Chapter XIV
DEMONSTRATING PROSPERITY
W. John Murray
The
Realm of Reality
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.
New York, 1922.
“I lead in the way of
righteousness, in the midst of the
paths of judgment:
That I may cause those that love me to
inherit substance; and I will fill
their treasures.”
--Proverbs 8:20, 21
[159] A
noted Hindoo teacher, visiting this
country, once said that if he announced a
lecture on “How to Get Rich,”
the hall would be packed, but if he
advertised one on
“Self-Surrender,” he would
not attract a baker’s dozen. He
felt that the paramount object of the
West, particularly of the United States,
was to accumulate this world’s
goods, irrespective of methods employed,
or the uses to which these were to be
put.
The belief
has become almost universal, and while
there may be some truth in it, there is
another side which critics ought to
consider in order that their criticism be
just, even if it is not generous. When it
is understood that this country is
peopled largely with those who come here
in order to escape from the limiting and
crippling influence of poverty in all its
phases, for it is very [160] doubtful if
any one ever came here save to improve
his condition, it will be seen that what
seems to be feverish haste to amass
wealth is nothing more or less than
urgency to escape the bondage of lack and
limitation. That some do not know what to
do with their riches after they acquire
them does not change the fact that
prosperity is a universal necessity, as
much as is health. That some men do not
take care of their health does not change
the fact that health is good, or the fact
that the more we have of it the
better.
If what the
Master says is true, with regard to a
tree being known by its fruit, it might
be well for us to consider the kind of
fruit which grows on the tree of poverty,
for we may, by so doing, get some idea of
the peculiar methods by which some
persons try to get away from it. Like the
deadly upas tree of Java, over which the
birds will not fly because of the
virulent poison which it casts off, so
the tree of poverty is one which all men
instinctively shun. And since this fact
is so universal, there must be a reason
for it.
Some time
ago an old policeman, a sergeant in one
of New York’s most poverty stricken
localities, was asked why it was that
there was so much crime in his precinct,
which was one noted, not only for its
adult criminals, but for its unusual
amount of juvenile delinquency. Being
neither a psychologist nor a social
settlement worker, his answer was not the
studies reply of one schooled in these
speculations, but that of one who had
[161] studied conditions at first hand
during a period of twenty-five years on
the force. He explained that he had
noticed that the children in his precinct
began at a very early age to indulge in
comparisons between themselves and other
children who were more fortunate. At
first this attitude manifested in envy,
which presently grew into covetousness,
so that the little fingers began to
follow the eye in the direction of an
object which was very desirable, but
financially unattainable. Frequently
these thefts were accomplished without
detection, but sometimes they were
frustrated, and the method of dealing
with them was not always one which ended
the desire to possess things, but rather
one which threw the juvenile offenders
into companionship with older persons who
were also seeking to escape from their
common enemy, poverty.
He said,
further, that poverty compelled these
children to live and sleep and eat under
such conditions as made home the last
place they wished to go, or remain in,
and so they were on the streets long
after they should have been in their
beds. This led to other temptations, such
as stealing to go to the movies. He
enumerated a list of crimes which he
believed were all the outcome of poverty,
and which one would never hear of in less
congested and cleaner precincts. When
asked if he thought the children in his
territory were naturally worse than
others, he replied that all children were
naturally good--they needed only a
chance.
[162] One
may, or may not, agree with this
philosopher of the streets, but I have
never met a man who would voluntarily
choose the tree of poverty under which to
recline, especially if he had a family.
That some monks take the “vow of
poverty” is a fact; but that is not
poverty which ties a man up to a
“Providing Order,” which
relieves the individual of all anxious
concern for the future. That the
monk’s life is reduced to one of
austere simplicity may be true, but he is
not always wondering where his next meal
is coming from, nor is he lying awake
nights thinking how he is going to meet
the rent man who has threatened to
dispossess him. The monk’s
existence, to a man freighted with
responsibilities, which he wants to meet,
but which he finds himself unable to do,
is not an altogether unenviable one. The
average man does not wish to become a
monk and avoid responsibility; he
simply desires to be a man and
meet his responsibilities in a
manly way. This is as true in the
sergeant’s precinct as it is in
those other localities where
‘shabby gentility’ weeps in
private and smiles in public. Poverty is
like a precious stone in one respect, for
it has many aspects, but unlike the
precious stone, none of its aspects is
beautiful.
