Editorial November 5, 1921 Issue

Borrowing and Lending

Gustavus S. Paine

Credit and security are two of the commonest words that are used in the world of business; but many people do not comprehend in the least that their real meaning is metaphysical. Rightly used, these words denote trust in Principle, not trust in persons, and they indicate activity of Mind, not merely methods of material commerce. To credit is to believe, or, more strictly speaking, to understand; for even in business affairs it is plain that a bank extends credit only to further activity in which it has confidence. Now one can have real confidence only in Truth, in divine intelligence, in Principle, and as one looks wholly to Principle for security, one finds intelligence manifest as all the credit that is necessary for unfolding action. Even a bank lends money on the basis of character, since stocks and bonds, notes and mortgages, personal property and real estate would be worthless if it were not for the character of intelligence which they represent. The credit of a nation is equal to the confidence which the nation inspires, and this confidence depends entirely upon the intelligence, or Principle, which the nation expresses.

The truth of debt is that man is indebted to infinite Mind for his whole being. In other words, man is what he is by reflection and not because he is in any way an originator. Man's entire confidence is in Mind, and in Mind he possesses perfect safety, or security. Infinite Mind upholds man, provides for man boundless variety of action, knows that man does fulfill his purpose of being, maintains success as incontrovertible reality. That is why man is always debtor to his creator, who in turn rejoices to be the true creditor, Mind having confidence in man, because Mind, or cause, is ever giving, and man, or effect, is ever receiving. Thus we see that there is, indeed, the truth in place of even the human sense of borrowing, for the entire process of borrowing and lending is but counterfeit of the interdependence of Principle and idea.

From the false beliefs about borrowing, with all their inconsistencies, their dishonesties, their limitations, one has nothing to fear when one knows that they are but counterfeits of Truth manifest. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 267 of Science and Health, "When examined in the light of divine Science, mortals present more than is detected upon the surface, since inverted thoughts and erroneous beliefs must be counterfeits of Truth. Thought is borrowed from a higher source than matter, and by reversal, errors serve as waymarks to the one Mind, in which all error disappears in celestial Truth." The world's sense of borrowing can be improved only as the counterfeit subsides in the presence of the true idea, man, receiving from infinite Mind the abundance of reality, more than which he could not desire.

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