"No, gentlemen," we wisely would answer, "the proposition would engulf us."

But as to the bearing of the interest-statute on the political and economic life of ancient Israel. That the statute was put in force in a state of civilization that differed fundamentally from our modern civilization is well understood. The statute was indeed an accompaniment of a policy that committed Israel to a system of community ownership in the land. The people were of one kin. The clan instinct was still strong. There was a brotherhood of endeavor. The pursuit of agriculture was the principal occupation. No labor problem existed. The needs of the people were simple. An open-air existence was enjoyed by all. Of caste and class distinctions there was none. Israel's affairs were family affairs. It was a tribal family, it is true; but even so, the tribal life was not best conserved by the fostering of debtor and creditor classes in the community.

Jesus' reference to interest is limited to a single parable. Of late years the parable has been taken as conveying his approval of the custom of giving and receiving interest, a custom which in his day was rife. In the early centuries the Church did not hold to our modern interpretation of the meaning of Jesus' words. Of this fact we shall have citations in a later chapter. The early Church based its belief that Jesus repudiated the custom of taking interest, not on the teaching of the parable in which he uses the word interest, but upon his doctrine of Christian lending.

It is not necessary to seize on the parable in question for a defense of interest. We are very well aware that interest, for our day and manner of civilization

at least, is a necessary institution. On what grounds, we shall see. It is not so certain that the taking of interest was either prudent or necessary in Jesus' day. Used as an instrument, not to harness productive capital, but as a weapon of oppression, the custom was subversive. Certainly Jesus' parable seems to convey to us that the custom as practised was both anti-theocratic and oppressive. Of this the reader will be his own best judge. We give the parable.

For a setting, the two evangelists, Matthew and Luke, agree that Jesus was confronted with the passionate longing of the people of Palestine for the fulfilment of the theocratic hope. 24 This appears in the outset in the narrative, which we will now follow.

"And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, 25 and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was immediately to appear. 24 He said therefore, A certain nobleman 26 went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called ten slaves 27 of his, and gave them ten pounds, and said unto them, Trade ye herewith till I come. 28 But his citizens hated him, and sent an ambassage after him, saying, We will not that this man reign over us. And it came to pass, when he was come back again, having received his kingdom, that he commanded these slaves unto whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know what they had gained by trading. And the first came before him, saying, Sir, thy pound hath made ten pounds more. And he said unto him, Well done, thou good slave; because thou wast found trusty in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities. And the second came, saying, Thy pound, Sir, hath made five pounds. And he said unto him also, Be thou ruler over five cities. And another came unto him saying, Sir, behold, here is thy pound, which I kept laid up in a napkin; for I feared thee, because thou art a rough man; thou takest up that which thou layedst not down, and reapest that which thou didst not sow. He said unto him. Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou miserable slave. Thou knowest that I am a rough man, taking up that which I laid not down, and reaping that which I did not sow; then wherefore gavest thou not my money to the money-changer's table, and at my coming I should have exacted it 29 with interest? And he said, Take away from him the pound... But these mine enemies, that would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me. 30 And cast ye the useless slave

into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 31

And when he had thus spoken, he went on before, going up to Jerusalem."

Here we have a cold-blooded despot who worships gold and who gloats over the slaughter of his slaves. Not an uncommon character in Palestine in the days of its subjugation, we are told.32 Out in Jesus' audience were many men, women and children who had barely escaped with their lives from the hands of similar tyrants. Few of them were at any time wholly safe from the thumb of such tyranny. It was even true that they were less safe if they had the courage to listen to Jesus than if they went about their business.33 This was a main circumstance of the hour. In less than seven days Jesus was to pay the extreme penalty of his unequivocal justification of the law and the prophets. Recently, when he had overthrown the tables of the money-changers and driven the interesttakers from the temples the very children of the people had gone singing through the temple, "Hosanna to the son of David!"35 Down from the northern districts of the country, courageous and gathering the courageous about him, he had moved as a crusader of righteousness on Jerusalem. Using the familiar imagery of the prophets, versed in the gospel of the law as the people were versed, poor as they were poor, altogether unchargeable for the mad rush to take the last "bite" out of the scanty resources of the people, sympathetic to their needs, possessing the marvelous faculty of encouraging their hope and stiffening their moral fibre by telling them stories the point of which, often escaping the intelligence of those who made gold their refuge, came burning with assurance and comfort into

their hearts, this Jesus had now become to them the idealization and warranty of the democratic, the fond and righteous theocratic, hope which they cherished.

Unconsciously or no, in order to draw a workable parallel between the murderer of the parable and Jesus, this parallel being supposed necessary, the King James translators, in our authorized version, have sought to throw as much glamor about the despot as possible. Jesus pictured the man as "well born," leaving it to the courageous slave to tell his master to his face that he was a "rough, harsh" man.37 The authorized version of the Bible ironed out this roughness and harshness by bringing the word over to the English from the Greek bodily, in the high sounding term "austere." Refraining from giving the despot a name in keeping with his character and with his apostasy from the law and the prophets, he was graciously nominated the "nobleman." Apprehending that the sole sentence of this character as he went off to get a crown for himself was, as he forced his gold into his slaves hands, trade ye herewith till I come," the translators tempered the commandment to read euphoniously "occupy till I come.' The slaves themselves were given a semblance of domestic felicity and called "servants." The money-changers' table, the like of which Jesus seems twice to have overturned as he whipped the money-changers out of the temple, is dignified as a "bank."

The commentators go very much further. The "nobleman" is dwelt on as "illustrious." The slave who refused to trade for his master, or to take his sordid gold to the money-changers' table, is called a "churl," a “slothful servant," a "hypocritical friend." Details

are said to be "intended to fix our attention on the paradox and seeming unfairness of that law of the kingdom, which decrees that the poor should become poorer still, and the rich become ever richer." 38

Without going into the merits of the controversy concerning interest in this chapter, it is to be said with utmost emphasis that Archbishop Trench cannot maintain his paradox. There is no law of the Kingdom of God "which decrees that the poor should become poorer still, and the rich become ever richer."

And were it necessary to a defense for the present custom of taking interest to assume that it is a divine law for the enrichment of the few and the impoverishment of the many, the custom would receive the anathema of every pulpit in Christendom.

We cling to interest today because it is the most social thing to cling to. Interest is a phenomenon of the interplay of income. Income is a crystallized form of human energy. It represents the fruits of social effort, and for most of us the fruits of privation and toil. Interest has become with us an institution for the stimulation of larger social effort. After all has been said, the truly wholesome stimulation of society is the dream of the ages. A lethargic society without interest would be infinitely inferior to a stimulated society with interest. A more stimulated society without interest, if it could be shown, would be superior to a less stimulated society with interest. Thus far no such society has flourished.

These admissions are required by our science in advance. We have embarked upon the study of the government of God. It is an open-minded study. It is likewise a formative study. We are a community of