CHAPTER 23

TO A MAN WHO HAS PRESSING DEBTS

THE one thing that is the matter with you is that you think there is something the matter with you. There isn't a thing wrong with you but that. Quit looking for troubles within or without. Quit looking for reasons why things are not as they might be if you were a different man in a different place.

Accept yourself as you are.

Accept your conditions as they are.

Rejoice in everything exactly as it is, because everything is an opportunity for you to turn it to more beautiful results.

See that you pray a plenty and always in faith, believing in your oneness with the Spirit of Wisdom and Power and Love. Whatsoever things you desire believe that ye receive them and you shall have them. In other words, know that the thing you desire is already yours in spirit and in truth, and that you are daily and hourly led in right ways to work out the things you see in spirit.

Now go in to win and stick to it. When John Wesley had an extra lot of work to perform he took an extra long time for prayer in the morning. Just you see that you don't skimp your time for going into the silence and practicing New Thought, no matter how much business pushes from the outside. This is the only way to get the WISDOM you need to swing that work. And if you have WISDOM enough you will certainly find the money. Wisdom comes from within and if you want to dig for wisdom you have got to dig in the Silence. There is no other way. There is only one source of wisdom and that is God within you.

And the wrong steps in your past haven't a thing to do with it! No matter whether you took wrong ones or right ones you did neither more nor less than other people are doing every day. We all take wrong steps and right steps. It doesn't matter what we did last year or last week, it is what we are doing now. "Break off thy sins by Tightness" NOW. Remember that the past is of no use whatever except to learn from. Take these lessons and be glad of them. But forget all the rest. Wipe off the slate! Wipe it off every morning and begin a bright fresh new day. Wipe off the slate every hour and begin a bright fresh new hour! What in the world is the use of spoiling a perfectly good day raking over the steps and mis-steps you took last week or last year or last decade? Read Ezekiel and you will see that God doesn't visit sins upon anybody's head a minute longer than the persons themselves keep persisting in the sins. The minute the soul turns to God all its past is forgiven and all of God's care and wisdom goes into helping the soul work out its present good desires.

Just what do you mean by your getting temporary relief in prayer but you do not get deliverance? True deliverance is a spiritual thing — deliverance from worry and fret, from a sense of being in the wrong place. True deliverance is deliverance from unright thought. Is that what you mean when you use the word? Or are you making the mistake of looking at the outward appearance and considering that you are not delivered simply because you still have debts and are still striving to accomplish things which are not yet accomplished? If so you are looking in the wrong direction for the proof of deliverance. Look within.

And how could you be delivered from all your debts if you are still striving to do things? No man can grow except by bursting bonds, transcending limitations, paying off old debts and incurring new ones perpetually. But your trouble may lie in biting off more than you can chew. Perhaps you try to work out your financial problems without taking into consideration the Great Unexpected — the most certain factor in every problem. To leave out the Great Unexpected is to find yourself cramped for means on every hand.

When you build a house you count everything in and get a contract price and then you need to add at least 50 per cent to cover the Great Unexpected that always comes up. When you are starting in on a business deal you should figure as closely as possible and then you should reckon at least 50 per cent extra that must be taken care of in cash and credit, otherwise you will find yourself in perpetual hot water. See that you get your business on to such a footing that you can pay every bill promptly on the minute when it is due. This is one of the most important things if you would keep out of financial hot water.

Keep your credit good, and hold a reserve of credit to cover the Great Unexpected in the way of expense AND OPPORTUNITIES. For the Great Unexpected is more often an Unexpected Opportunity than an item of Unexpected additional expense.

Cultivate thoroughness in your business calculations and remember that the most important thing in all business is to be able to pay your bills when they are due taking advantage of every penny of discount and paying promptly even when there is no discount. Jesus said "Make no vows but if you make them keep them." Be mighty careful what kind of obligations you incur, and don't ever let a man have a chance to say you crawled out of an obligation or deferred the payment of it. If you take all your discounts you are banking every day a big Surplus of Credit that can be drawn on in case of a particularly great opportunity arriving. But your reserve credit should not be drawn on once in ten years or more! — and then only temporarily. For credit is like a reserve in bank, and should always be kept there undepleted ready for the Great Day of Opportunity. It is the lack of this good credit that keeps you in hot water — if you are in this particular kind of hot water.

