○  russell conwell : acres of diamonds  ○

don’t you think there are some things in this world that are better than money?” of course i do, but i am talking about money now. of course there are some things higher than money. oh yes, i know by the grave that has left me standing alone that there are some things in this world that are higher and sweeter and purer than money. well do i know there are some things higher and grander than gold. love is the grandest thing on god’s earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. money is power, money is force, money will do good as harm. in the hands of good men and women it could accomplish, and it has accomplished, good.

i hate to leave that behind me. i heard a man get up in a prayer-meeting in our city and thank the lord he was “one of god’s poor.” well, i wonder what his wife thinks about that? she earns all the money that comes into that house, and he smokes a part of that on the veranda. i don’t want to see any more of the lord’s poor of that kind, and i don’t believe the lord does. and yet there are some people who think in order to be pious you must be awfully poor and awfully dirty. that does not follow at all. while we sympathize with the poor, let us not teach a doctrine like that.

yet the age is prejudiced against advising a christian man (or, as a jew would say, a godly man) from attaining unto wealth. the prejudice is so universal and the years are far enough back, i think, for me to safely mention that years ago up at temple university there was a young man in our theological school who thought he was the only pious student in that department. he came into my office on evening and sat down by my desk, and said to me: “mr. president, i think it is my duty sir, to come in and labor with you.” “what has happened now?” said he, “i heard you say at the academy, at the pierce school commencement, that you thought it was an honorable ambition for a young man to desire to have wealth, and that you thought it made him temperate, made him a

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