Part 22

Money is much like a man. If you do not hold it too jealously it returns to you the more readily.

Never hesitate to give aid where you feel there is sore and pressing need, for fear you will be left in want yourself. You will not be.

This does not mean that indiscriminate charity is commendable. It does not mean that you should lend money to everyone who asks, or lift and carry the burdens of everyone who is ready to lean upon you.

It is as wrong to encourage the man addicted to the vice of borrowing, as the one with the vice of alcohol or drugs.

One depends upon his acquaintances to tide him over hard places, instead of upon his own strength of character, and the other depends upon stimulants for the same purpose. The too ready lender is almost as great an evil to humanity as rum or opium, since he too helps a man to kill his own better nature and destroy his self-respect.

If you were able and willing to pay rents of all the poor people you know, and clothe their children, you would soon produce a condition of settled pauperism among them. Large and frequent favors of a financial nature are an injury to anyone, even if it is your son or brother.

Let no man lean on anyone save God and his own divine self.

But little helps, when they are unexpected, arouse hope and awaken new faith and new ambition in a discouraged soul.

Look about you for such souls, the worn and weary father of a brood of hungry children, the widow struggling with adverse fate in an effort to clothe and educate a child, the tired shop girl who uses all her earnings to sustain her parents, the ambitious boy or girl eager for a chance in life, and the poor cripple or invalid seeking health. You will find them all about you. Do not be afraid to use a dollar here or there to give these worthy ones a happy surprise, no matter how poor you are.

It is an insult to the Opulent Creator to suppose you will suffer want and poverty if you help those who are in temporary misfortune.

You will not.

Ofttimes we read and hear of the open-handed generous man who "helped everybody," and who "never refused to aid a needy brother," and who ended his life in penury because of his generosity.

Never believe these tales until you investigate them. Invariably you will find not generosity but extravagance and utter lack of forethought, caused the man's financial ruin.

I recall a gifted young woman who gave freely to all who asked her assistance and who died a lingering death as a charity patient in a hospital.

Yet this young woman had expended ten dollars on foolish and rapid living where she gave one in charity; it was her wasteful extravagance, not her open heart of sympathy, which made her a pauper.

It has been my observation that dollars planted in the soil of benevolence grow into harvests of prosperity. The man who is not afraid to use his small means to assist others need not fear poverty.

Woman's Opportunity

The greatest opportunity to better the world which can come to any woman is through the experience of maternity.

The power of prenatal influence which a mother possesses is awe-inspiring to realize.

It has been said upon excellent authority that Napoleon's mother read Roman history with absorbing interest during the months preceding his birth.

Think of the nations and the centuries influenced by that one woman's mental concentration! The geography of the world was changed by her power of focused thought.

In all probability Napoleon's mother did not know what she was doing; she was not conscious of the destiny her mind was shaping for her unborn child, nor of the law governing such conditions.

Women have been strangely ignorant of this vital truth; until recent years it has not been considered a "proper" theme for tongue or pen, and to-day the great majority of young women marry absolutely uninformed upon the subject of prenatal influence.

Men are equally oblivious of any knowledge regarding the matter, and consequently make no special effort to keep the expectant mother of their offspring happy, hopeful, or free of anxiety and worry during this period. Often they do not strive to aid them in their own attempts to bestow a desirable temperament upon the unborn child, but heedlessly and needlessly aggravate or grieve the mind which is stamping its impress upon an unborn soul.

It is just here that the "New Thought" can perform its greatest miracles of good.

Even the woman who has not been enlightened upon the law of ante-birth-influence will, if a true disciple of the Religion of Right-living, bring healthy and helpful children into the world, because her normal state of mind will be inclusive of those three qualities; and her continued and repeated assertions of her own divine nature will shape the brain of her child in optimistic and reverential mould.

There is the old law of the continual falling of the drop of water upon the stone to be verified in the spiritual plane. Continual assertions of a mother that her child will be all that she desires it to be, will wear away the stone of inherited tendencies, and bring into physical being a malleable nature wholly amenable to the after influences and efforts she may bring to bear upon it.

It is a tremendous responsibility which rests upon the woman who knows she is to be a mother of a human being.