We must conquer inward poverty before we can conquer outward poverty.

Fears and doubts repel prosperity. Abundance cannot get to a person who holds such a mental attitude. Things that are unlike in the mental realm repel one another. Trying to become prosperous while always talking poverty, thinking poverty, dreading it, predicting that you will always be poor, is like trying to cure disease by always thinking about it, picturing it, visualizing it, believing that you are always going to be sick, that you never can be cured. Nothing can attract prosperity but that which has an affinity for it, the prosperous thought, the prosperous conviction, the prosperity faith, the prosperity ambition. Opulence follows a law as strict as that of mathematics. If we obey the law we get the opulent flow. If we disobey the law, we cut off the flow. Most of us tap the great life supply by inserting a half-inch pipe, and then pinch even this with our doubts, fears and uncertainties. There is no lack in Him in whom all fullness lies. The pinching, the limitation is in ourselves, “for He satisfieth the longing soul and filleth the hungry soul with good things.”

True prosperity is the inward consciousness of spiritual opulence, wholeness, completeness; we cannot feel poor when we are conscious of being enveloped in the all-supply, that God is our partner, our Shepherd, and that we cannot want. A poor woman who had all her life previously lived in the back country, moved to a progressive little village where, to her great surprise, she found that her new home was lighted by electricity. She knew nothing about electricity, had never even seen an electric light before, and the little eight candle power electric bulbs with which the house was fitted seemed very marvelous to her. Later, a man came along, one day, selling a new kind of electric bulb, and asked the woman to allow him to replace one of her small bulbs with one of his new style sixty candle power bulbs just to show her what it would do. She consented, and when the electricity was turned on she stood transfixed. It seemed to her nothing short of magic that such a little bulb could give so wonderful a light, almost like that of sunlight. She never dreamed that the source of the new flood of illumination had been there all the time, that the enormously increased light came from the same current which had been feeding her little eight candle bulb. We smile at the ignorance of this poor woman, but the majority of us are far more ignorant of our own power than she was of the power of the electric current. We go through life using a little eight candle power bulb, believing we are getting all the power that can come to us, all that we can express or that destiny will give us, believing that we are limited to eight candle power bulbs. We never dream that an infinite current, a current in which we are perpetually bathed would flood our lives with light, with a light inconceivably brilliant and beautiful, if we would only put on a larger bulb, make a larger connection with the infinite supply current. The supply wire we are using is so tiny that only a little of the great current can flow through, only a few candle power, when there are millions flowing past our very door. An unlimited supply of this infinite current is ours for the taking, ours for the expressing. Multitudes of human beings go through life just as ignorant as was the poor country woman of the fact that there is unlimited light and unlimited power flowing right past their doors ready for their use, and that they may use all of it they can express. They are getting no more from the vast resources at their command than this woman was getting from the electric current. They seem to think that if they are expressing four candles, or eight candles power, that it is all the infinite supply can give them, or all that they were intended to have. It never occurs to them that the trouble is not in the current itself, but in the small bulbs they are using. Millions have died in mental and physical penury, died weaklings, when they had within their own nature’s vast possibilities of wealth and power which were never utilized, because they did not connect with the source which would have enabled them to express wealth and power. Most of us strangle our supply by our pinching thoughts, our stingy, poverty thought, our doubt and fear thoughts. We pinch or entirely cut off the inflow of prosperity by our poverty-stricken mental attitude. The stream of plenty flows toward the open mind, the expectant mind. It flows toward faith and confidence and away from doubt. It will not flow toward a stingy, pessimistic unbelieving mind, a fearing, worrying, anxious mind. We must keep the current open or the supply will be cut off. We cannot get a sixty or a hundred candle power supply through a four or eight candle power bulb. The stream of plenty, of unlimited opulence, is flowing right past your door, carrying an infinite, never-ending supply of all the good things that heart could wish for. If you have the faith that creates, the faith that believes the best is coming to you, you can reach out mentally into this great stream of plenty—the universal supply—and get material aid to build what you will. The supply is there. It rests with you to make the connection that will draw it to you. If all of the poverty-stricken people in the world today would quit thinking of poverty, quit dwelling on it, worrying about it and fearing it; if they would wipe the poverty thought out of their minds, if they would cut off mentally all relations with poverty and substitute the opulent thought, the prosperity thought, the mental attitude that faces toward prosperity, they would soon begin to change conditions. It is the dwelling on the thing, fearing it, the worrying about it, the anxiety about it, and the terror of it that attracts us to it and attracts it to us. We cut off our supply current and establish relations with want, with poverty-stricken conditions. Many people who have become interested in the new philosophy are greatly disappointed that they are not making any appreciable demonstration over poverty, that they are not advancing their position in life, not improving their conditions as they had expected they would. Now, my friend, the law of abundance, of opulence, is as definite as the law of gravitation, and works just as unerringly. If you are not demonstrating as you expected to, you are probably still held under the bond of mental limitation, for there is no lack in “Him in whom all fullness lies.” There is no limitation in the all-supply. The trouble is you try to tap it with a miserable little half or quarter inch pipe instead of a great big one, and the supply cannot flow through and flood your life with abundance.

