Acres of Diamonds | Page 9

your duty to get rich. How
many of my pious brethren say to me, ``Do you, a Christian minister,
spend your time going up and down the country advising young people
to get rich, to get money?'' ``Yes, of course I do.'' They say, ``Isn't that
awful! Why don't you preach the gospel instead of preaching about
man's making money?'' ``Because to make money honestly is to preach
the gospel.'' That is the reason. The men who get rich may be the most
honest men you find in the community.
``Oh,'' but says some young man here to-night, ``I have been told all
my life that if a person has money he is very dishonest and
dishonorable and mean and contemptible. ``My friend, that is the
reason why you have none, because you have that idea of people. The
foundation of your faith is altogether false. Let me say here clearly, and

say it briefly, though subject to discussion which I have not time for
here, ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are
honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with
money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of
people to work with them. It is because they are honest men.
Says another young man, ``I hear sometimes of men that get millions of
dollars dishonestly.'' Yes, of course you do, and so do I. But they are so
rare a thing in fact that the newspapers talk about them all the time as a
matter of news until you get the idea that all the other rich men got rich
dishonestly.
My friend, you take and drive me--if you furnish the auto--out into the
suburbs of Philadelphia, and introduce me to the people who own their
homes around this great city, those beautiful homes with gardens and
flowers, those magnificent homes so lovely in their art, and I will
introduce you to the very best people in character as well as in
enterprise in our city, and you know I will. A man is not really a true
man until he owns his own home, and they that own their homes are
made more honorable and honest and pure, and true and economical
and careful, by owning the home.
For a man to have money, even in large sums, is not an inconsistent
thing. We preach against covetousness, and you know we do, in the
pulpit, and oftentimes preach against it so long and use the terms about
``filthy lucre'' so extremely that Christians get the idea that when we
stand in the pulpit we believe it is wicked for any man to have
money--until the collection-basket goes around, and then we almost
swear at the people because they don't give more money. Oh, the
inconsistency of such doctrines as that!
Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it.
You ought because you can do more good with it than you could
without it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches,
money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers, and
you would not have many of them, either, if you did not pay them. I am
always willing that my church should raise my salary, because the
church that pays the largest salary always raises it the easiest. You

never knew an exception to it in your life. The man who gets the largest
salary can do the most good with the power that is furnished to him. Of
course he can if his spirit be right to use it for what it is given to him.
I say, then, you ought to have money. If you can honestly attain unto
riches in Philadelphia, it is your Christian and godly duty to do so. It is
an awful mistake of these pious people to think you must be awfully
poor in order to be pious.
Some men say, ``Don't you sympathize with the poor people?'' Of
course I do, or else I would not have been lecturing these years. I won't
give in but what I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor
who are to be sympathized with is very small. To sympathize with a
man whom God has punished for his sins, thus to help him when God
would still continue a just punishment, is to do wrong, no doubt about
it, and we do that more than we help those who are deserving. While
we should sympathize with God's poor--that is, those who cannot help
themselves-- let us remember there is not a poor person in the United
States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings, or by the
shortcomings of some one else. It is all wrong to be poor,