Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America : $b the work and the manBurr, Agnes Rush
Religion
Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America : $b the work and the man
Burr, Agnes Rush
Conwell, Russell H., 1843-1925; Minneapolis (Minn.) -- Biography
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 and speak to you, sir, and say that the
Holy Scriptures declare that money is the root of all evil." I asked
him where he found that saying, and he said he found it in the Bible.
I asked him whether he had made a new Bible, and he said, no, he had
not gotten a new Bible, that it was in the old Bible. "Well," I
said, "if it is in my Bible, I never saw it. Will you please get the
text-book and let me see it?" He left the room and soon came stalking
in with his Bible open, with all the bigoted pride of the narrow
sectarian, who founds his creed on some misinterpretation of
Scripture, and he puts the Bible down on the table before me and
fairly squealed into my ear, "There it is. You can read it for
yourself." I said to him, "Young man, you will learn, when you get a
little older, that you cannot trust another denomination to read the
Bible for you." I said, "Now, you belong to another denomination.
Please read it to me, and remember that you are taught in a school
where emphasis is exegesis." So he took the Bible and read it: "The
_love_ of money is the root of all evil." Then he had it right. The
Great Book has come back into the esteem and love of the people, and
into the respect of the greatest minds of earth, and now you can quote
it and rest your life and your death on it without more fear. So, when
he quoted right from the Scriptures he quoted the truth. "The love of
money is the root of all evil." Oh, that is it. It is the worship of
the means instead of the end, though you cannot reach the end without
the means. When a man makes an idol of the money instead of the
purposes for which it may be used, when he squeezes the dollar until
the eagle squeals, then it is made the root of all evil. Think, if you
only had the money, what you could do for your wife, your child, and
for your home and your city. Think how soon you could endow the Temple
College yonder if you only had the money and the disposition to give
it; and yet, my friend, people say you and I should not spend the time
getting rich. How inconsistent the whole thing is. We ought to be
rich, because money has power. I think the best thing for me to do is
to illustrate this, for if I say you ought to get rich, I ought, at
least, to suggest how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men
because of the lies that are told about them. The lies that are told
about Mr. Rockefeller because he has two hundred million dollars--so
many believe them; yet how false is the representation of that man
to the world. How little we can tell what is true nowadays when
newspapers try to sell their papers entirely on some sensation! The
way they lie about the rich men is something terrible, and I do not
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