roduce 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 i