the old proverb “Money is a good servant but a hard master.” No other type of character exhibits such unreasoning folly and seems so fully to merit the rebuke: “Thou Fool.” The one safeguard in the acquisition of wealth is the constant, unremitting cultivation of the human sympathies and the exercise of benevolence. Without this, the acquisition of money is generally attended by a freezing up of the moral nature and a growing love for money for purely selfish purposes, or for money’s sake, ending in avarice and the wretched condition of the miser. It is quite easy to see how the rigid economy many feel called upon to exercise in rising from poverty to wealth, and the constant mental habit of reaching out in desire and act for material gain, would in the lapse of years work a transformation of character, so that men who set out in life with an ambition to acquire a fortune for the uplift of humanity, find with the gaining of the fortune they have lost all benevolent desire. This is an unspeakable calamity to multitudes of men who become enslaved not by money, but by the love of money, and miss the grandest opportunity of a life dowered with the possession of money the privilege of using wealth to enrich themselves and their fellows with that increasing knowledge, happiness and virtue, that constitute the eternal riches of the soul.
Better a thousandfold for a man that he live and die under the disadvantages and limitations and hardships of poverty and retain the spirit of brotherhood and humanity in his heart, than to acquire the wealth of Croesus and shrink his soul up to the littleness, meanness and wretchedness of a miser.
A very good test of our own soul attitude toward money, a very fair indication of how we would use great wealth if it came to us, may be had in the serious answer of the question: How are we using the measure of wealth which is ours today? How much have we contributed to purely benevolent objects this past year?
A man should ever recognize his own kingship and demand a liberal income from the world, and it is his business to see to it that all obstacles in himself and his environment are removed which would hinder a generous flow of Nature’s great stream of Opulence toward himself. And then he should live like a king, and be as generous as a king, with his fellowmen.
We Seek to Intensify Your Desires for Wealth
In place of encouraging contentment with Poverty, we preach the Gospel of Discontent. We would whet your desires for wealth and intensify your love not of money but of the good things in life which money represents. It is a misinterpretation of life and of all true religion to deny either the vast advantages of money on the one hand, or the right and duty of all men to possess and use it in as large a degree as is consistent with honor and justice. The inherent desires of men, the demands of the world today upon us in our complex civilization, the Law of Opulence everywhere seen in Nature, all prove that men ought to conquer conditions and amass wealth.
Lesson 1 — The Making Over of One’s Self
Our first lesson is introductory, desiring to give the student the right viewpoint of the subject, to enable him to see clearly the relation between character and achievements in life, and to clear the ground for the practical rules and instructions to follow:
Our first rule then, and one of the most important of all, is this:
MAKE YOURSELF OVER
The student of these lessons will very probably interpose this objection: We expected to get practical instructions in money-making and our teacher is giving us theoretical instruction in the building of character.
And for the very good reason that moneymaking, money-keeping and right moneyusing depend on character. Nothing more directly bearing on material interests could be given a student than the up-building of a strong, progressive, courageous and determined character. All real success in life in all departments of human endeavor depends on that. Men conquer material conditions by first conquering themselves. Men become rich in worldly goods by becoming rich in intellectual power, in faith, hope, courage, and in the creative powers of the mind. The outward life is a reflex of the inward life and no man can become master of the outward and physical realms who does not master the kingdom within. No one is prepared to make wealth, conserve wealth, or rightly use wealth, who is in mental poverty, moral weakness or of a cowardly spirit.
The Great Master of Nazareth knew the order in which happiness, harmony, health and riches in fact all outward good come into the life, and expressed it when he said: “Seek first the Kingdom that is within and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Multitudes of men want results in their lives without the trouble on their part of furnishing the efficient cause. But results do not come from mere wishing. Harvests do not come without the sweat and toil of the laborer and the sowing of the seed.
All the greatest blessings of life and all our mightiest achievements result from right thinking, right feeling and right willing.
Until a man gets the right conception of the meaning of life, of the unlimited powers of the human soul, until his nature is burning with desire to do and dare and win, until his Will is developed by exercise and he has acquired Courage and indomitable Perseverance, he is poorly equipped for either attaining or rightly using money. It is well worth the student’s attention, therefore, to study the relation between strong character and great achievements.
Most people have to do considerable judicious weeding in the garden of their minds getting rid of many inherited and traditional ideas and notions of earlier times freeing the mentality from Fear, Worry, Doubt, and planting therein the seeds of Faith in themselves, in Nature, in the Law of Opulence, Faith in their own Rights, and developing Courage, Hope, Ambition and Patience, until mentally and spiritually they have rebuilt themselves into a nobler type of being.
As man’s present outward condition whether poverty or wealth, happiness or misery is largely the result of his past methods of thinking, so will the future outward conditions be the direct outgrowth of his future methods of thinking.
“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” which is but another way of saying that man’s body is the result of his thinking (conscious or unconscious); his speech, manner, gait, his culture conduct, his influence among men, his success or failure all are the natural sequence of his thoughts.
How, then, you ask, can one make himself over? Just as a tailor makes over a coat, a carpenter makes over a house, a shipbuilder makes over a ship by changing the pattern or the design. We build our lives from Ideals as the carpenter builds his house from plans. If we change our ideas, our conceptions of life, its privileges and responsibilities, our thoughts of ourselves, our ideals of character, and persist in holding the new ideas and ideals, we shall develop characters in harmony with them. Whatever we want in our outward life in material expression, we must first build into our mental life, into our Ideals, Purposes and Will.
Events, conditions and seeming results of chance or miracle in our outward life, are all under law and in reality are mostly genuine materializations of forms we have built up in our thought realm.
Life proceeds as a stream from the “within” to the “without,” from the mental and spiritual to the physical and material expressions. We must therefore create wealth in the mind before we realize its possession in the life.
This is not peculiar to the subject of money-making but applies to all life’s activities, as we see that the architect first builds his house in his mind before he erects it on the material plane; the engineer constructs his tunnel mentally before he pierces the mountain or builds his underground railway; the financial magnate builds his plans of commercial conquest or aggression in the silence and secrecy of his own mind before he takes the first step toward their outward realization.
We shall treat this more fully in succeeding
