or of their virtues. Many of them

have come accidentally, so far as human provision can give us the power

to discern. Whatever the causes of these differences may be, in time they

often become very painful. They are a source, very often, of great injustice,

of sorrow, of human suffering. They entail misery, at times, upon untold

generations, and the differences would continue to increase the miseries of

humanity, if there were not some leveling process by which they could be

destroyed.

Laws of Moses. — When God undertook, through Moses, to establish a

national life, he gave laws for correcting the inequalities that produce

wrongs to social life. He established the Sabbatical year and the year of

Jubilee. Every seventh year men were compelled to forego certain advan-

tages: they were compelled to release slaves whom they had bought; they

had to return land which they had obtained. They had to forgive men their

debts, and thus, by the frequent application of this law, the wrongs that

grew out of the inequalities could not become so intense; frequent correc-

tions made the sufferings much less; and above all, it had a tendency to

preserve, in a large degree, the brotherhood of man.

The Law Disregarded. — The law that God gave to ancient Israel was not

always respected. In time it was forgotten. Even the book containing it

was lost, and the people went on under the wrongs of inequalities until the

severer leveling processes were brought upon them. Surrounding nations

broke in upon them, robbed them and plundered them, and when such cor-

rections did not suffice, the Israelites were carried away into bondage, and

the entire people reduced to a condition of abject servitude. The differences

and the wrongs that grew out of them made a new beginning in life neces-

sary. Rut the leveling processes that come as a result of punishment are so

much more terrible; they are so severe, that sometimes whole nations are

pra-tically wiped out of existence. To correct the inequalities of condi-

tions in life, war sometimes has its terrible work to do. Revolutions break

out, and anarchy prevails. History teaches us that as a rule immorality

increases with the increase of inequality — with the divergence between the

rich and the poor.

Inequalities Created by War.— Witness the prodigious revenue required

PROBLEMS OF EVERY-DAY LIFE 241

for war and the taxes needed to supply them. Many believe that the rich

will be practically taxed out of existence. Will they? Or will they in time

be able to shift, by all sorts of contrivances, the burden of taxation upon the

general public. Income taxes upon great corporations and monopolies are

too often made a part of running expenses, and the public pays the bill.

Men easily conceal themselves behind corporations and practice extortions

they could not carry on as individuals. Men at the battle fronts may feel

the equalizing processes that come through comradeship, but in civil life

huge fortunes are created because of war conditions. Those who fight will

feel the pinch of finance after the war. The pinch will be severe, and those

who suffer will sense keenly the financial differences which others have

reaped at their expense. Those who have met the dangers and borne the bur-

den of war in its most dreadful aspects will clamor for some leveling pro-

cess. Selfishness will obliterate the highest patriotic motives, and men must

suffer from unjust discriminations. How much will they suffer? No human

means has ever been devised for financial equality. Money will still be an

unjust power, so great it may be as to provoke revolutions and create

anarchy.

Need of Religion. — Religion must come to the relief of the unfortunate

if serious trouble is escaped. To add to the difficulty and danger there

will be an army of dependents, many of whom will avoid the divinely-ap-

pointed duty of toil. It will be the old condition of unworthy poor anil

oppressive rich. A revelation in 1831 portrays the unhappy lives of both

classes, Doc. and Cov. 56:16,17.