the people, is an ideal that has been caught alike from the Old Testament and the New; (b) That the teachings of both Testaments contain the positive laws and principles, without the observance of which there can be no new era, no true democracy; and (c) That the present Christian Community Movement offers an exemplification of the spirit and purpose the Kingdom of God that cannot be gainsaid.

Our method of procedure, due to the historical nature of the material with which we have to do, will necessarily be unique. We shall be required at the outset to trace a branching stream of thought, now in one direction, and now in another, always wondering whether, like channels divided by an undetermined stretch of land, the parted streams may not come together again. It is the history of the interest-statute that thus divides our attention. First, we must trace the stream of thought which originally went with the statute. This will occupy us through the succeeding chapter. Following this survey we shall pause, in two short chapters entitled The Watch-Tower of Democracy and Songs of Democracy, to glimpse the fact that the question of interest is subordinate to other questions. In the sixth chapter we shall trace the stream of thought that led up to the rejection of the intereststatute by the Church. And thereafter we shall go through upward-struggling epochs, fathoming the depth of things belonging to the Kingdom of God, as the events of history, and the nature of our science shall require.

CHAPTER III

Church and Interest

"The teaching of the Church on the subject of usury, i. e. the taking of any payment for a loan of money, was due, even more directly than the doctrine of a just price, to the lessons of the Gospel. It began with the very natural attempt to enforce the precept, "Lend hoping for nothing again," as part of the duty of brotherly love among Christians; and as having the force of a Divine command, and therefore to be obeyed, even had the precept not appealed, as to most of the Fathers it seemed to, directly to the conscience... The Council of Nicea, in 325 A. D. forbade the clergy to take interest on pain of degradation from the clerical office, and the duty of abstaining from such base gain was repeatedly insisted upon by the decrees of synods and in the writings of the Fathers."-W. J. ASHLEY 48

THE

HE present chapter is of value, as showing the workings of the mind of Christ in the Christian community life of the early and middle ages. Space forbids more than the briefest glimpse of this life. If it seemed wrong to take interest, and for reasons related to the life of the community, it will be observed that the question did not function unduly. It is the sturdy togetherness, the beginnings of industrial and commercial enterprises, the remarkable prosperity that attended the community undertakings, the spirit of cooperation and good-will, the absence of a vexing labor problem, the oneness of the society, the dignity of work, the passion for service, that challenges our admiration.

We may begin with William Cunningham, 49 the greatest of present-day economists in the Church. Cunningham, a scholar of the first rank, accustomed to weigh his words, eminently prepared by historical

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researches that have been published in many volumes, possessed of judicial qualities of the highest order, never controversial, always painstaking, has been giving us books for so long, that no one will need an introduction to him. As the Archdeacon of Ely, some of our readers may have heard Dr. Cunningham in his pulpit. He has lectured in America, in Harvard University. His first words will lift us to our feet.

"In days gone by we had a social system which was permeated by Christian morality, and where all the relations of life were defined on this basis." 50

"The whole English society had come into being under Christian guidance, and the laws of the old Saxon and Anglo kingdom show ample traces of a Christian spirit. Especially is this true of our industrial and commercial life from the earliest date of which we have any definite knowledge of it . . . Religious and industrial life were closely interconnected, and there were countless points at which the principles of the divine law must have been brought to bear on the transactions of business. p. 25.

"Tillage was carried on by communities, or at any rate was so far co-operative, that the cultivator would rarely be reduced to borrowing money, as the Eastern peasants do." "The end in view in mediaeval times was the cultivation of fair dealing and industrial prosperity . . . . all could work together for the common good: the usurer and the middle man was the bane of all lands." pp. 41-42.

"The monastery was an industrial organisation The Christian ideal of a disciplined life of work was embodied in monastic institutions and was markedly different from the aims which have been generally favoured in the ancient or in the modern world ...... Monastic life was a Christian Communism, and the remarkable prosperity which it maintained, for something like a thousand yeras, is at least proof that communism, when attempted under favourable conditions and on sound lines, is not necessarily such a failure as the history of recent experiments might lead us to suppose." pp. 26-7, 35.

