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 %ry 'H;:',. ''--rt'if^- 
 
 ;>• ;,' '■ *;■ .•7-< 
 
 ANTI-USURY TRACTS. 
 
 BY WILLIAM l^ROWN, 
 
 U^^*^^-^^ 
 
 :"■ '■^■■#r;:'t' 
 
 A SHORT SERMON FROM AN OLD TEXT. 
 
 Matt. XXV, 21. 
 
 The frequency with which wc have heard the parahle of the Talents urged 
 as an excuse for the practice of lending on interest, must be our apology for 
 introducing, into the present scries, a matter having, in reality, so little bear- 
 ing upon the subject. 
 
 The propriety or impropriety of lending on interest is not to be gathered 
 from anything said in this beautiful and instructive parable. It was alto- 
 gether foreign to our Lord's intention to inculcate any precept bearing upon 
 the subject of usury. The design of the parable, among other things, is to 
 teach menkind the nature of the responsibility under which they rest to their 
 great Master in the employment of the different gifts and opportunities be- 
 stowed upon them, and to illustrate the important doctrine of reward for the 
 righteous or those who profitably use their talents, and punishment for the 
 wicked or those who neglect and despise the means of grace. 
 
 Although, therefore, these various talents are represented under the emblem 
 of money, and although the slothful servant is condemned because he failed 
 to put out his means to the exchangers that usury or increase might be 
 received for its use, it would be as unreasonable to conclude that our Saviour 
 thereby expresses anything either in approbation or in condemnation of the 
 practice of usury, as it would be to conclude that the hard, austere, and 
 Nabal-like character ?o applicable to the usurer pourtrayed in verse 24th, is 
 descriptive of the Divine Redeemer who uttered this parable. If such an 
 interpretation could by any means be put upon the 27th verse, then we might 
 Avith equal propriety conclude that Christ commends the conduct of the 
 unjust judge in the parable of the importunate widow ; or the equally wicked 
 conduct of the dishonest steward, who though ashamed to beg and unable to 
 dip, was expert enough at falsifying his master's accounts ; or that the large 
 hearted Solomon, in Proverbs xx, Hi. comracuds the mean practice of pledge 
 taking M'hen warning his reader? against i)utting trust in abandoned liber- 
 
 *./.'» 
 
 1 iiJOC^i: 
 
— 2 — 
 
 tinea. Those, therefore, who would urge this parable as an evidence of our 
 Lord's approval of that practice everywhere else held forth in scripture as a 
 vice, greatly mistake the purport of the parable itself and introduce a prin- 
 ciple of interpretation which would reduce the Bible to the level of the Koran, 
 and resolve its holy and beautiful precepts into a mass of palpable contradic- 
 tion and meaningless absurdities. If such a construction could, by any pro- 
 cess of reasoning, be put upon the parable, then we have the precepts of the 
 new testament brought into direct collision with those of the old, and our 
 Saviour commending to his people a practice destructive of their peace, 
 because ever associated with debt, and in direct opposition to apostolic 
 injunctions. 
 
 We may look at the subject from another though much less conclusive 
 point of view. Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that our Lord does 
 in reality commend the taking of usury. What follows? Plainly this — that 
 the parable proves too much and places the usurer on the horns of a dilemma. 
 For it commends the taking of usury, a practice which, according as they 
 interpret the word, the advocates of the credit system loudly condemn. 
 
 It may not be out of place to take this opportunity to add a few additional 
 reflections on the meaning and application of the term usury. 
 
