be poor. To live
in Philadelphia and not be rich is a misfortune, and it is doubly a
misfortune, because you could have been rich just as well as be poor.
Philadelphia furnishes so many opportunities. You ought to be rich. But
persons with certain religious prejudice will ask, "How can you spend
your time advising the rising generation to give their time to getting
money--dollars and cents--the commercial spirit?"

Yet I must say that you ought to spend time getting rich. You and I know
there are some things more valuable than money; of course, we do. Ah,
yes! By a heart made unspeakably sad by a grave on which the autumn
leaves now fall, I know there are some things higher and grander and
sublimer than money. Well does the man know, who has suffered, that
there are some things sweeter and holier and more sacred than gold.
Nevertheless, the man of common sense also knows that there is not any
one of those things that is not greatly enhanced by the use of money.
Money is power. Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate
the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power; money has powers; and
for a man to say, "I do not want money," is to say, "I do not wish to do
any good to my fellowmen." It is absurd thus to talk. It is absurd to
disconnect them. This is a wonderfully great life, and you ought to
spend your time getting money, because of the power there is in money.
And yet this religious prejudice is so great that some people think it
is a great honor to be one of God's poor. I am looking in the faces of
people who think just that way. I heard a man once say in a prayer
meeting that he was thankful that he was one of God's poor, and then I
silently wondered what his wife would say to that speech, as she took in
washing to support the man while he sat and smoked on the veranda. I
don't want to see any more of that land of God's poor. Now, when a man
could have been rich just as well, and he is now weak because he is
poor, he has done some great wrong; he has been untruthful to himself;
he has been unkind to his fellowmen. We ought to get rich if we can by
honorable and Christian methods, and these are the only methods that
sweep us quickly toward the goal of riches.

I remember, not many years ago a young theological student who came into
my office and said to me that he thought it was his duty to come in and
"labor with me." I asked him what had happened, and he said: "I feel it
is my duty to come in an