○  russell conwell : acres of diamonds  ○

e 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 our 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 wont give in but what i sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be 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 that 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, anyhow. let us give in to that argument and pass that to one side.

a gentleman gets up back there, and says, “

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