p. 76 | Getting “Time.” by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 18, 1873

Getting “Time.”

By James White

WITH regret I have noticed a disposition on the part of some brethren to buy almost every thing they can if they can get “time” on it, which means that they can buy it on credit, paying at some time future. This is a dangerous practice, and is generally attended with bad results. I have never known a person to prosper who was addicted to it; and when once the habit is formed, articles are frequently bought which are not needed. Such people are always in trouble; always behind their promises, or paying old debts at a sacrifice. Debt is a delusion—it deceives the unwary. I have known some who always meant to help the cause of God when they got out of debt, but year after year only put farther off the desired time. It was said by a certain writer that some people exercise all their benevolence over other people’s goods; that is, they tell what great things they would do if they were as rich as certain others, but feel little burden of doing with what they have. It is an easy matter to feel benevolent if we can make the feeling excuse us from action. And so with people who keep constantly in debt: they often feel a strong conviction of duty to help the cause when they get out of debt, but make comparatively little effort to get or to keep out of debt.

Solomon said, “The borrower is servant to the lender.” To many it is even worse than that. He that is cumbered with debts is a slave; he is not a free man. He is never out of trouble, unless, as occasionally happens, a man is perfectly unconcerned and at ease with debts upon him which he knows not how to pay; but such are greater objects of pity than any others.

“I will give you time,” should be heard with suspicion. It is a note of danger. It speaks of trouble, of anxiety, of days of perplexity, and often of sleepless nights. It is emphatically “vanity and vexation of spirit.”

He who gets in debt without imperative necessity is squandering the means which Providence has placed in his reach for better uses; yet many do not realize this. The amount usually paid on “s. b.” is $10.40 for $1000 for one year. But he who owes $1000 pays not less than $100 a year on it—nearly ten times as much. Yet some are paying even higher rates of interest than that, whose circumstances and business cannot warrant it; it is a leak which runs away all their profits, and keeps them crippled both in regard to their worldly business and their efforts to aid the cause of God. In a time of financial trouble, such are at the mercy of worldly men. It is a great satisfaction as well as a revealed duty to “Owe no man anything.”

J. H. W.