unable to set his
affections, for a time at least, upon other things, and the desire,
without the means of gratifying it will be doubly torturing to him.
Perchance this torture may be increased by his seeing the accumulations
he thought were his now being scattered and wasted by spendthrifts. He
wills his property, as we say, to others, but he can have no word as to
its use.

How foolish, then, for us to think that any material possessions _are
ours_. How absurd, for example, for one to fence off a number of acres
of God's earth and say they are _his_. Nothing is ours that we cannot
retain. The things that come into our hands come not for the purpose
of being possessed, as we say, much less for the purpose of being
hoarded. They come into our hands to be used, to be wisely used. We
are stewards merely, and as stewards we shall be held accountable for
the way we use whatever is entrusted to us. That great law of
compensation that runs through all life is wonderfully exact in its
workings, although we may not always fully comprehend it, or even
recognize it when it operates in connection with ourselves.

The one who has come into the realization of the higher life no longer
has a desire for the accumulation of enormous wealth, any more than he
has a desire for any other _excess_. In the degree that he comes into
the recognition of the fact that he is wealthy within, external wealth
becomes less important in his estimation. When he comes into the
realization of the fact that there is a source within from which he can
put forth a power to call to him and actualize in his hands at any time
a sufficient supply for all his needs, he no longer burdens himself
with vast material accumulations that require his constant care and
attention, and thus take his time and his thought from the real things
of life. In other words, he first finds the _kingdom_, and he realizes
that when he has found this, all other things follow in full measure.

It is as hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, said
the Master,--he who having nothing had everything,--as it is for a
camel to pass through the eye of a needle. In other words, if a man
give all his time to the accumulation, the hoarding of outward material
possessions far beyond what he can possibly ever use, what time has he
for the finding of that wonderful kingdom, which when found, brings all
else with it. Which is better, to have millions of dollars, and to