Acres of Diamonds: Our Every-day Opportunities
great wealth, is here in Philadelphia now, within the reach of almost
every man and woman who hears me speak to-night, and I mean just what I
say. I have not come to this platform even under these circumstances to
recite something to you. I have come to tell you what in God’s sight I
believe to be the truth, and if the years of life have been of any value
to me in the attainment of common sense, I know I am right; that the men
and women sitting here, who found it difficult perhaps to buy a ticket
to this lecture or gathering to-night, have within their reach “acres of
diamonds,” opportunities to get largely wealthy. There never was a place
on earth more adapted than the city of Philadelphia to-day, and never
in the history of the world did a poor man without capital have such an
opportunity to get rich quickly and honestly as he has now in our city.
I say it is the truth, and I want you to accept it as such; for if you
think I have come to simply recite something, then I would better not be
here. I have no time to waste in any such talk, but to say the things I
believe, and unless some of you get richer for what I am saying to-night
my time is wasted.
I say that you ought to get rich, and it is 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, anyhow. Let us give in to that argument and pass that
to one side.
A gentleman gets up back there, and says, “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 well 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 one 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 Peirce 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 anxious to have a good
name, and made him industrious. You spoke about man’s ambition to have
money helping to make him a good man. Sir, I have come to tell you the
Holy Bible says that ‘money is the root of all evil.’”
I told him I had never seen it in the Bible, and advised him to go out
into the chapel and get the Bible, and show me the place. So out he went
for the Bible, and soon he stalked into my office with the Bible open,
with all the bigoted pride of the narrow sectarian, or of one who founds
his Christianity on some misinterpretation of Scripture. He flung the
Bible down on my desk, and fairly squealed into my ear: “There it is,
Mr. President; you can read it for yourself.” I said to him: “Well,
young man, you will learn when you get a little older that you cannot
trust another denomination to read the Bible for you. You belong to
another denomination. You are taught in the theological school, however,
that emphasis is exegesis. Now, will you take that Bible and read it
yourself, and give the proper emphasis to it?”
He took the Bible, and proudly read, “‘The love of money is the root of
all evil.’”
Then he had it right, and when one does quote aright from that same old
Book he quotes the absolute truth. I have lived through fifty years of
the mightiest battle that old Book has ever fought, and I have lived to
see its banners flying free; for never in the history of this world
did the great minds of earth so universally agree that the Bible is
true--all true--as they do at this very hour.
So I say that when he quoted right, of course he quoted the absolute
truth. “The love of money is the root of all evil.” He who tries to
attain unto it too quickly, or dishonestly, will fall into many snares,
no doubt about that. The love of money. What is that? It is making an
idol of money, and idolatry pure and simple everywhere is condemned by
the Holy Scriptures and by man’s common sense. The man that worships
the dollar instead of thinking of the purposes for which it ought to be
used, the man who idolizes simply money, the miser that hordes his money
in the cellar, or hides it in his stocking, or refuses to invest it
where it will do the world good, that man who hugs the dollar until the
eagle squeals has in him the root of all evil.
I think I will leave that behind me now and answer the question of
nearly all of you who are asking, “Is there opportunity to get rich in
Philadelphia?” Well, now, how simple a thing it is to see where it is,
and the instant you see where it is it is yours. Some old gentleman gets
up back there and says, “Mr. Conwell, have you lived in Philadelphia for
thirty-one years and don’t know that the time has gone by when you can
make anything in this city?” “No, I don’t think it is.” “Yes, it is;
I have tried it.” “What business are you in?” “I kept a store here for
twenty years, and never made over a thousand dollars in the whole twenty
years.”
“Well, then, you can measure the good you have been to this city by what
this city has paid you, because a man can judge very well what he is
worth by what he receives; that is, in what he is to the world at this
time. If you have not made over a thousand dollars in twenty years in
Philadelphia, it would have been better for Philadelphia if they had
kicked you out of the city nineteen years and nine months ago. A man has
no right to keep a store in Philadelphia twenty years and not make at
least five hundred thousand dollars even though it be a corner grocery
up-town.” You say, “You cannot make five thousand dollars in a store
now.” Oh, my friends, if you will just take only four blocks around you,
and find out what the people want and what you ought to supply and set
them down with your pencil and figure up the profits you would make if
you did supply them, you would very soon see it. There is wealth right
within the sound of your voice.
Some one says: “You don’t know anything about business. A preacher never
knows a thing about business.” Well, then, I will have to prove that I
am an expert. I don’t like to do this, but I have to do it because my
testimony will not be taken if I am not an expert. My father kept a
country store, and if there is any place under the stars where a man