The
so-called man of means is not always
shielded from the stings and jibes of
lack, but often tosses on his bed when
notes are due or overdue, and nothing but
the sacrifice of one thing will enable
him to keep another thing which must
[163] be kept, if all is not to go from
bad to worse. In addition to poverty
being an actual condition, it is also a
state of consciousness, in which one may
have much and delude himself into
thinking he has little. The case of the
wealthy woman who passed away in New York
some time ago, and concerning whose will
there was so much contention, is a case
in point. She was wealthy, even as we
today consider wealth, and yet she lived
as only a miser would live, through a
persistent fear that she would end her
days in the poor-house. When we think of
a woman worth millions, eating at
inexpensive restaurants and smuggling
food into her hotel from cheap lunch
counters in order to avoid ordering from
the hotel menu and tipping the waiters in
addition, we are not surprised that her
daughter used these facts to prove that
her mother was of unsound mind when she
made her will. However, it is only an
exaggerated instance of an almost
universal insanity.
When one
considers the prodigality of nature, it
is a mild form of mental derangement to
suppose that there can be a lack in the
universe that is filled with unlimited
abundance. To be sure there is inequality
of distribution, but this is due to
“man’s inhumanity to
man,” rather than to God’s
“immutable plan.” We have
various recipes for the conquest of
poverty. The poor are recommended to be
more industrious and less extravagant,
which is not bad advice to give to any
class.
But there
are times when the most industrious and
least extravagant find themselves in what
are [164] called straitened
circumstances. War, trade fluctuations
and sickness are conditions over which
the most industrious and the least
extravagant cannot always exercise
control. It is not always because men
have spent their money in riotous living
that they find themselves, when their
little savings are all gone, unable to
purchase the remedy and food which the
doctor prescribes for a sick wife or
child. That poverty is due to drink and
gambling in many instances is true, but
frequently men and women drink and gamble
as the children in the old
sergeant’s precinct steal bananas
or apples. They want something which
instinct tells them they ought to have
and, not knowing the right way to procure
it, they yield to the temptation which
ignorance calls the easiest way, but
which subsequently proves to be the
hardest way.
If a man on
a small income tries to increase that
income by gambling in stocks or betting
on horse-races, and become more
impoverished in consequence, there is
little pity for him. If, on the other
hand, a man resists the temptation to
gamble under such circumstances, but
“drinks to forget,” we have
very little pity for him either,
especially if the pangs of poverty have
not made themselves felt in our personal
experience.
One cannot
pick up a high-class magazine today
without seeing anywhere from one to a
dozen well advertised methods by which
the conquest of poverty is to be brought
about. Poverty is the Hun of the economic
world, and all the forces of [165]
progression are the Allies which first
defend themselves against it and then
defeat it, if they can. Among such
advertisements are those which recommend
home-study of law, medicine,
chiropractics, engineering in all its
branches, and those various trainings for
which correspondence schools are noted.
From all of this very excellent advice,
it is obvious that the conquest of
poverty is to be brought about, not by
muscular, but by mental energy; for all
these systems rest upon the improvement
of the mind along lines already in
operation, or the direction of the forces
in ways other than those which the
aspirant to prosperity has been
taking.
It is almost
generally conceded that the path from
poverty to power is that of mental
culture, but this opinion is receiving
many rather hard jolts these days if one
reads some of the articles concerning
doctors, ministers and college professors
which are appearing in the papers. One
says that the man who minds the train
gets a much larger salary than the man
who trains the mind; the brakeman on a
freight train gets more than a teacher in
a high school, while the brakeman on a
passenger train gets more than an
ordinary professor in a college. The
conductor receives more than a college
president, and the engineer’s wage,
if given to the professor of chemistry or
botany in most colleges, might have a
tendency to turn his head. Professors and
ministers of the gospel have gone into
the automobile and other businesses, for
the simple reason that, with the [166]
current high cost of living, their
miserable stipends were insufficient to
buy shoes for their children. It would
seem that when one class prospers another
class suffers. War has a strange way of
making the rich poor and the poor rich.