 I have, in another place,* 'endeavoured to explain the meaning of the word 
 
 usury. Modern expositors, generally, have put a false gloss upon the word, 
 
 towards which they have probably been more influenced by the practice of the 
 
 age than the spirit of the text. The Hebrew word Neshech, to bite, cut, or 
 
 pierce with the teeth, is employed to denote usury or increase. It is repeatedly 
 
 used in the same sense with the Hebrew words Tarbith and Marbith, simple 
 
 interest or increase. As, for example, in Leviticus xxv, 36, 31, " Take thou 
 
 no usury of him or increase'' — either of thy brother, the stranger, or the 
 
 sojourner — where the words Neshech and Marbith are both used. Nothing 
 
 could bo plainer or more explicit than these anti-usury texts. Neshech is the 
 
 word used figuratively to denote what is understood by the words Tarbith and 
 
 Marbith, both of which have the same meaning and are derived from a root 
 
 signifying increase. It is a word used generally and figuratively to express 
 
 lending on interest, and has no reference to any particular rale. Had it been 
 
 lawful to take interest, it would have been as absurd to have fixed a limit as 
 
 to have iixed a price for merchand-se, for every one is, in that case, entitled 
 
 to aim at the highest price. If the word usury denoted only an exorbitant 
 
 rate, then the inference would be plain that a certain rate was permitted. 
 
 But this notion cannot for a moment be entertained, for we are forbidden, in 
 
 the same sentence, to take any increase at all for our loans ; and here usury 
 
 is not distinguished from increase, but placed in apposition with it to show 
 
 that it denotes the same thing. The fact is, all loans imply necessity on the 
 
 part of the borrower, — a necessity, in the circumstances, not to be compared 
 
 with that which prompts a man to engage in barter — and accordingly 
 
 all exactions of interest are hateful in the sight of God. No man will 
 
 * See Hii'X's Merchants' Magazine, May. 1869. 
 
3 
 
 of our 
 1*6 as a 
 prin- 
 iKoran, 
 Itradic- 
 \y pro- 
 I of the 
 id our 
 J peace, 
 lostolic 
 
 borrow who does not need to do so. No man who does not need to 
 borrow ought to be encouraged in speculation. The mind instinctively 
 recoils from the idea advanced by certain expositors, that a profit for the 
 loan of money is as just as a profit on the sale of merchandise. No 
 man can be held guiltless who provides the means by which another 
 is involved in debt. God will therefore have us to give in charity what we 
 must not lend for gain. The necessity of sales or barter is quite a different 
 affair, with which charity has nothing to do. However serious and solemn the 
 charge, there can be no doubt that the all but universal practice of the 
 christian world is, in respect to lending on interest, in direct violation of the 
 law of God. t 
 
 The word usury has no specific reference to money alone. In Deuteronomy 
 xxiii, 19, it is used to denote the increase of money, victuals, and goods gen- 
 erally. In Leviticus, xxv, 31: "Thou shalt not give him thy money upon 
 usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase," it is evidently to be understood 
 that the lending of the victuals for increase is the same thing with the lend- 
 ing of the money on usury. So also in Ezekiel. Though the injunction is 
 here conveyed in different terms, the criminality of the act is the same, the 
 person who lent his victuals for increase being equally guilty with one who 
 lent his money on usury. Neither here, nor in any other of the kindred pas- 
 sages, is there the slightest intimation of a lawful or legal rate of interest. 
 It is the opinion of nearly all the ancient commentators, both Jewish and 
 Christian, that lending on interest is entirely forbidden, and this is the view 
 which has been held by the Church and by all the great and good within her 
 pale up till comparatively recent times. The opinions of the different modern 
 expositors whose works I have had an opportunity of consulting betoken so 
 much ignorance of the great principles involved that they are hardly worthy 
 of special refutation. If the lending of money on interest were an ordinary 
 mercantile transaction to be judged of by ordinary mercantile rules, the impo- 
 sition of a legal rate would be simply absurd. As it is, the imposition of a 
 legal rate, whatever may be said as to the probity of the intention, legalises 
 a vice. And in this act of legalised vice, the Church is but too prone to find 
 excuse for that system in which she is herself so largely involved. Hence, 
 by slow degrees, has a fatal tampering with the word of God resulted in an 
 evil of colossal magnitude which now darkens and overshadows every civil- 
 ised land, and which is the source of endless contentions, sorrows, and strife. 
 