If you pinch your supply pipe with your doubts and fears, your anxiety, the terror of coming to want, if you do not believe you can demonstrate abundance, you will get but a meager, limited supply instead of the inexhaustible flow you might have. In other words, the supply pipe is pinched only by your own mental limitations. By your doubts and fears and worries and unbelief, you can cut off all the supply and starve or, by a great magnetizing faith, a superb confidence in the all-supply, you can flood your life with all good things. The law of supply is scientific. It will not act unless all the necessary conditions are fulfilled. Simply believing in the new philosophy and still keeping your old life doubts and fear habits, living in your old thought habits of lack and poverty, inefficiency, will not bring success. If you don’t believe you will prosper and you don’t practice what you believe, you will get no results. If you would reap its fruits you must obey the law of supply, the law of abundance, the law of prosperity. Prosperity never comes by merely wishing or longing for it. Keeping your mind fixed on it, simply thinking of prosperity will never bring it to you. This is only the first step. You must cling to your prosperity thought, your prosperity ideal, but you must also back it up with scientific methods, the practical common-sense methods which all successful men employ in their work. You might dream of abundance and prosperity all your life-time and die in the poorhouse, if you did not back up your dream with businesslike efficiency methods. That is, you must be methodical, orderly, systematic, accurate, thorough, and industrious. You must do everything to a finish. You must fling your energy, your heart into your business, your profession, your work, whatever it is. One of the worst things about poverty is that it induces the habit of expecting poverty and failure, the habit of being half reconciled to its necessity. No matter how poor you may be, if you have the right mental attitude you will not long remain poor. If you are determined to turn your back upon poverty and face toward prosperity, however your actual conditions may contradict this; if you really believe that you are a child of the Creator and Possessor of all things, that you were not intended for poverty, but that on the contrary the good things, the beautiful things of life are for you, the life glorious and not the pauper or the drudge life, you at once open your mind to the inflow of the prosperity current. Have you, who are beating against the iron bars of poverty, ever stopped to think what marvelous things the Creator has everywhere provided for us His children? Just imagine the entire universe, the great cosmic ocean of creative intelligence, packed with all the riches, all the glorious things, the magnificent possibilities the human mind can conceive, and then try to picture what it would mean to you and to all who are complaining of lack and want if by some magic they could call out of this universal supply of creative intelligence anything which would match their desires, their heart longings. Imagine this vast universe, this ocean of creative energy, packed with possibilities from which human beings could draw everything which the wildest imagination could conceive, everything they desire in life, everything they need for comfort and convenience, even luxuries,—also cities, railroads, telegraphs and all sorts of wonderful inventions and discoveries. You will say, doubtless, that such a thing is too silly to contemplate for a moment. Yet, haven’t human beings been doing this very thing since the dawn of civilization, all up through the ages? Every discovery, every invention, every improvement, every facility, every home, every building, every city, every railroad, every ship, everything that man has created for our use and benefit he has fashioned out of this vast invisible cosmic ocean of intelligence by thought force. Everything we use, everything we have, every achievement of man is preceded by a mental vision, a plan. Everything man has accomplished on this earth is a result of a desire, has been preceded by a mental picture of it. Everything he has produced on this plane of existence has been drawn out of this invisible ocean of divine intelligence by his thought force. His imagination first pictured the thing he wanted to do; he kept visualizing this mental conception, never stopped thinking, creating, until his efforts to match his visions with their realities drew to him the thing he had concentrated on. We all imagine that we actually, of ourselves, create these things. We do not. We simply work in unison with the Creator, and draw them out of the vast invisible cosmic ocean of supply. But we must do our part or there will be no realization for us. Just as the first step in an architect’s building is his plan, so must we first make a plan or picture of the thing we desire. The architect first sees in all its details in his mind’s eye the building to be erected even before he draws his plan on paper. He mentally sees the real building long before there are any materials on the spot for its construction. His plan has come out of the invisible, out of the fathomless ocean of possibilities which surrounds us. All of our wants and desires can find their fulfillment in this unlimited supply. This is a marvelous revelation to man, the significance of which most of us have not grasped. Only here and there is there one who utilizes it in his daily living. But science is recognizing it. Edison says all scientists feel that “about and through everything there is the play of an Eternal Mind.” They are recognizing that this is the first great Cause. It is difficult to realize that every instant, under the impulse of Eternal Mind, miracles are leaping out from the cosmic ocean of energy into objectivity to meet our wants, to supply all our needs. Most of us are not able to grasp the idea that there is wealth and beauty and unthinkable luxuries waiting here for God’s children. And because of this we do not materialize the things we desire. It is one of the most marvelous things, in this wonderful plan of creation, that we actually live, move and have our being in this invisible ocean of limitless creative material, and that all we have to do to attract what we want is to hold the right mental attitude toward it and do our best on the physical plane to match it with its reality. When we once get it firmly fixed in our minds that in this invisible world of possibilities is everything which matches every legitimate desire and ambition, and that our own will come to us if we visualize it intensely enough, persistently enough, and do our best to make it real, we will no longer live in poverty and misery.

