The Bondage of the Borrower

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” — xxii. 7.

HE law is laid down in general terms, that it may be freely modified in its application by the circumstances of each case. It is not written, Thou shalt not borrow; or, Thou shalt not lend. The text describes the practical consequences of the act, and leaves every reader to judge for himself whether his circumstances permit or require him to come under their influence. In some cases it may be right to borrow, and in others it is certainly wrong: this text does not cut the knot and make morality easy by an authoritative permission on the one side, or an authoritative prohibition on the other. It is an instance of the reserve which is a common characteristic of Scripture. Minute directions are not given for the conduct of daily life. Principles are laid down and tendencies indicated; and from these every man must construct a working plan for himself, according to the analogy of faith and the testimony of conscience. A book of medicine, emanating from the highest authority, distinctly describes the effects of a certain stimulant, when administered internally, upon the human body. It quickens the circulation, and stirs all the vital functions into a greater than their normal activity; but when the effect of the potion has passed away, a lassitude supervenes, which brings down the patient’s strength to a lower point than that at which it stood before the application of the stimulant. The medicine adds nothing to the permanent resources of the system, but gives you the command of a stronger impulse for a time, on condition of full repayment, and something to boot, as the price of the accommodation. Already we know certainly that this article of the pharmacopeia may in peculiar circumstances be useful as a medicine, but can never in any case be available as food. A man may be so situated that the power of making an extraordinary effort for an hour will be worth purchasing at the price of an exhaustion many degrees below his normal condition during the whole of the following day. In such a case temporary resort to the medicine may be a lawful expedient; but no circumstances can possibly make it wise or safe to administer or use it from day to day as an ordinary article of food.

The expedient to which the “borrower” resorts in his difficulty is precisely such a stimulant. It is not necessarily and in all cases evil. It is a medicine, but not food. It may sometimes be administered with good effect at the crisis of the pecuniary distress; but such is the character of this substance, that you cannot safely employ it as a curative agent at all, unless you secure the highest professional advice as to the prescription at first, and exercise the most scrupulous care afterwards in the actual administration of the dose. Thus prescribed and thus administered, it is lawful and useful. It is one of those good things of God which watchful disciples may receive with thankfulness, and use with profit. When you have taken into consideration the character and capacity of the individual who requires the stimulant, the kind and extent of the losses that have temporarily placed him in straits, and the prospects of trade at the time, generally in the community and particularly in his own department — when you have considered and compared all these elements, and found that the stoppage is only a momentary faint in a sound constitution, by all means administer the draught: but watch the patient while he is under its influence, and bring him back as soon as possible to his ordinary regimen. If he begin to like the stimulant, and the dreamy comfort which it supplies; if he manifest a tendency to resort to another dose as soon as the effects of the last begin to wear away, — the symptoms are alarming. The patient has acquired a morbid appetite for the medicine. The cure has become more dangerous to him than the disease.

There is a remarkably close analogy between the expedient of borrowing money in a temporary strait, and the expedient of borrowing for the moment from your own future store by means of ardent spirits. There is a likeness in the usefulness and power of the expedients when skilfully applied at the crisis of an ailment; a likeness in the tendency to undue repetition of the stimulants, often begotten in the patient by their use; and a likeness in the wretched life -long bondage to which the victim is reduced when that which at first was occasionally resorted to as a medicine has become necessary to him as daily food.

When an honest and industrious man has been thrown into pecuniary distress by a series of adverse circumstances which he could neither foresee nor avert, he may — he should cast about for some one who can, by a loan, help him over the chasm which has suddenly opened across his path and forbids his progress. When a man of worth has fallen into such a strait, he generally finds some one able and willing to do a brother’s turn. In this lower sphere of temporal things, they who wait upon the Lord are often enabled to renew their strength. In this, department, they who observe wisely the course of events, may often see and taste the loving-kindness of the Lord. Having frankly grasped in his weakness a brother’s offered arm, he puts all his energies to their utmost stretch, in order to reach at the earliest moment an independent footing, where he can stand alone again. This done, he takes his own burden upon his own shoulders, and sets his benefactor free. It is well. He fell into distress; he applied a remedy; the remedy was successful; he is thankful for the relief which it gave him, but he has no desire to continue the application of the remedy; he casts it away as the convalescent casts away his drugs, glad that he had them in the time of need, but as glad to get quit of them when the time of need is past. This hearty, conclusive repudiation of the labelled bottles that stood in rows in his sick-room, is one symptom that the cure is complete. The tendency, wherever it is manifested, to continue sipping at the stimulant or narcotic draught, is evidence that if the patient has been relieved of one disease, he has in the process contracted a worse. The honest man who borrowed in a time of need, never breathes freely till he is standing on his own feet, and working his own way again. “Owe no man anything,” sounded in his ears as long as he was in debt; and he felt that he could not answer to the Lord, whose word it is, if he should indolently neglect any opportunity of reducing it. His fear of God and his regard for man conspire to strain every nerve in the effort to be free.