 We may designate a " legal rate of interest " as an unhappy compromise 
 between good and evil, between the spirit of charity and that of an unbridled 
 lust for gold, and too readily has the Church adopted the "legal rate" as a 
 cloak for its sin. This restraint has, for hundreds of years, been a standing 
 evidence to the world of those feelings regarding this vice which have been 
 indelibly stamped upon the human mind. So far as the law is restrictive, it 
 
 t According to Sir E. Coke, Usura dicitur ab «»u e.t are, quia dalurjiro usu, teri$ ; or, wiura 
 rftcitur, quasi ignis urens. If the latter dorivaiion be correct, tl.u Hebrew and the Latin ore 
 equally expressive. 
 
is a good law, protecting society in general and the poor in particular — so 
 far as it is permissive, it is a bad law. The " legal rate " is a fabrication of 
 the human brain, engrafted upon the word of God, antagonistic to the pure and 
 holy precepts of that word, but withal a very happy idea for ministers who in- 
 dulge in borrowing and lending and for a church not over particular in the way 
 of raising the wind. Thus, with shame let it be said, the church of the living 
 God, which ought to be an impersonation of everything holy and beautiful, 
 does a happy stroke of usurious business with its funds through the agency of 
 banks and kindred institutions. But docs not this violent dealing come down 
 upon her own pate? She thus involves others in pecuniary obligations, but 
 how many churches and missions groan under loads of debt I Professing to 
 aim at owing no man anything, she somehow or other grievously misses the 
 mark. She is, like a drowning man, continually clamouring to be delivered 
 out of those disreputable situations in which debt has placed her, and yet her 
 actions and teachings constrain men to be stinted in their measure of help. 
 For indebted men can hardly, in their givings, be either consistent, conscien- 
 tious or liberal. The law is a comprehensive one, embracing every species 
 of loan on increase, whether the result of ecclesiastical polity or of commer- 
 cial usage. One of the most serious results of this system is that, in time of 
 panic, the means of the church are dissipated with those of commerce. True, 
 there is the usual deceptive ledger inscription or a plentiful tender of worth- 
 less paper, but the means, the means, are not in the strong box. The whole 
 subject has a most important bearing on the progress of the gospel, and the 
 comfortable maintenance of that ministry, the value of whose labors to this 
 fallen world can never be sufficiently estimated. Not till the teachings of the 
 church and of the schools are in accordance with the precepts of the Bible, 
 can we expect large, steady and permanent support to the gospel of Christ, 
 for all must admit that the credit system is one which eminently diverts 
 men's minds from the peaceful duties of religion. It is one by which the 
 social machine is everywhere completely overworked and overdriven. If the 
 views I have expressed are correct, well may every heart tremble at the 
 thought of the misery, sorrow, and sin which have for generations followed in 
 the train of the credit or usury system, and never with more fatal results than 
 in our own days. 
 
 A calm and disinterested survey of the broad effects of this vice in all its 
 bearings cannot but leave a fixed impression ■^hat it is one which has most 
 powerfully prostituted the church and debased the general character of the 
 christian world. I believe the church to be the grand conservator of the rights 
 and liberties of man, and well it is for the human race that she is not soon 
 moved from her position. She will, no doubt, long adhere to her present 
 opinions, but the day will come when thickening events will bear this subject 
 down upon her with tremendous force. Then, Bible in hand, shall she go 
 forth, the teacher of the nations, and be made the happy instrument of weav- 
 ing the garlands of domestic bliss and social joy around the pillars of eternal 
 truth according to all the pattern showed to her in the Mount. 
 