If you want to get away from poverty, if you wish to demonstrate abundance, prosperity, you must form the habit of mentally living in abundance; live in the ideal of what you want; that is, you must live the prosperity thought, you must hold the thought of abundance. Saturate yourself with it. Then the poverty thought cannot touch you. It will be neutralized because you cannot hold in your mind two opposite thoughts at the same time, and whatever thought you hold is a real creative force. The great majority of poor people are poor thinkers, poor planners, and poor executives. They do not think prosperity, they do not obey the law of opulence, and so they stay poor in the midst of abundance. You can no more attain opulence while holding the opposite thought than a youth could become a great lawyer by concentrating upon something else, thinking of other things all the time. The specialist makes his mind a magnet to attract the thing he is trying to attain. He dwells upon it, thinks of it, bends all his energies toward it, dreams it, lives it; and eventually draws it to him. In the same way, opulence, prosperity, obeys the law of attraction. The idea of opulence must be implanted firmly in the subconscious mind, just as everything else which we desire to bring about, to draw out of the universal supply, must be impressed upon the subconscious mind by registering our vow, our determination there until it has become a fixed motive or actuating principle. Then it becomes an active influence in the life, an ever-increasing mental magnet that attracts the thing desired. Whatever we wish to bring about in the actual, we must first establish in the subconscious mind by a constant, positive, affirmative attitude toward that thing. It is because they understand the importance, the imperative necessity, of this holding of the right mental attitude, that there is such a tremendous difference between the poverty of people who have imbibed the new philosophy and those who are still in the old thought. It is the difference between poverty with hope, poverty with courage, poverty with the expectation of something better coming, backed by a faithful effort to improve one’s condition, and the poverty which is accompanied by despair, the poverty that has no hope for the future, the poverty that expects nothing better, that looks forward only to more and probably worse poverty, more pinching, more want and suffering. Even the poverty with hope and expectation of better things is not a very comfortable state, but there is no despair in it, there is no real pain in it, there is not much real distress, because hope sees the goal beyond the blackness, it gives a light that dispels the gloom of limitation by showing a vista of good things in process of realization. It is the poverty which is accompanied by despair, which sees no light ahead and forces men and women to drudge on day after day without prospect of relief or hope of betterment that grinds the life out of its victims. This is the poverty that kills the spirit that destroys the buoyancy of life, the gladness and the joy, which are the birthright of every human being. The poverty of those who have seen the light, who have gotten a glimpse of something better, the poverty which sees something ahead to work for, may be compared with the temporary discomforts which a family camping out for the summer may have to put up with. Knowing that their discomforts are temporary they make light of them. They do not impair their happiness, because they know conditions will soon change. They do not worry about their situation as they would if it were permanent and could not be remedied. There are multitudes of ignorant, undeveloped people who are like many of the squatters on the desert in the arid lands of the West. These squatters build shanties and cultivate little patches around them, raising a few domestic animals to help them eke out a living. They barely exist, and yet the very soil from which they hardly get a living is rich with vast potencies, possibilities of bounteous harvests and the production of great wealth. If these people knew enough to mix brains with the soil, or if they would only settle somewhere near a supply of water so that they could irrigate their farms, they might live in luxury. There is nothing lacking in the land, but it must have water and intelligence to develop its resources. These would make the desert fruitful. Water and intelligence mixed with the soil would perform miracles of cultivation where ignorance succeeds in producing scarcely enough to support a miserable existence. Not far from such ignorant squatters I have seen a portion of the same desert land enriched by water and intelligent cultivation until it had become a veritable Eden of delicious fruits, vegetables, grains and flowers. Large families were living comfortably on an incredibly small piece of land, whereas before the introduction of water they would have half starved on perhaps a hundred acres. Most human beings live all their lives on deserts which are teeming with marvelous potencies and possibilities, but for lack of knowledge they live in poverty. Their mental resources yield nothing because they have not yet been developed. Some of us get a little irrigation into a corner of our lives and raise a few vegetables. Some of us cultivate a few flowers, and now and then one will get water and inspiration and ambition enough upon a little larger section of his mental desert and produce something worthwhile. But very few human beings ever cultivate their entire resources