But there is in the community a numerous class whose normal condition is debt. If at the first they took borrowed money, as they might take opium, a medicine to relieve an acute disease which would not yield to other means, they chew it now every day and all day, as the staff of their life. The appetite has become like a second nature. Whenever real life touches the dreamer roughly, he opens his eyes languidly, takes another pill, and sleeps himself into the fool’s paradise again, until the next jolt disturbs his ignoble slumbers. This disease is prevalent in the community. There are dealers of various grades who seem to count debt their element; they live in it; they do not expect to get out of it; they scarcely wish — at least they never energetically strive to get out. They borrow and spend, and borrow again, in a weary, unvarying circle. If they lose, the loss falls on others, for they never possess anything which is really their own. The disease is chronic, and the patient in some sense actually likes to be in it. To him the negative condition of debt affords fewer cares than would the positive possession of wealth. A community cannot thrive in which this habit of life largely prevails: a family is wretched whose daily supply is filtered through this unhealthy medium. A soul cannot grow in grace while the lower life is steeped in this stagnant element.

Beside the ravages which it commits in the higher sphere of commerce, this vice is spreading among the labouring poor, and weakening society by eating into its foundations. The difference between a workman who pays his way as he goes, and a workman who lives on credit, is in one aspect very small, and in another very great. A very small sum of money saved or squandered, and a very slight personal effort made or refused, will turn the balance and determine whether of the two conditions shall be yours; but though the antecedents of the two conditions lie so near each other, their consequences are far apart. A very little, in the way of cause, will place a man in this position or in that; but this position will produce to its occupant, in the way of effect, a life of comfort, and that position a life of misery. A little makes the difference; but the difference which that little makes is very great.

Morally and materially the habit of borrowing is to a working man and his family an incalculable evil. It is eminently a demoralizing habit. The man who indulges it loses by degrees the power to keep a shilling in his pocket. The winsome but delicate bloom of self-respect is soon worn off. By giving up the exercise, you soon destroy the power of foresight: the capacity of self-denial is destroyed and the reins flung loose on the neck of indulgence. Such is the blighting influence of this habit that no virtue can live in its atmosphere.

As it is morally a vice, it is economically a blunder. Here the truth of the text comes most clearly out, that the borrower is servant to the lender; and a degrading service it is. If the workman borrows from his employer, he is enslaved to the capitalist, and has lost the power of maintaining his own rights: if he borrows from a shopkeeper, he has thrown away the privilege of buying in the cheapest market. The vice is reduced to a system in large communities, and cultivated as a trade. It is a wound received in life’s stern battle, and left without a bandage to fester in the sun: it affords food and feasting to a horde of vermin, but wastes the poor soldier’s life away.

Two mechanics are employed in the same factory, and live with their families in contiguous dwellings. From the one house, at certain stated seasons, the wife and mother issues forth with money in her hand to purchase necessaries for her household: from the other, the wife and mother steals out at irregular intervals and untimely hours to borrow the means of satisfying her children’s hunger. Into both houses the same amount of weekly wages comes; but twenty shillings laid out bring more comfort into this house than into that. The buyer goes to any shop that pleases her, and takes there the articles which she judges cheap and good: the borrower is led by an agent to the shopkeeper who is willing to part with his goods without receiving their price. The merchant who sells on credit to such a class of customers needs a large profit, and takes it. The article is dearer to the borrower than it is to the buyer, and not so good. The agent must be paid too for seeking out the customer, and it is the customer who pays for being sought out. The borrower is the lender’s slave: the servant is impoverished, and probably in the long-run the master is not enriched.

