The gospel-bearing value, the news that one can get into a man’s mind with one dollar, the news that he can be made to see and act on for one dollar—­well, thinking of this some days, makes for me, at least, going up and down the Main Street of the World feeling my purse snuggling in my pocket, and all the people I can step up to with my purse and tell so many dollars’ worth of news to, tell that dollar’s worth of gospel to about the world—­makes going up and down with a dollar on a big business street, and spending it or not spending it, feel like a kind of chronic, easy, happy, going to Church.  One always has a little money in one’s pocket that one spends or that one won’t spend, and sometimes even not spending a dollar, practised by some people, at just the right moment and in just the right way, can be made to mean as much and do as much with a world as spending a thousand dollars would without any meaning put into it.

Sometimes I even go into a store on purpose, a certain kind of store I know will try to cheat me in a certain way, let them look a minute at the dollar they cannot have.  Then I walk out with it quietly.

I have said that the life-blood of my convictions shall circulate in my money and if I cannot express my soul, my religion, my gospel or news for this world, news about what I want and about what I will have in a world, if I cannot make every dollar, every shilling I earn, go through the world and sing my own little world-song in it, may I never have another shilling or earn another dollar as long as I live!

The very sight of a dollar now whenever I see one once more, fills me with deep, hopeful working joy, thinking of what a bargain it is and how I can use it twice over, thinking of the dollar’s worth of news, to say nothing of the dollar’s worth of things that belong with a dollar!

* * * * *

For some generations, now, we have tried to make people good in a vague, general way, by using priests, sacraments and confessional boxes.  For some centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers and juries and ballot boxes.  We are now to try, at last, religion or gospel or news or ideals—­practical, shrewd aimed ideals, that is, news to a man about himself or news about the man from the man himself to us.  In everything a man does he is expressing to us this news about himself, and about his world, and about his God.  We are all telling news about the world and about ourselves all the time and we are all in a position for news all the time.

What is it from hour to hour and day to day that we will do and we will not do?

This news about us is the religion in us.

The average man is coming to have very accurate ideas of late as to just where his religion is located.  He has come to see that real religion in a man, very conveniently located (immediately at hand in him and personally directed), is his own action, his own divine “I will” or “I won’t.”