Debt Part 3 from C. H. Spurgeon

Debt
C. H. Spurgeon writing as John Ploughman
From John Ploughmans Talk

"Debtors can hardly help being liars, for they promise to pay when they know they cannot. When they have made up a lot of false excuses they promise again, and so they lie as fast as a horse can trot.

You have debts, and make debts still, If you've not lied, lie you will.

Now, if owing leads to lying, who shall say that it is not a most evil thing? Of course, there are exceptions, and I do not want to bear hard upon an honest man who is brought down by sickness or heavy losses; but take the rule as a rule, and you will find debt to be a great dismal swamp, a huge mud-hole, a dirty ditch. Happy is the man who gets out of it after once tumbling in, but happiest of all is he who has been by God's goodness kept out of the mire. If you once ask the Devil to dinner it will be hard to get him out of the house again; better to have nothing to do with him. Where a hen has laid one egg she is very likely to lay another; when a man is once in debt, he is likely to get into it again; better keep clear of it from the first. He who gets in over shoes is very liable to be over boots.

If you want to sleep soundly, buy a bed of a man who is in debt; surely it must be a very soft one, or he never could have rested so easy on it. I suppose people get hardened to it, as Smith's donkey did when its master broke so many sticks across its back. It seems to me that a real honest man would sooner get as lean as a greyhound than feast on borrowed money. He would choke up his throat with March dust before he would let the landlord make chalks against him. What pins and needles tradesmen's bills must stick in a fellow's soul! A pig on credit always grunts. Without debt, without care; out of debt, out of danger; but owing and borrowing are bramble bushes full of thorns. If ever I borrow a spade of my next door neighbor I never feel safe with it for fear I should break it. I never can dig in peace as I do with my own; but if I had a spade at the shop and knew I could not pay for it, I think I should dig my own grave out of shame. Scripture says, "Owe no man anything," which does not mean pay your debts, but never have any to pay. My opinion is, that those who break this law ought to be turned out of the Christian church. Our laws are shamefully full of encouragement to credit: no body need be a thief now; he has only to open a shoj and make a failure of it, and it will pay him much better. The proverb is: "He who never fails will never grow rich." Why, I know tradesmen who have failed five o six times, and yet think they are on the road to Heaven What would they do if they got there? They are a dea more likely to go where they shall never come out til they have paid the uttermost farthing. But people say "How liberal they are!" Yes, with other people's money I hate to see a man steal a goose and then give religioi the giblets. Piety by all means, but pay your way as par of it. Honesty first, and then generosity. But how oftei religion is a cloak for deceiving! There's Mrs. Scamp a fine as a peacock, all the girls out at boarding-school learning French and the piano, the boys swelling abou in gloves, and G. B. Scamp, Esq., driving a fast-trotting mare, and taking the chair at public meetings, while hi; poor creditors cannot get more than enough to live front hand to mouth. It is shameful and beyond endurance to see how genteel swindling is winked at by many. If I hac my way, I'd give them the county crop, and the prisor garb for six months; gentlemen or not, I'd let them see that big rogues could dance on the treadmill to the same tune as little ones. I'd make the land too hot to hole such scamping gentry if I were a member of Parliament or a prime minister. As I've no such power, I can at leasi let off the steam of my wrath in that way."