MONEY is not substance. It is merely a symbol of value, a “medium of exchange,” which we have vitalized and made powerful by our faith in it. The real power back of the symbol which we call money is our faith in it and our love for it. Our love for it is based upon our belief in the power which its possession will give us. Faith is the power that brings substance into visibility. That in which we place our faith always manifests to us—good, bad or indifferent. “Even as thy faith, so be it unto thee.”

Money is local. Each Government has its own peculiar symbol for its medium of exchange. On the other hand, substance is universal, interplanetary, omnipresent. Substance completely fills that incomprehensible all space-filling infinity, those mansions in the sky, to which our Heavenly Father has made our title clear.

When faith, “the substance of things hoped for,” is taken away from money, we see it for what it really is—just an empty symbol, without life, intelligence or substance. “Fiat money,” we call it. Some years ago I bought two million German Marks for twenty-five cents in American money. I wanted the Marks for a curio, nothing more. Why did the man sell me two million Marks for an American quarter? Because he had perfect faith in the American symbol of money and none whatever in the German Marks.

I know a man whose friendship I prize very highly. The mining boom in Goldfield, Nevada, made him a multi-millionaire. Stored away in an attic he has a trunk full of mining stocks for which he once refused five million dollars in cash. One day I was fortunate enough to catch him in just the right mood and he opened the trunk. For awhile I revelled in the wealth of another day—a wealth which had been, but is no more. I held millions of dollars worth of the empty symbol of an erstwhile fortune in my hands. Gone was its value, gone its power. Even the printer’s ink, which had once festooned it in gay and colorful magnificence, was faded and dead. Whimsically my friend said: “It’s old and worthless now, like myself; but we both have our memories, and fond ones, too. Men long ago lost faith in those stocks and their value is now gone.”

Years ago, as a boy, it was my privilege to “play” with countless wealth that once had been. I scooped up thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of cancelled Government Script. The Government had removed the faith of the public from it. Without the public’s faith in it was worthless, powerless.

By our faith in the power of money we make of it a Calf of Gold, before which we bow down and worship, not realizing that our faith is the real substance back of it, and that the Golden Calf of money before which we grovel, is just an empty symbol. Even at its best, money is only an accepted standard by which we measure values—values more or less uncertain and always fluctuating.

Gold has always been considered the most lasting, enduring and reliable standard of money. For the possession of gold men have suffered every known privation, including death. Human beings have been known literally to starve to death rather than spend a little of their hoarded gold. In the hope of securing it, men have committed every known crime, from the “little white lies” of deception, to the most fiendish murders. And the best they can do with their gold after they have gained possession of it is to hoard it.

This habit of hoarding is the cause of most of the suffering in the world today. Millions of men, women and children, deprived of sufficient and proper food, are living below the level of nutrition, slowly lapsing into despair, because of man’s insatiable greed for gold. When man is healed of this insane desire to hoard the symbol of wealth, the ever-present super-abundance of God’s limitless Substance will become manifest.

In view of the foregoing facts, man’s manner of handling gold is most mystifying. After having suffered every privation to get it out of the bowels of the earth, he solemnly proceeds to bury it again! Every “gold standard” nation has its gold reserve hidden in some specially constructed and carefully guarded vault. The gold reserve of France is said to be buried somewhere beneath the streets of Paris. Just now, while the war clouds are lowering so menacingly over all Europe, millions of dollars worth of gold is being shipped to the United States because it is thought to be safer.

If we can find no better use for gold than to bury it again, why mine it in the first place? How long will men foolishly continue to worship the empty symbol and completely ignore the real substance? The habit of hoarding is the outcropping of thoughts of fear, and fear is lack of faith in God. Therefore by faith shall we be healed of the poverty caused by hoarding and come to realize the ever-present presence of God’s abundance, always and instantly available. Truly the Lord is our Shepherd, and we shall not want when our faith is quickened.

Substance is the living mirror which faithfully reflects our mental images upon the screen of visibility. Our innermost, habitual thoughts take form, and, filled with substance, present themselves to us for our consideration and disposal. Thus are we given dominion over all things. We are free-will agents, not mere automatons, and we can control our thoughts if we have sufficient courage. By controlling our thoughts we control conditions in our environment. “All power in heaven and on earth” is given to us through our freedom of choice. All of the limitless power of God may be used by him who holds his thoughts true to God, the Good. That same boundless power, with every iota of its strength, is against the one who allows his mind to run riot. We must reap what we sow, but we have the choice of what seed we will sow.

When we have learned to think thoughts of abundance we shall cease to experience lack. When we have learned to think thoughts of love we shall cease to suffer from the hatred of others, or from our hatred of them. When we have learned to think thoughts of health we shall no longer writhe in painful disease. When we have learned to think thoughts of Eternal Life we shall cease to pass through the gate called death. Then will the Angel of Life roll away the stone of negation from the door of the sepulcher of defeated death, and we, clothed in the light of understanding, shall live forevermore, that our Father may be glorified.