Counsels on Stewardship

Counsel to a Colporteur

In your letter you complain of the yoke of debt. But there is no excuse for your being in debt.... Your freedom in borrowing, with no reason to suppose that you will be in a position to repay it, is doing great injustice to others, robbing them of their little all, and bringing reproach upon the cause of God. If you realized what you were doing at the time of your action, you would stop. You would see the sinfulness of robbing men, believers or unbelievers, and bringing them into strait places in order to relieve your present necessities. CS 256.3

This case of yours, Brother -----, is not a small affair. In the course you have pursued, you will leave upon the track of other canvassers a blighting influence, difficult for you to efface. You will have closed the door to other persons who would canvass, and do the work honestly, but who will be regarded as untrustworthy. To those who really need to have some indulgence and favors in the line of trust, because of the wrong course some canvassers have pursued, they dare not venture. And with the experience they have had, in the loss from the treasury of hundreds of pounds, why should they not be afraid to repose confidence in men who so manage as to draw from the treasury, and leave them minus the means they so greatly need to sustain the work of God for this time?—Letter 36, 1897. CS 256.4