If we aim at worldly success, thinking that thereby we shall be able to do more for mankind and be more useful, we may defeat our own purpose by worry and anxiety. The present moment is all that any man has in which to come into agreement with his fellows.

If for lack of understanding he spends that moment in worry and unrest, he makes himself and everybody else more or less unhappy, thereby destroys his own usefulness, and proves his unfitness to gain success. But it may be that he is deceived as to his motive; he may desire success really for the satisfaction of winning against his less fortunate fellows.

Why should we desire worldly success to enable us to help our fellows? No amount of benevolence or philanthropy can atone for the selfishness, inhumanity and the greed necessary to acquire great wealth under modern conditions. The widow’s mite or the cup of cold water given from moment to moment is of greater value than the millions bestowed upon charity as a sop to one’s conscience, or as a pacifier of public clamor.

There is a degree of satisfaction in giving all that can never come from giving a portion of superabundance. We never hear of a very rich man giving all that he hath, over and above a comfortable, or even a luxurious, living. His giving hardly requires the sacrifice of even a whim. How can a man like Rockefeller, with an admitted income of nearly a dollar every second, be generous? How much would he have to give in order to feel it?—and what mischief would he not do in giving such a sum! The “luxury of giving” can never be his, for that is the result of giving at the expense of our daily desires. The widow who cast in her mite enjoyed the luxury of giving, and many still give in that way. This gift of somebody’s mite incited the giving of millions.

But it is not possible that the gift of millions should bring the giver much happiness, if it brings any. There is too much publicity and display in such a gift; it is noised abroad from press and platform, and creates a new distress in the mind of the giver. The giver knows that unscrupulous, undeserving persons or causes will now lay siege to a share of his wealth, because of the notoriety his great gift has brought him. Some are so oppressed with appeals that they have to appoint committees to give away the money. There must be about as much satisfaction in that as in having a committee to kiss the women you love.

Besides this, great benefactions cause uneasiness, lest they be misapplied or unwisely distributed, or lest the glory may be eclipsed by some other millionaire giving a larger sum to a more popular cause. Thus donations become a source of unrest and worriment, and the donor’s last state is worse than his first. The giver of the mite is generally unknown of the crowd, sometimes unknown even of the one to whom he gives, so that his joy comes from the giving, and cannot be taken from him. To him alone is it true that “the gift is to the giver” and that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” If there is no real joy to be had from giving of great wealth, why should we desire to have it, or fret ourselves that we do not win it? Neither to acquire wealth nor to possess it can bring happiness or peace. We have seen how great is the price we must pay to get great riches, and it is easy to see why their possession cannot bring peace or happiness.

Man has a limited number of wants, and there is an end even to whims. When all of these have been satisfied, what is left? The ordinary man must give time, skill, thought, and labor to satisfy his needs, and from the effort he gets a large measure of joy and satisfaction. Even if he never gets what he is after, the effort has given him pleasure, strengthened his purpose, and developed his whole nature. But the wealthy man is denied this natural satisfaction. He does not even have to seek what he wants; servants do that for him; he speaks and the thing is done. For him there is no joyous effort; no increase of pleasure in the very delay of fulfillment; no sense of achievement when he gets what he desires. For this reason he soon wearies, and, having run the whole gamut of pleasures, and exhausted his idle fancies, he becomes a prey to ennui, has no object in life, and finds no delight in the days. It could not be otherwise. As an old servant in my family once said, “If the rich were happy, we should know there was no God.” “How hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven,” said Jesus; meaning thereby that the possession of wealth destroys our sympathy with our poorer brethren and prevents a man from seeing his true relation to those who have it not; makes it difficult for him to recognize his oneness with all mankind, and so cuts him off from that heaven of love and peace on earth that can come only from agreement of his own life with the life of others outside his circle.

If we are worried or ill at ease for any other cause, such as ill-health, disappointed affections, unsatisfied desires, or from any of the innumerable causes to which we attribute our ill, we have but to examine them to find that in every instance the underlying error is the same. It is that we think of our separate interests, that we are for self; that “me” has a deeper significance to our mind than “us” that the “I” blots out the “thou.” All worry, all unrest comes from self-seeking, from the feeling of separateness rather than of oneness; from an inharmonious attitude towards life and its underlying verities.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” said the Teacher, “and all these things”—material things, food and clothes that he had been speaking of—“shall be added unto you.” Now God is love, and the kingdom of God is universal love, the love that knows no separateness; therefore let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Believe in God. The man who seeks first the wide Universal Peace does not worry nor fret. He has, by that very seeking, put himself in tune with the Infinite, and he finds that the sounds which have seemed to him like harsh discords are, to his listening ear, blended into harmony. He has heard the “sweetest carol ever sung” and nothing can drown its melody. With that song in his ears he can “run and never be wearied, he can walk and not faint.” He loses his feverish impatience, for “he that believeth shall not make haste”; he sees himself in every man and every man in himself; he has found rest for his soul.

When this peace reigns within, the seeming ills of life do not disturb us. We are not conscious of ungratified desires, and in this lies the truth of the promise—“all things shall be added unto you.” For, if man is not conscious of any ungratified want or desire, then, though he be poor in this world’s goods and entirely unknown, he is richer by far than the multi-millionaire who is compelled to heap silver upon gold, or the pushing politician whose thirst for fame can never be slaked. He is in harmony with the Universe, he has allied himself with moral gravitation, and, going with its force, he is upheld and supported, so that he has rest now and is neither worried nor afraid.