IS THERE GREAT DANGER IN ACQUIRING WEALTH?

Undoubtedly but greater dangers still in the lack of wealth. The one great danger in acquiring money and in possessing it, is the danger of becoming a slave to gold. This is one of the vilest forms of slavery ( and, perhaps, no other form of idolatry is quite so benumbing to all the higher and diviner qualities of manhood as avarice.

The miser is of all characters most despised and illustrates the truth of 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 thousand fold 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 mea12 sure 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.