more than he can
possibly ever use, always eager for more, growing still more eager and
grasping the nearer he comes to life's end, then lying down, dying, and
leaving it. It seems to me about as sensible for a man to have as the
great aim and ambition of life the piling up of an immense pile of old
iron in the middle of a large field, and sitting on it day after day
because he is so wedded to it that it has become a part of his life and
lest a fragment disappear, denying himself and those around him many of
the things that go to make life valuable and pleasant, and finally dying
there, himself, the soul, so dwarfed and so stunted that he has really a
hard time to make his way out of the miserable old body. There is not
such a great difference, if you will think of it carefully,--one a pile
of old iron, the other a pile of gold or silver, but all belonging to
the same general class.

It is a great law of our being that we become like those things we
contemplate. If we contemplate those that are true and noble and
elevating, we grow in the likeness of these. If we contemplate merely
material things, as gold or silver or copper or iron, our souls, our
natures, and even our faces become like them, hard and flinty, robbed of
their finer and better and grander qualities. Call to mind the person or
picture of the miser, and you will quickly see that this is true. Merely
nature's great law. He thought he was going to be a master: he finds
himself the slave. Instead of possessing his wealth, his wealth
possesses him. How often have I seen persons of nearly or quite this
kind! Some can be found almost anywhere. You can call to mind a few,
perhaps many.

During the past two or three years two well-known millionaires in the
United States, millionaires many times over, have died. The one started
into life with the idea of acquiring a great name by accumulating great
wealth. These two things he had in mind,--self and great wealth. And, as
he went on, he gradually became so that he could see nothing but these.
The greed for gain soon made him more and more the slave; and he,
knowing nothing other than obedience to his master, piled and
accumulated and hoarded, and after spending all his days thus, he then
lay down and died, taking not so much as one poor little penny with him,
only a soul dwarfed compared to what it otherwise might have been. For
it might have been the soul of a royal master instead of that of an
abject slave.