Proverbs 3:27-28 - Homiletics

Dilatoriness in the payment of just debts

I. THIS DILATORINESS IN MORALLY CULPABLE , AND MOST INJURIOUS TO SOCIETY . Through thoughtlessness in some cases, through deliberate meanness in others, many people postpone the payment of their just debts as long as possible, though they have the money by them, and are perhaps turning it to account for their own advantage. Such needless delay of justice should be regarded as a moral offence. A sad laxity prevails in this matter. It is said that preachers direct their admonitions respecting the business habits of the day too much to one side of the case. The tradesman is accused of greed, dishonesty, deceit, while little is said of the conduct of the customer. But here is an instance where the failing, nay, the sin, lies with the buyer. Most of us little know how much the trading classes suffer from delay and difficulty in calling in the money that is owing to them; how often they pinch themselves and stiffer in silence for fear of losing a customer by giving offence in too much pressing for payment, knowing that the common selfishness of others will readily lead them to court the patronage of the offended client. This delay is grossly unjust to more conscientious people who pay promptly, and yet are made to suffer from the high prices necessitated by the bad debts and postponed payments of others. It is also a direct temptation to those shifty practices which all of us deprecate when we meet with them in trade, Feeling that he cannot recoup himself readily in the regular way, the tradesman is tempted to try some less straightforward method for making his business, thus heavily handicapped, to some extent profitable. A new moral tone is requisite in this matter. People should see that to delay to execute justice is to commit injustice. Time is as valuable as coins. He who robs a man of time is a thief, and should wear the brand of a thief.

II. THE REMEDY FOR THIS DILATORINESS MUST BE FOUND IN A FULLER RECOGNITION OF THE CLAIMS OF HUMAN BROTHERHOOD . It is not enough to prove the abstract justice of prompt payment. The selfishness which withholds it will find some casuistic excuse for further delay. This selfishness, which is at the root of the evil, must be overcome. The spirit of Cain is dishonest as well as murderous. We are too ready to treat those with whom we have merely business dealings according to art entirely different code from that which controls our conduct with our friends. Commercial rules are so much more lax than social laws. The mere business relation is too often robbed of all human consideration, treated from a purely selfish standpoint, almost on a principle of enmity, as though it belonged to a state of war. Does a mart cease to be our brother because we buy and sell with him? When he was a stranger, we felt some tie of common humanity with him. After we have entered into relations of mutual convenience, is the tie broken, and does he become as a heathen and a publican? We must remember that it is our "neighbour" who claims just payment; and are we not required to love our neighbor as ourselves? The golden rule of Christ, that we must do to others as we would that they should do to us, must be applied to business, or we have no right to profess ourselves to be Christians.