Others there are who protest their determination to pay up, even to the last cent; their dun-bills are always kept in sight, lest they forget their obligations; they treasure these bills, as one treasures a thing of immense value.  But they live beyond their means and income, purchase pleasure and luxury, refuse to curtail frivolous expenses and extravagant outlay.  And in the meantime their debts remain in status quo, unredeemed and less and less redeemable, their determination holds good, apparently; and the creditor breaks commandments looking on and hoping.

Some do violence to their thinking faculty by trying to find justification, somehow, for not paying their debts.  The creditor is dead, they say; or he has plenty and can well afford to be generous.  An attempt is often made at establishing a case of occult compensation, its only merit being its ingenuity, worthy of a better cause.  All such lame excuses argue a deeper perversity of will, a malice well-nigh incurable; but they do not satisfy justice, because they are not founded on truth.

A debt has a character of sacredness, like all moral obligations; more sacred than many other moral obligations, because this quality is taken directly from the eternal prototype of justice, which is God.  You cannot wilfully repudiate it therefore without repudiating God.  You must respect it as you respect Him.  Your sins and your debts will follow you before the throne of God.  God alone is concerned with your sins; but with your debts a third party is concerned.  And if God may easily waive His claims against you as a sinner, a sterner necessity may influence His judgment of you as a debtor, through respect for the inviolable rights of that third party who does not forgive so readily.

THE END.

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art of profiting by our faults.