Sell off some land at a sacrifice or do any old thing to get yourself on to a basis where every obligation is paid promptly on the dot. If I were to step into your shoes now and if I couldn't get hold of more money in the regular channels to bring every bit of my business dealings up to the exact dot of cash-on- the-minute, I would rustle around somewhere and try to get somebody to bank on me to the extent of a loan large enough to put everything on to this cash basis. I would consider this far more necessary than the matter of getting land. And I think I would manage it in very much the way that you manage the land — by getting hold of somebody that had faith in me to the extent of putting up the necessary cash and not dunning me for the interest or the principal. I would try to get hold of somebody that was willing to gamble on me on a long time deal. If I couldn't do this I would go to two or three of my biggest creditors and state the case and get their word to hold their accounts with me in abeyance for a long period until I could get things on to this pay on the minute basis. It seems to me that that should be your endeavor now ahead of anything and everything else.

And the same principle ought to be put into practice in your community. There must be a number of people in that community already, settlers who are working their own farms. Get these people together and explain to them that in order to draw more people you have got to make a beginning at a center and you have got to make every bit of that center very thoroughly well built and beautiful. Get your community people together one day each week, or even each two weeks or each four weeks, for the public good. Get somebody who knows how to lay out a sort of civic center on your ideal farm. Plant trees, build macadam roads — build them a yard at a time if you can't build any more. Begin to beautify from a very small center and radiate outward going only just as far as you can pay as you go. I can imagine that that entire place at the present time looks down at the heels. You must demonstrate beauty if you want to make an attractive center of that place and find people falling over themselves to pay you money for the privilege of getting in there.

I don't mean that you are to make something away in advance of the sort of people who buy that land, but you have got to make a center which to them is a beautiful and attractive center. First of all, you need a meeting place — it need not be an expensive place but it should be very beautiful of its kind, most exquisitely kept, beautiful grounds about it, fine trees and roadways, etc. Remember not to undertake more than you can get labor to carry out and carry out well. Then you must have certain days for every man to do public work, and there must be a head that amounts to something as a head — which means he must have a soul as well as a head — and he must be on the job and boss the work that is offered for the public good on these certain days. When you have got something started that you can really be proud of you will be surprised to see how people will flock in there. Of course it takes some money to do these things, but if you get the right point of view yourself and if you have the spirit of thoroughness as well as beauty, and if you can get your settlers together and inspire hearty co-operation, you can do wonders with a very little bit of money.

I wish somebody would hire me for a job like that! I would love to go down there and look over that place and plan out something of the sort I have in mind, and then have a few rich friends to invest in my organizing and beautifying ability! Nothing would please me better than that very kind of work. And I believe I could do it so that it would make the Datives sit up and take notice! I have always had a sort of dream of that kind and maybe some day I will get into line for just that kind of work. For the present I am doing work of that sort on a small scale, on a 90 x 112 foot lot with a new building, etc., and with some twenty-five employees.

But I would like to do it on a whole township with ever so many neighbors to co-operate. I am very much interested in your work down there and if the location is as good as you say in your literature I don't see why you can't do something fine as well as profitable. But good gracious, when I saw that you had to take a stage ride from 6 o'clock in the morning till 5 o'clock at night to get there it rather dampened my interest! What has become of the railroad that was going right through there so close? And how do you get stuff to market? Why can't you get the neighbors to co-operate and build a little railroad down to the town, instead of taking that beastly stage ride? I should think you could run it with a hand power car until you could buy something neat in the way of a steam or gasoline car that could run on the rails. I don't see why you can't cut your ties right there and build your road with public co-operation and get your goods to market at one-quarter the expense it must cost you for teaming. It seems to me what you need in a place like that is a head to organize and a soul to enthuse people to work together!