"The mediaeval prohibitions all rested on a desire to avoid transactions which were inconsistent with the Christian duty of loving one's neighbor. The usurer, who extorted private gain from the unfortunate, or from those who were devoting themselves to the service of their King or the Church, seemed clearly guilty of infringing this broad rule Not only was there

a Christian doctrine of the terms on which loans should be made but a Christian doctrine of prices as well, resting on

... the

attempt to bring about a fair rate of exchange, in which neither party got the better of the other." p. 26.

"The law of the realm was in practical accord with the canons discussed by S. Thomas Aquinas; other guardians of morality in the pulpits and elsewhere, exerted their inuence in the same direction. We need not be surprised that under these circumstances a strong public opinion was formed on the subject a public opinion which supported the ecclesiastical and other powers in inflicting penalties. It is commonly supposed that the narrow-minded ecclesiastics laid down an arbitrary and unjustifiable rule. . . . . The rule was not arbitrary, but commended itself to ordinary common sense." 51

Second scarcely to Dr. Cunningham as an authority on the history of English economics is W. J. Ashley, M. A., sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, then professor of political economy in the University of Toronto, and finally called to the professorship of economic history in Harvard University.

We have two books from Mr. Ashley's pen. The first book deals with the economic history of England in the early, and the second book, in the latter, part of the Middle Ages. One breathes with deep gratification over Mr. Ashley's dedication of the earlier volume to the memory of Arnold Toynbee. The citations no doubt will lead the reader to avail himself of an opportunity to read Mr. Ashley's works entire, as beyond question Dr. Cunningham's works. Mr. Ashley opens the subject in his first book, in the third chapter at the 17th paragraph:

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"The teaching of the Church on the subject of usury, i. e. the taking of any payment for a loan of money, was due . to the lessons of the Gospel . . . The Council of Nicaea, in 325, forbade the clergy to take interest. . . . The prohibition was extended to the laity in western Europe by the capitularies of Charles the Great, and the councils of the ninth century." p. 148.

"We cannot fail to connect the renewed attention by churchmen to the sin of usury, from the twelfth century onward, with the revived study of Roman law in the West. No legislator or judge could remain ignorant that the code which men looked on as the highest embodiment of human wisdom and statescraft

(setting aside the Bible code) distinctly permitted loans on interest, and provided means for enforcing the payment of interest as well as capital.

"Papal legislation to meet what was deemed a growing evil, had begun as early as 1179. Among the canons of the great Lateran Council held . in that year, one ran as follows: 'Since in almost every place the crime of usury has become so prevalent that many persons give up all other business and become usurers, as if it were permitted, regarding not its prohibition in both testaments, we ordain that manifest usurers shall not be admitted to communion, nor, if they die in their sin, receive Christian burial, and that no priest shall accept their alms.' Clergy disobeying this order were to be suspended from their office until they had satisfied their bishop.

"It was at another great council, that of Lyons in 1274, that Gregory X. ordained that no community, corporation, or individual should permit foreign usuers to hire houses, or indeed to dwell at all upon their lands, but rather should expel them within three months This latter provision was not likely to be effective; consequently the more importance must be attached to the next canon, which ordained that the wills of unrepentant usurers,-of usurers who did not make restitution, should be without validity. This brought usury definitely within the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts.

"The last step was taken in 1311, when Clement V. boldly declared all secular legislation in favour of usury null and void, and branded as heresy the belief that usury was unsinful.

"Even the laws of Justinian had placed certain limitations on the lending of money." pp. 148-151.

"The Instructions for Parish Priests, the work of John Myrc, about the middle of the fifteenth century similarly illustrates the attempt to impress upon the mind of the people the main principles of the Church's teaching as to worldly goods." ii.386

Thus stands the statute of interest in Europe in the Middle Ages. Even though the statute came to be successfully contested in the later centuries, it is to be noted that it accompanied an era of co-operation and good-will that deserves to be re-enacted. We close the chapter with the statute 25th of Edward I of England, the tenor of the good-will of which merits the title of the Magna Charta of Democracy.

"Our land shall have their laws, liberties and free customs, as largely and wholly as they used to have them when they had them best..... And if any statutes have been made by us or our