It not only affects individuals, but
nations, so that we are led to inquire if
there is not back of it all a law which
is ever working to equalize matters.
It is all so
bewildering that we conclude that life on
this planet is largely a game of chance,
and therefore we must try to be good
sports and pray for better luck on the
next planet. On the principle that
“God helps those who help
themselves,” we have done the best
we could, only to find ourselves in sore
straits after all, so that the most
natural question has been,
“What’s the use?”
Poverty is like one of those puzzle games
which are invented from time to time,
which we try by every means in our power
to solve, only to find ourselves baffled,
for we have not discovered the little
trick connected with it.
In the
matter of solving the problem of poverty,
we have learned that a healthy body and a
well-trained mind are most valuable
assets, but when these fail to keep the
enemy from the door, as they frequently
do, then even these soon show the effect
of the unequal struggle. Poverty is a
wrestler which has thrown many a strong
man, until he learned the hold which not
even poverty can break. In struggling
with limitation, the [167] unbreakable
hold is the soul’s reliance on the
eternal promises. When we have tried all
the regulation tricks and our shoulders
are being borne to the mat, so that the
situation seems hopeless, if we can hold
on to the promise that, “The Lord
shall guide thee continually, and satisfy
thy soul in drought, and make fat thy
bones; and thou shalt be like a watered
garden, and like a spring of water, whose
waters fail not,” we shall wriggle
out from under poverty’s grasp; we
shall break away from the bondage of fear
and stand upright on our feet.
Every
wrestler will tell you that when he has
overcome fear, the struggle becomes
easier and the victory surer. We enter
the arena with this old antagonist of the
race in a state of mental uncertainty;
its reputation terrifies us; it has
thrown so many bigger and stronger men
than we, and we have witnessed those
unequal contents. We are really whipped
before we commence, just as young boxers
are defeated by the reputation of older
ones. It is an astonishing thing what a
reputation will do, if one is afraid of
it. It is a trick among boxers to play
upon the fears of youngsters who are
ambitious to win. They have skill and
they have strength, but there is too
often a hole in their mental armor. I
remember one of those unusual young men,
who, when he was told of the enormous
size of his opponent, in addition to his
terrifying reputation, replied,
“The bigger they are, the harder
they fall; and when they fall their
reputation goes down with
them.”
[168] One
does not look for sound philosophy from a
prize-fighter, but when one finds it, one
ought to apply it to those contests in
human life, which, while they may be more
dignified, are just as undesirable. If we
could look at our approaching troubles,
especially our financial ones, when they
loom large on the mental horizon, and
say, “the bigger they are, the
harder they fall,” there would be
fewer failures, and old and formidable
poverty would presently lose its
reputation. Other men have beaten it, and
so can we, if we “put on the whole
armour of God.” When a man is
afraid, there is a crack in his shield,
and it is through this opening that the
universal enemy shoots its poisonous
dart. At the close of the Civil War men
who had never known the touch of want
suddenly found themselves penniless. Some
allowed their shoulders to be pinned to
the mat and they never rose again, while
others wriggled out from under and became
richer than ever, not only in cash, but
in character.
Poverty is a
ghost which terrifies us so long as we
are children in spirit, but when we are
grown in Christ, we see it for the sham
it is and cast it off. When all our other
holds have failed, let us try this new
hold; let us hold on to the promise of
God, which reads, “They that seek
the Lord shall not want any good
thing.” We must learn to say with
the Psalmist, “All my springs are
in Thee, nothing can by any means
overthrow me or dismay me.” When we
are not sufficient of ourselves, it is
well to remember that our sufficiency
[169] is of Him in Whom is no lack. We
look for abundance with our eyes closed
to its Omnipresence, but when God opens
our eyes, as He opened the eyes of Hagar
in the wilderness, we see what has always
been here, but which we could not see
before, because fear had blinded us.
“The Lord shall open unto thee His
good treasure” when thou openest
thine eyes to see that without Him thou
canst do nothing, but with Him thou canst
do all things.
Chapter
15
* * * * *
The Realm of Reality
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
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