Our Debts

ALLYN W. KELLOGG

Individuals, business firms, and nations seem constantly faced with the problem of paying debts. The meeting of these obligations promptly seems at times to human sense impossible. The failure to meet obligations often causes men to become angry with their neighbors. Let us search to find out the cause of this disquieting condition. By so doing we shall be able more understandingly to overcome this error.

"Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law," says Paul in his epistle to the Romans. To "owe no man any thing" is a command to free ourselves from the bondage of encumbrances of every kind and to remain free. Quoting from a dictionary, we find a debt to be, "that which is due from one person to another."

Just what is due from one person to another? Does that which is due from, and to, our brother consist only of material obligations, such as money, notes, and the like? It is such believing that leads to misunderstandings. Paul has shed much healing light in the last part of this sentence. In order to fulfill the law of really loving one another, one must of necessity love God. When both creditor and debtor seek to fulfill the law of love, God's omnipotent law, all fear of loss and sense of persecution are destroyed. This leads each of the parties involved to seek and find the source of all true supply, namely, divine Mind. The creditor knows that as all God's ideas are honest and upright, true supply will not be withheld. The debtor learns that his need is met, and the manifestation wherewith to meet his brother's need is certain to appear.

Fear of loss, greed, malice, and impatience must be replaced by love, generosity, compassion, and patience. And fear of persecution, self-pity, dishonesty, and discouragement must be destroyed by faith, confidence, honesty, and courage. This places all transactions in the realm of thought, where divine intelligence is ever in operation, for the glorification of God and protection of men.

Our beloved Leader tells us on page 232 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," that "the right way wins the right of way, even the way of Truth and Love whereby all our debts are paid, mankind blessed, and God glorified." If the doing of all things in "the right way" leads to the paying of all debts, then our need is to learn the right way. This learning will be hastened by prayerfully, consistently, and carefully studying each day our Lesson-Sermon, by obeying our Church Manual, supporting our literature, and by regular attendance at our church services. Thus we shall begin to express the gratitude we should feel toward Mrs. Eddy for giving the world the wonderful truth of Christian Science. The sooner we learn how to stay in "the right way," the sooner shall we ourselves be free and be found ready to help others to lift their thoughts above the mists of material sense.

Our real debt is to love our neighbor as ourselves with such consistency and fidelity that we shall constantly make payment of our obligations. There is no one who does not owe his fellow beings, at all times, under all conditions, the expression of his highest understanding of divine Truth and Love.

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