III.
The Debt of Love.
" Owe no man anything, save to love one another." St. Paul bids us avoid all debt save this. This is a debt which we all owe, which we can never discharge, and which we must always be seeking to pay.
1. It is unavoidable. — Owe nothing, do you say? Paid for all ? You may pay your tradesman for his wares, you may pay your tailor for your coat, your butcher and your cook for your meals. But what have you paid Arkwright and Watt for your cotton ? What have you paid Kepler and Newton and Laplace and Bowditch for your ocean commerce ? What have you paid Sir Humphry Davy for your coal ? You cannot stir without encountering obligations which no conceivable amount of silver or gold can ever compensate. And now let us mount from worldly and intellectual obligations to spiritual — from that which is least to that which is highest. Who shall repay the prophets and martyrs of sacred truths for the light they have shed on our mortal path, and for the hope of immortality ? Who shall satisfy the debt incurred by their testimonies and sacrifices, the dangers braved, the pains endured in the cause of mankind ? Whatever he may think, every son of man is a debtor to his kind for the larger part of all that he possesses, or can by any possibility acquire. A compound and accumulated debt has
* Thomas Waugh, Twenty -Three Years a Missioner, 220.
ROMANS XIII. 8 357
devolved upon his head — a debt of which a fraction of the interest is all that with lifelong effort he can hope to discharge ; a debt contracted in part before he saw the light, multiplied by all the years of childish imbecility and childish dependence, and consummated by drafts on years to come. Past, Present, and Future are his creditors. It needs another view than the mercantile, debt-and-credit theory of life and society to free us from the weight of obligation, the overwhelming burden of indebtedness, which the thoughtful and conscientious mind must feel, regarding the subject of benefits received and ability to pay in that light.
^ Compared with that goodwill I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it has proved an intellectual trick — no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.^
Love, work thy wonted miracle to-day.
Here stand, in jars of manifold design. Life's bitter waters, mixed with mire and clay,
And thou canst change them into purest wine.*
2. It is commendable. — The more we pay the more we have to contribute, and the greater the capital from which to draw. But the recognition of the debt with the consequent effort to liquidate it, though leaving us with the debt unpaid, fulfils the law of life. St. Paul bids us lead a life of universal love. If we do that we shall not only be good citizens, paying our taxes as law-abiding subjects should, but we shall be good neighbours, good husbands, good parents, good children, good masters, good servants.
^ I often wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are. How much the world needs it. How easilv it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered, How superabundantly it pays itself back — for there is no debtor in the world so honom-able, so superbly honourable, as love.^
*|| A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that it is always the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay every just demand on your time, your talents,
^ Emerson, Essays, ii. 122. * Hannah Parker Kimball.
* Uoary Drummond,
358 DEBT
or your heart. Always pay ; for first or last you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. He is base — and that is the one base thing in the universe — who receives favours and renders none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying on your hand. It will corrupt and breed worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.^
3. It is unpayable. — But the effort to discharge it cancels obligation. Wherever two things are bound to each other by reciprocal, equal, and perfect love, all feeling of obligation or indebtedness one to the other ceases; there is no question of claims or dues between them, though all the giving, the technical, ostensible giving, has been confined to one side of the union and all the apparent receiving to the other. In a case of friend- ship, fervent and true, between two large-hearted men, if one happens to be in want and borrows and the other happens to abound and lends, although there is a technical and legal indebtedness of the borrower, there is no obligation between them, or if any, it is the lender's quite as much as the borrower's.