Wisdom & Empowerment: The Orison Swett Marden Edition (18 Books in One Volume). Orison Swett Marden
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would go very far towards acquiring an education.
And yet thousands of people have gotten a splendid substitute for a college course just in this way.
I know some very able men who have obtained most of their education by reading alone. They went to school but very little, but, by the persistent reading habit, they have become well-educated in history, in politics and literature, in philosophy, and well-posted in all sorts of things. And they have achieved all of this during their evenings and odd moments, which most people either throw away or spend in hunting for pleasure.
The pursuit of education by a soul hungry for knowledge, yearning for mental enlargement, is the highest kind of pleasure, because it gives infinite satisfaction and infinite advantage.
One of the grandest sights in the world is that of an adult seizing every opportunity to make up for the loss of early educational advantages, pouring his very soul into his spare moments and evenings, trying to make himself a larger, fuller, completer man.
Chapter XXII.
A Religious Slot Machine
Some people expect tremendous things of their Creator. They expect God to be liberal, and pray for abundance of health, and ask Him to pour material blessings and all good without stint. Yet they are very mean and stingy in everything that relates to their religion, contemptible in their charities, in their assistance of others, in their help of the church.
Did you ever think that your attitude towards your fellow men, towards the poor, the unfortunate, your treatment of the Creator’s institutions here on earth, your treatment of His children, constitute your treatment of Him? “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
Many people seem to think that the Creator is some power entirely separate from human beings, and that their dealings must be directly with Him.
I knew of a man who said he thanked God that there was one good thing in the world that was cheap,—that he did not believe his religion cost him over twenty-five cents a year. He got just about twenty-five cents’ worth out of his religion annually. Our religions are slot machines, and if we put in a quarter, we get out only a quarter’s worth.
We get out of a thing what we put into it. If we are stingy with God, he will necessarily be stingy with us, because it is our acts that open or close the gates of our minds,—the gates of appreciation and of happiness.
The farmer who is stingy with his seed corn gets a stingy harvest. The Creator does not crowd our lives with rich things when we are mean with Him. We limit our receptive capacity by what we give out.
We get a stingy education, if we are stingy in study. We must give liberally before we get, in every department of life. I have never known a person who is mean in giving time, sympathy, and money to the church, who ever got much out of it.
The Creator will not flood your life with good things, with fat things, when you are so mean that you will not give up a cent if you can possibly avoid it, or give time and helpfulness.
We limit our receipts. The Creator can not give us more than we will allow Him. What we get must come through our mental avenues, and, if these are closed by ourselves, even the Almighty can not reach us with abundance.
Have you not known people too contemptible to get very much out of life, anyway? It pains them to give up anything. They think every dollar they get is theirs. They do not look upon themselves as trustees for the general benefit of their fellow men.
It is the large-hearted, generous, magnanimous man that gets the blessings. He who gives out gets back; our own acts determine our harvest. If we are liberal and openhanded, our harvest will be rich and abundant.
Small souls cut off their own supply. They limit what they get by their narrowness, pinchiness.
The Good Book gives us the recipe for getting. “Give and it shall be given unto thee.” “To him that hath shall be given.”
It ought to make you feel mean to slip a nickel, or less, into the contribution box of your church, which you pretend means so much to you.
Others may not see, or know of your stingy gift. But you know that such a thing would be considered mean and contemptible between business men. And what shall we say of such a transaction between yourself and your God?
I have seen people who were well fixed in life put coppers into the contribution box, just because they thought others would not know how much they gave.
What stories of lying, of deception, the church contribution box could tell! How mortified, humiliated, disgraced many men would be if these boxes could tell the truth to the congregation!
Some people who would be liberal on a subscription paper, because other people would know what they gave, would cheat their God when the contribution box was passed.
If you can not be conscientious in your giving to your Maker, can there be any conscientiousness in your character? If you are not true to your God, will you be true to your fellow men or true to yourself?
Character: The Grandest Thing in the World
Chapter III. The Great-Hearted
Chapter IV. A North-Star Course
Chapter V. Intrepidity of Spirit
Chapter VI. “A Fragment of the Rock of Ages”
Chapter VII. The Wealth of the Commonwealth
Chapter VIII. The Apollo Belvidere and the Venus di Milo
Chapter IX. Cultivating the Growth of Man-Timber
Chapter I.
A Grand Character
If Henry Drummond was wise in calling an abstract quality, Love, the Greatest Thing in the World – then Love in the concrete, embodied in Character, is the Grandest Thing in the World. Drummond himself, in his life-story, is far grander than anything he ever wrote, for his was “the life of a radiant personality.”
“You met him,” says Dr. George Adam Smith, his biographer, “a graceful, well-dressed gentleman, tall and lithe, with a swing in his walk and a brightness in his face, who seemed to carry no cares, and to know neither presumption nor timidity. You spoke, and found him keen for any of a hundred interests. He fished, he shot, he skated, as few can; he played cricket; he would go any distance to see a fire or a football match. He had a new story or a new puzzle or a new joke every time he met you. Was it on the street? He drew you to watch two messenger-boys meet, grin, knock each other’s hat off, lay down their baskets,