Pay Your Debts

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 76, 9 December 1884, Page 3

Pay Your Debts

A Lay Sermon from the •* Borkhamsted Times'." — ** Riches certainly make themselves wings." Our present comment on this text must take the form of an exhortation — •' See tbat the riches for which, •with your proverbial uncertainty, you are responsible be all your own." Why should the bankruptcy of A bring 1 half the other letters of the alphabet to grief? B. C. D. and all the rest ol them may have been great fool 8, but A must have been a roguo. What right had he to put that which was not his to any ri«k ? And it is not in trade alone, nor even chiefly, that credit beyond present means ie continually required and given. The difficulty and misery all round arising out of keeping" money in your bands which is not yours cannot be exaggerated. To make all shopkeepers money lenders too is always folly ; often it is immorality; and more often than you imagine it is cruelty. Wealtuy families, to whom in comparison with others lite is little but a pastime, who take their pleasure and their holiday while bills remain unpaid, Bhouid consider sometimes the trouble and distress which with lighthearted thoughtlessness their neglect has left behind them, Paltry ' matters as they think them, creating only petty irritation here, may there be creating 1 sleepless anxiety and grief, and even ruin. " Kiches make themselves wings." There is but one exception to this truth. That portion of your means which has been U"sed to pay a just debt is alone, so far as you are concerned, absolutely s.afe. Pay your debts, then, promptly. Not to do it is dishonesty ; and even to delay it is to palter with dishonesty. But not only are we generally guilty here* we ridicule our mentors, and invent a nickname at tbeir expense. The " dun,'' however, stands upon his right; and we, if we dismiss him, are in tho wrong- Of that thorn Cannot be a doubt. We are preach ing to a congregation, unique as compared with tho e addressed froin other pulpits - Ist, in tbat it is: chiefly grown men who are listening to us, and to them this subject must como home ; and, 2nd, in that we have clergy as well as laity among our hearers. They equally with others are • 'amenable to considerations affecting those duties which are common to us all ; and they, perhaps, even more than others will feel the telling force of a second text with which we ena our short '• discourse : — " Say not to thy neighbour, * Go and come again to-morrow I will 'give tho.' when thou hast it by thee !"' "^-.Agricultural GuzsJtte.