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Horror of Debt

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 24, 1865

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 25, No. 9.

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Horror of Debt.

On the first rule of the art of managing money, all preceptors must be agreed. It is told in three words—Horror of debt. Nurse, cherish, never cavil away the wholesome horror of Debt. Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness. Man hazards the condition, and loses the virtues of a freeman, in proportion as he accustoms his thoughts to view without anguish and shame his lapse into the bondage of debtor. Debt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave. If you mock my illustration, if you sneer at the truth it embodies, give yourself no farther trouble to learn how to manage your money: Consider yourself doomed; pass on your way with a jaunty step; the path is facile. But if, while I write, your heart, true to the instinct of manhood, responds to my words—if you say, 'Agreed; that which you call the first rule for the management of money, I hold yet more imperative as the necessity to freedom and the life-spring of probity'—then advance on your way assured that wherever it winds it must ascend. You see but the temple of Honor; close behind it is the temple of Fortune.—Caxtoniana.