THE MIRACLES OF RIGHT THOUGHT. Orison Swett Marden

and opulent in the universe. The very holding of the mind open toward all the good things of the world, expecting and appreciating them, will have everything to do with obtaining them.

       There is something wrong when multitudes of the sons and daughters of the King of Kings, who have inherited all the good things of the universe, starve on the very shores of the stream of plenty, of opulence unspeakable, which flows past their very doors and which carries infinite supply.

      Our circumstances in life, our financial condition, our poverty or our wealth, our friends or lack of them, our condition of harmony or discord, are all very largely the offspring of our thought. If our mental attitude has been one of want, if we have dwelt much upon lack, our environment will correspond. If our thinking has been open, generous, and broad, if we have thought in terms of abundance, prosperity, and have made a relative effort to realize these conditions, our environment will tend to correspond. Everything we get in life comes through the gateway of our thought and resembles its quality. If that is pinched, stingy, mean, what flows to us will be like it.

      When we see people who have been for years in a poverty-stricken condition, unless there has been much ill health or very unusual misfortune, we know that somebody has been sinning, has been in a wrong, vicious, mental attitude. We should very likely find the head of the house a complainer against fate for the sparseness of his supply, the littleness of his inflow.

      If you are dissatisfied with your condition, if you feel that life has been hard and the fates cruel, if you are a complainer of your lot, you will probably find that, whatever your condition may be, in your home or business or social life, it is the legitimate offspring of your own thought, your own ideals, and that you have nobody to blame but yourself.

      Right thinking will produce right living; clean thinking, a clean life; and a prosperous, generous thought followed up by intelligent endeavor to make your thoughts and your ideals real will produce corresponding results.

      If we learn to trust implicitly the Great Dispenser of All Good, the source of Infinite Supply,—the Power which brings seed time and harvest, the Power which feeds, which supplies, the Power which bids us take no thought for the morrow but consider the lilies how they grow,—and do our level best to improve our condition, we shall never know what want is.

      There is nothing which the human race lacks so much as unquestioned, implicit confidence in the divine source of all supply. We ought to stand in the same relation to the Infinite Source as the child does to its parents. The child does not say, “I do not dare eat this food for fear that I may not get any more.” It takes everything with absolute confidence and assurance that all its needs will be supplied, that there is plenty more where these things came from.

      We do not have half good enough opinions of our possibilities; do not expect half enough of ourselves; we do not demand half enough, hence the meagerness, the stinginess of what we actually get. We do not demand the abundance which belongs to us, hence the leanness, the lack of fullness, the incompleteness of our lives. We do not demand royally enough. We are content with too little of the things worthwhile. It was intended that we should live the abundant life, that we should have plenty of everything that is good for us. No one was meant to live in poverty and wretchedness. The lack of anything that is desirable is not natural to the constitution of any human being.

      Hold the thought that you are one with what you want, that you are in tune with it, so as to attract it; keep your mind vigorously concentrated upon it; never doubt your ability to get what you are after, and you will tend to get it.

      Poverty is often a mental disease. If you are suffering from it, if you are a victim of it, you will be surprised to see how quickly your condition will improve when you change your mental attitude, and, instead of holding that miserable, shriveled, limited poverty image, turn about and face towards abundance and plenty, towards freedom and happiness.

      Success comes through a perfectly scientific mental process. The man who becomes prosperous believes that he is going to be prosperous. He has faith in his ability to make money. He does not start out with his mind filled with doubts and fears, and all the time talk poverty and think poverty, walk like a pauper and dress like a pauper. He turns his face towards the thing he is trying for and is determined to get, and will not admit its opposite picture in his mind.

      There are multitudes of poor people in the world who are half satisfied to remain in poverty, and who have ceased to make a desperate struggle to rise out of it. They may work hard, but they have lost the hope, the expectation of getting an independence.

      Many people keep themselves poor by fear of poverty, allowing themselves to dwell upon the possibility of coming to want, of not having enough to live upon, by allowing themselves to dwell upon conditions of poverty.

      The minds of the children in many families are saturated with the poverty thought; they hear it from morning till night. They see poverty-stricken conditions everywhere. They hear everybody talking limitation, lack. Everything about them suggests poverty.

      Is it any wonder that children brought up in such an atmosphere repeat the poverty-stricken conditions of their parents and environment?

      Did you ever think that your terror of poverty, your constant worry about making ends meet, your fear of that awful “rainy day,” not only make you unhappy, but actually disqualify you from putting yourself in a better financial condition? You are thus simply adding to a load which is already too heavy for you.

      No matter how black the outlook or how iron your environment, positively refuse to see anything that is unfavorable to you, any condition which tends to enslave you, and to keep you from expressing the best that is in you.

      By what philosophy can you expect poverty thoughts, thoughts of lack and want, to produce prosperity? Your condition will correspond to your attitude and ideals. These form the patterns which are woven into the life web. If they are slovenly, poverty-stricken, your life condition will correspond.

      Suppose a boy should try to become a lawyer without expecting to be admitted to the bar, or while believing that he would never amount to anything as a lawyer. He would fail. We tend to get what we expect, and if we expect nothing we get nothing. The stream can not rise higher than its fountainhead; no one can become prosperous when they expect or half expect to remain poor.

      The man who IS bound to wm believes he IS going to be prosperous; he starts out with the understanding with himself that he is going to be a successful man, a winner and not a loser. He does not say to himself all the time, “What’s the use? The great business combinations are swallowing up the chances. Before long the multitude will have to work for the few. I do not believe I shall ever do anything more than make just a plain living in a very humble way. I shall never have a home and the things that other people have. I am destined to be poor and a nobody.” A man will never get anywhere with such ideals.

      Everybody ought to stand erect with face towards the sun of hope and prosperity. Success and happiness are the inalienable rights of every human being.

      Every achievement has its origin in the mind, every structure is first a mental structure. The building is first completed in all its details in the architect’s mind. The contractor merely puts the stones, the brick and other material around the idea. We are all architects.

      Everything we do in life is preceded by some sort of a plan.

      Some people would like to make money, but they keep their minds so pinched, so closed, that they are not in a condition to receive an abundance.

      The man who expects prosperity is constantly creating money in his mind, building his financial structure mentally. There must be a mental picture of the prosperity first; the building around it is comparatively easy. It does not take as great a man to place the material around the idea as to create the idea, the mental picture. This is not idle dreaming, it is brain building, mental planning, mental construction. Dogged imagination is often one of the most practical of faculties; the true dreamer is the believer, the achiever.

      Let us put up a new image, a new ideal of plenty, of abundance. Have we not worshiped the God of poverty, of lack, of want, about long enough? Let