* B. Jowett.
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produced that money, not merely in the exact amount, but in the very litile coin in which it had been paid in by the village people when they bought their stamps. Here is an example of honesty, the honesty which is at the root of a noble life, the simple, central honesty about money without which, in its pure and simple detail, we can build no building that in the sight of God will stand.^
(2) The love of display. — The craving for luxuries, the passion for physical comforts, the widespread disposition to make life more ornate and less rugged, more smooth and less self-denying, are tendencies and desires concerning which at the present day there can be no dispute or any serious question. In a community this means the growth of a relaxed sense of individual honour and of common honesty. It means a disposition that will have luxuries by paying for them if it can, but which will have them anyhow. To think lightly of debt, and the personal and business discredit which comes or ought to come with it, to be loose in matters of trust, and reckless or unscrupulous in deahng with the interests of others, to maintain a scale of living which is consciously beyond one's means, and yet to go any length and run any risk rather than abridge or relinquish it, these things are so frequent, if not so familiar, as almost to have lost the power to shock us.
(3) Envy. — The emulation of richer neighbours and friends, the eagerness to have and wear and eat and drink what one's neighbours have to wear and eat and drink is another potent factor. We know the story. It repeats itself very often; it repeats itself not least among religious people. A young couple begin life with a small competence — enough if they would be modest in their requirements. But they have richer friends, and they think the good things of the world are meant for them too. Why should they not have them ? And so they find themselves by the end of the year living beyond their income — they are in debt. There are bills they cannot pay, and there begins that long period of bondage, of misery, which comes when we are not, and ought not to be, able to look people in the face.
2. The results of this easy " running into debt " are always grave and often tragic.
* Bishop Gore.
348 DEBT
(1) One result is loss of independence. — Not only are many enjoyments and comforts dependent on the possession of some amount of wealth, but also many of the higher goods of life. Often through extravagance in youth a man may be bound to some inferior or mechanical occupation; he may be deprived of the means of study or education ; he may lose one of the best of all God's gifts — independence.
(2) Over the miseries of debt there have been hearts hroJcen — of parents suddenly awakened out of the fool's paradise in which they have been living, of children saddened by the thought of the sorrow to others which their improvidence has caused. Every now and then the community stands aghast at some tragedy of horror in which a poor wretch, daring rather to face his Maker than his creditors, jumps off the dock or blows his brains out. A dozen of his fellows, hastily gathered and as hastily dismissed, register their verdict of " suicide occasioned by financial difficulties," and the great wave of human life rolls on and over, and the story is soon forgotten. Whereas, if we fairly realized what such things meant, we would empanel as the jury every youth who is just setting out in life, every husband who has just led home a young wife, every woman who is a mother or a daughter in so many thoughtless house- holds, and cry to them, " See ! Here is the fruit of extravagant living and chronic debt. Here is the outcome of craving for what you cannot pay for, and of spending what you have not earned. Would you be free and self-respecting and undismayed, no matter how scanty your raiment or bare your larder ? Hear the Apostle's words to that Rome which had such dire need to heed them : ' Owe no man anything, save to love one another.' "
^ Said a foremost physician in one of our foremost cities not long ago, when asked how far the facility with which American constitutions break down was occasioned by overwork, " It is not overwork that is killing the American people ; neither the people who work with their brains nor those who work with their hands. I see a great many broken-down men and women. I am called to treat scores of people with shattered brains and nerves, but they are not the fruits of overwork. The most fruitful sources of physical derangement and mental and nervous
ROMANS XIII. 8 349
disorders in America are pecuniary embarrassments and family dissensions." ^
^ A question that Dr. Kidd often put to the bridegroom, immediately after the ceremony was over, was, "What makes a good husband ? " The answer expected was, " The grace of God," to which the minister sometimes added, " Yes, and keeping out of debt." A young man, wanting to be fully primed before he had to submit to the fiery ordeal of the Doctor's questioning, got the whole thing up in parrot-like fashion. The usual question being put, " What makes a good husband ? " the young fellow glibly blurted out, "The grace of God, sir, and keeping out of debt." The Doctor gave him a curious look, and then, with a comical twinkle, added, "I see, sir, you have been ploughing with my heifer." ^