But of course I might think differently if I were on the spot. But I'll tell you right now that I wouldn't be there very long but what I would make things move somehow. I would clear off fifty feet square and start a beauty spot there if I couldn't do any better. And I would do it myself if I couldn't get them to co-operate. I think everybody would get enthused with the beauty center idea and help to work things out.

What you say about violating financial laws and then relying on having done the will of God is amusing. Likewise it is a very common failure. It seems funny that one should violate the very laws that Jesus laid down and then lay it off on God! So many people do it. Jesus told you to make no vows but to keep whatever vows you did make, and yet a business man will rush in blindly and make promises that he can see no way of fulfilling, and just trust to God to work a miracle in his behalf. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

That reminds me of the way New Thought people defy all the rules of Tightness and trust to luck and a few affirmations that water will be made to run uphill to please them. I just read of a case of a New Thought woman who coolly walked off with eight hundred dollars worth of diamonds belonging to another woman and trusted to luck that the other woman's heart would be miraculously softened to the needs of the woman who walked off with her jewels!

Which reminds me again of the time when Emerson remonstrated with Bronson Alcott for swiping his potatoes. Alcott kept on shoveling potatoes into his wheelbarrow while he scowled at Emerson and answered brusquely "I need 'em, I need 'em!"

If you are violating any "common financial laws" just you quit it! One of the chief laws of God is that you must stand up to what you lead other people to expect of you. If you give your word about a thing you must keep your word or you are breaking God's law as well as financial laws. Get yourself square with the financial laws and you will find deliverance in prayer, as well as consolation. To be right with God is to be right with man. In as much as ye do it unto the least of, these human beings you do it unto God. And there is no use trying to fool yourself by thinking that you wouldn't mind if you were in the other fellow's place. You would mind. If you were in the other fellow's place you would see just as the other fellow does, and you would be just as mad as the other fellow is with you when you don't keep your word.

But whatever thing is wrong with you is merely a kink in your thinker. You are essentially right at heart and you are one with God whether you realize it or not; and you are in exactly the right place to work out the wisdom and power that God wills in and through you. Be still and know.

If you are head over ears in debt and can't pay your bills just have an honest talk with your biggest creditors and lay the big debts on the shelf until you get the little ones paid. Then you go at it tooth and nail to pay up those little debts just as fast as you can. Get every one of your little obligations wiped off — every little debt is a vote from a fellow man for you to go to hell. Better have a few great big debts than a score of little ones.

I once found myself very much in the position I fancy you may be, only on a smaller scale. I went to two men and told them just how I was situated. I fancy they had already begun to think I was a dead- beat. But they quit thinking that and gave me their Good Will and agreed to wait for years if necessary for their money. Then I wiped off every one of the little debts, many of which were not of my making at all. By and bye I got around to the big ones. It was several years, but I got there at last. And from the very minute that I had an understanding with those men and got the little debts wiped off I felt free. The two creditors didn't hold me in condemnation, and I found that what they forgave was forgiven within me, in "heaven." And I found myself free to work and to make money as I never had before in my life. In fact, that was the beginning of my making money.

And for goodness sake don't make the foolish mistake of owing money through going security for some one else. No one on earth has a right to go security for another man unless his pin money will cover that security in case of loss. In other words if you have a thousand dollars in the bank over and above all your debts and obligations, a thousand dollars extra that is rolling uphill you are entitled to go security for another to that extent. That was a little thing I learned of my father — a pioneer lumber manufacturer in Oregon — when I was a little girl. And curiously enough I learned it because he did that very sort of thing for other persons. He was always going security for somebody and then worrying himself sick over it when the somebody fizzled out and he had to pay. And through his worrying I became conscious of the cause and I received the fullness of wisdom which he gained through his hard experiences — he admonished me never to go security for anybody unless I had pin money to cover it. I remembered it, and I have lived up to it pretty well so far.

THE INDIVIDUAL AS A MAGNET >

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