th things that perish, while
down to the least blade of creation earth is laden with unfading riches
and God is everywhere?

If we might but learn this lesson, we people of the laden hand and the
empty heart, that since life is more than digestion and man more than
beast or machine, since determining all is the spiritual world, they
only are wise who set first things first, who use the garnered
experience of the past and the opportunities of the present to the
enriching of the soul, who listen among all the voices of time for the
words that proceed from the lips of Him who inhabiteth eternity.

LIFE'S UNVARYING VALUES

Life is the business of learning to use things as tools, the real as
the servant of the ideal, to make conditions even better that character
may grow the more, to serve in the making of things and the enduring of
things under the inspiration of the full and glorious purpose of life,
the realizing of the best for ourselves, the rendering of our best to
others.

Only an age that has lost both heart and intellect--the divinely given
measuring rods of life--will think of estimating a life by the money
measure. It is a shallow world that knows a man as soon as and only
when it has scheduled his marketable assets; nor is it a happy augury
for a nation when it acquires the habit of estimating its men by the
length of the catalogues of their possessions.

A period of outer prosperity is always in danger of being one of inner
paralysis. Luxury is a foe to life. Character does not develop
freely, largely, beautifully in an atmosphere of commercialism. A
moral decline that but presages enduring disaster is sure to succeed
the supremacy of the market.

The great danger is that we shall set the tools of life before its
work, that we shall make life serve our business or our ambitions
instead of causing ambitions, activities, and opportunities all to
contribute to the deepening, enriching, and strengthening of the life
itself. In the details of making a living it is easy to lose sight of
the prime thing, the life; it is easy to forget that the great question
is not, what have you? but, what are you?

Life cannot consist in things any more than silk can consist of
shuttles, or pictures of brushes and palettes. Life is both process
and product; but things and fame and power are no more than the tools
and machinery serving to perfect the product. Life must consist in
thoughts, experiences, motives, ide