ever wrought in her ruin and corruption. The same is true of the human race — the more they prospered the farther they wandered from God and the more dire the periodic calamities with which He recalled them. In fact God's truest servants are ever more numerous among the afflicted and the poor than in the ranks of fortune's favorites. The poor are the true Christian nobility, and among them are enacted day by day scenes of Christian heroism, deeds of heroic fortitude and patience, such as the proud aristocrats with all their pretensions are seldom capable of performing or appreciating. For though worldlings must taste betimes the chalice of suffering, it is not the chalice of Christ, but of the world, it is not drained with Christian cheerfulness and resignation, but with sorrow and loathing. Only they, says Holy Writ, who drink the chalice of the Lord are made the friends of God. But this divine affiliation is produced both in the actual sufferers and in those witnesses of those sufferings who try to relieve them. Go into the homes of poverty and disease and see the trials there so patiently endured and tell me if you are not a better man for the experience. See the little orphans wailing farewell to one another and to the old home perhaps forever, and going off to spend and end their lives how or where God only knows. Again see the parentless brother and sister, or the widowed mother proudly braving the great world, and winning from it an independent subsistence for the little ones at home. Stand by the deathbed of these latter-day saints and martyrs, and watch
