He was very much afraid of debt. It was not in his style of living . He wore a beard, I never knew him without one. It was the style those days. Such was evidently not the case in England if the story about Jacob Cats, the household poet of the Netherlands, is true. Cats had been delegated to represent the Netherlands at the government of England. They would not accept him because he did not have a beard. Cats made the rejoinder, had they known this in the Netherlands they would have sent them a billygoat.

Style has much to say in the life of a people. One’s living standard may be such that it breaks him. Unless the standard of one’s living be kept within the bounds of one’s income we belong to the category of thieves and robbers. We are then taking something that does not belong to us.

Father did not believe in this. When he retired, his income was very small. He bought a little home which had both electricity and city water; he had both taken out. He figured out what both would cost them and be decided to continue the use of the pump which was on the porch and also the old lamp which had been used on the farm. The neighbors wondered what was the matter with the old gentleman next door. He must be suffering some mental derangement. The answer of father was: “My income is small and I must live within that income.”

We may shake our heads at the reasoning of this oldfashioned father. His thinking may be carried to an extreme, but it contain s a lesson sorely needed these days. In a day when we think that to be happy we need every gadget which modern science supplies to clutter the market, we are missing the mark.

And, sad to say, our government is leading the way. We have but to think of the staggering debt which is ever rising and placing us under a burden of interest which is becoming unbearable.

Back to the old–fashioned Biblical rule—Owe no man anything but to love one another.

(Rev.) John De Jong

Ripon, Cal.

From The Banner