The words hold a large place in every alert life: Happiness, Health and
Heart; some may put them Success, Strength and the Soul. It is easy to
recognize the importance of the first two; that of the third is more
remote. Some have imagined that religion emphasizes the last alone and
ignores the other two.
Evidently it is a legitimate thing for the Christian to pray for
prosperity; and it is right for him to try to answer his own prayers.
Poverty is no proof of piety. Nothing about God is or can be
poverty-stricken. He gives us a rich and glorious world, prolific in
its resources; its life is rich and prosperous. Nature is running
over, fairly rioting in splendour and wealth. The Creator has given
man this garden of glory that he might enjoy it. It is a sin not to
enter into its possession; he is dead already who does not desire
prosperity, who no longer seeks success in life. It is an easy matter
for the man who has made an all around failure to talk about the
dispensations of Providence and the compensations of the future.
Prosperity is always a sin to the man who lacks the pluck to secure it.
Yet many who seem to have failed may have succeeded best of all.
Prosperity often comes in strange packages; it may even be labelled
Adversity. Not all will succeed according to popular standards. Many
will be more fortunate; they will win the riches of influence,
friendship, family, thought, knowledge, love, character. It is not the
things we have that make us rich; it is the amount of life we are
capable of enjoying. The soul determines prosperity. It is the
energizing spirit of man, stirring him out of the ignoble dust,
creating the desire for more of the things of life and then for more of
life itself. It determines values. It has a way of reversing things
so that one man gets more out of a dollar book than another gets out of
a million dollar bond. It alone gives appetite and appreciation, and,
without these, though there may be many possessions, there is no
prosperity.
What is true of prosperity is true also of health. Happily the days
are gone when sickness passed for saintliness. No longer is red blood
counted a foe of righteousness. We are getting back to the simpler,
earlier thinking. It is not only right to seek health; it is wrong not
to. The haggard face no longer indicates the holy heart; it is likely
to evidence the opposite. We are getting over the notion that God is
glorified by ruining the fair temple He has given us. Men no longer
count on being beautiful angels in the skies because they have looked
like walking sepulchres on our streets. It is an imperfect holiness
that does not have health. Health, that is physical prosperity, is a
duty.
And here, also, the soul is central. The clean heart, pure thoughts,
controlled appetites, aspiring hopes, these make health. Evil temper,
lust, worry, care, envy, these are the soul processes that disturb the
life and destroy health. Happiness is health, and happiness is wholly
of the heart. The soul is but the sum of all the things within, the
force that moves all things in life; if within the man looks up, then
he lives up; if the soul droops, he decays. What you are within
determines what you are without; he who is poor in heart, in this inner
life, will be poor in prosperity and weak in health, no matter how much
he possesses. But he who with his soul takes in the world of beauty,
of love, of joy, who reaches out to heaven and God, all these things
are his and he is rich and strong indeed.