When the system is fully elaborated, the agent prowls about during the day, when the wives are idle and the husbands absent, baiting his hook, and getting its barb insinuated into the victim’s mouth. He gives a showy article in hand, which the woman may wear to-morrow, although she has not a penny wherewith to pay for it. Her name is inscribed in his book under an obligation to pay one shilling every week, until the payments reach a pound, — this sum being considered sufficient to cover material, agency, risk, and interest. Ten or twelve weeks in succession the poor woman wends her way to the appointed place and deposits her shilling. Then the gaudy garment disappears from her shoulders: perhaps the pawnbroker’s shelves could give some account of it. She has not now the comfort of possession. When the article is off her back, the shilling slips from her memory. The payments are interrupted one day — one hour beyond the stipulated time. At this opening a pair of pincers, diabolically prepared beforehand, are introduced, to tear out the pound of flesh according as it is in the bond. They are constructed thus: Certain messengers, or sheriff’s officers, in league with the agent and sharers of the spoil, come in with a summons to the small debt court. Decreet, as a matter of course, goes against the defaulter, expenses and all. A large portion of the expenses consists of fees to these officers. If, in addition to the principal, the names of two securities have been attached to the bond, each is served with a summons, and a triple profit accrues. Business and pay are thus created for the company, and the miserable borrower serves the associated lenders as the worn-out camel serves the watchful vultures, when the caravan has passed and left it lying still living on the sand. One form of human vice suggests and sustains another. As long as men will fight and kill each other in thousands, creatures in human form will follow the trail of armies, and prowl on the battle-field at night, stripping the dead, and occasionally, perhaps, giving the finishing stroke to the dying. As long as the improvidence of multitudes shall provide the carcase, harpies will hover overhead, and make a bold swoop down for a morsel as often as an opportunity occurs: nor is it to be expected, considering their character and calling, that when the victim is helplessly prostrate, they will always be scrupulously conscientious in waiting till the breath go out. The rank corruption that has been allowed to creep” over the economic condition of the people, allures and harbours these loathsome night birds. The evils are deeply seated and wideh spread, — only one cure can fully meet the malady; but the evils lean on each other, and to cut the roots of one would impede the progress of the rest.

We have already said that a very small amount of money and effort would suffice to turn the scale, and give the borrower all the buyer’s vantage-ground. Of time a week, of money twenty shillings sterling, — this is all external to the men, that constitutes the interval between them. In a fishing village, on the margin of an estuary through which one of our larger rivers pours itself into the sea, live two labouring men. On each is laid the task of pulling his boat with the produce of certain fisheries daily up the river, to a market town about fifteen miles inland. One starts with the flowing tide, and returns on its receding wave: the other delays his departure till the tide has turned. A single mistake insures a double misfortune: the sluggard must contend against the stream in his upward voyage, and the tide has set in against him again ere he is ready to return. These two men accomplish the same distance in a day, and over the same course; but the task of the one is easy, and the task of the other hard. Such is the difference between the workman who, having fallen behind the world once, remains behind it always, and the workman who begins by paying his way, and has always the means of paying it. One effort, one sacrifice, and instead of running hither and thither with your wages to pay the debts of the past, you have the money free in your hand to command the market for the time to come. This could easily be accomplished, but the character which would keep matters right when they are right is not so easily attained. Although you should give the borrower a sum of money sufficient to pay all his debts, he will soon be deeper in debt than ever. Unless the moral principle be implanted, and the provident habit formed, no amount of material contribution can improve the condition of the people. Wealth and charity in league cannot do it. Although mountains of gold and silver were thrown into the chasm, it would gape as dark and wide as before. In this matter as in others we must adopt the Lord’s way, and employ his instruments. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will in no wise depart from it.

These things are more intimately connected with spiritual religion than the reader at first sight may suppose. If one should say in regard to the natural history of animals, Let us have the life of the living creature, and we care not what may be the constituents of the element in which it dwells, — you would not count him a discriminating observer. No less does he miss the mark who, in efforts for the regeneration of the people, concerns himself only with their faith in Christ, and neglects, as irrelevant, the economics of their homes.

Spiritual life, we confess, is the one thing above all others needful for the dead in sin; but that life will not thrive — that life cannot be in an alien element. The double difficulty of paying an old debt and contracting a new one is precisely “the care of this life” which will most effectually choke the word and make it unfruitful. When Moses proclaimed to Israel in Egypt the richest proihises of God, it is expressly recorded that “they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage” (Exod. vi. 9). The consolation which the lawgiver brought to them from the treasures of divine grace was the very medicine which their broken hearts needed; but these hearts were so crushed by oppression that they could not take the consolation in. The perplexity of the Hebrews when they were compelled to make bricks without straw could not be greater than that of a labouring man in one of our cities, with hungry children round him, and his wages all spent before they are won. The pawnbroker and his kin are harder masters than any Pharaoh that ever ruled in Egypt. When the borrower is conclusively subjected to the lender’s yoke, his bondage is more irksome than that under which ancient Israel groaned. The perennial anguish which accompanies this economic dislocation forbids the approach of saving truth to the soul that needs it most. The new life, begotten by the Spirit and growing into strength, would prevail to cure the economic derangement; but reciprocally, an improved condition of the household economics would powerfully work together with more direct means to kindle and cherish the spiritual life.

Can these dry bones live? They may; but it is when the Spirit of the Lord breathes life into them. Reformation will not do: regeneration is needed.

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