— 
 
 ticular—so 
 [ri cation of 
 pure and 
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 tho living 
 beautiful, 
 agency of 
 ome down 
 Jations, but 
 )fe8sing to 
 misses the 
 5 delivered 
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 conscien- 
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 f commer- 
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 rce. True, 
 of worth- 
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 I, and the 
 ors to this 
 ngs of the 
 the Bible, 
 Jf Christ, 
 ly diverts 
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 llowed in 
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 I she go 
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 4" 
 
 Often have I looked, with increasing admiration, upon an old portraii in 
 my possession evidently drawn by a master hand. No painting in the most 
 celebrated gallery can compare with it — its lines are original and perfect, its 
 colouring inimitable, and no lapse of ages can tarnish its striking beauty. 
 The longer we behold this picture the more we admire it. You will see it, 
 reader, in the lifteenth Psalm. Let us look at it, once again, in all its full 
 length beauty. Is it not the divine ideal of a man, perfect in all his parts, 
 comely in all his proportions? Will you, or I, presume with sacrilegious 
 hand, to mutilate this glorious model, to deface this perfect picture 7 
 
 Ah I who shall abide in His tabernacle? Who shall dwell in His holy hill? 
 
 " He that putteth not out his money to usury." 
 
 The ordinary ideas of modem expositors are fairly set forth as follows by 
 Professor Pairbain, in his deeply instructive Exposition of the Prophet Eze- 
 kiel : — " Perhaps what will strike most readers m the present day as chiefly 
 peculiar in the description given of the righteous man, is the stress laid upon 
 the abstaining from iisury : ' He hath not given forth upon usury, neither 
 hath taken any increase.' We fiind the same prominence, however, given to 
 this feature in the still briefer description of the righteous by the Psalmist in 
 the 15th Psalm : ' putteth not out his money to usury.' It arose in both cases 
 from the strict prohibition in the law against lending money for interest to 
 an Israelite. In several of the passages, it is clearly implied that the money 
 to be lent was to the poor, which consequently ought to have been done in a 
 . spirit of brotherly love, and not for the purpose of taking advantage of their 
 necessities, and turning the loan into an occasion of trouble and oppression. 
 
 The word denoting usury (from the verb to bite or eat) has respect to 
 
 this vexatious and selfish mode of dealing with a brother's poverty. But as 
 the law permitted the lending of money on usury to str. n<ier8, it of course 
 indicated that the practice was not in all circumstances imr <-oper. The law 
 had respect to a very simple state of society and a polity which was designed 
 rather to check speculation in trade and commerce, and diffuse a general 
 well-being and comfort ; hence it was important to encourage liberality to 
 the poorer members of the commonwealth, and repress the tendency to undue 
 exactions on the part of the richer ; though, in corrupt times, the spirit of sel- 
 fishness was always breaking through the restrictions. In the artificial and 
 complicated affairs of modern times, the prohibitions of the laws against usury 
 camiot fairly be stretched further than to regard them as involving the imper- 
 ative obligation of dealing in a kind and liberal spirit towards our poorer 
 brethren, lending to them when they have need without expecting anything 
 again, and to discourage the spirit of rash and ambitious speculation." 
 
 Now, the question is, shall we take this merely permissive law, this inci- 
 dental relaxation in favor of the Jews lending on interest to the stranger or 
 heathens around them, as a rule for the guidance of members of the same 
 christian faith in their dealings with each other ? Shall we, who dwell under 
 the shadows of a vine of more luxuriant growth and fairer promise than 
 
 i:.: 
 
1 
 
 i 
 
 I? 
 
 — 6 — 
 
 was ever seen by Israel in her pahniest days, " exact usury, every one of hia 
 brother?" Shall we, in full view of that last g^at commission of our Saviour, 
 received by the eleven on the solitary mountain of Galilee, which broke down for 
 ever all national distinctions and barriers, practice that vice, which, wherever 
 and whenever it is exercised, falls with crushing weight upon our poor breth- 
 ren ? Shall we, in hardness of heart, and in utter disregard of divine law, 
 seize those weapons which God saw fit to permit the Jews to employ against 
 the heathen and turn them against our own kindred ? Shall we recede from 
 the virtue and practice the vice ? Israel was permitted to buy bondmen and 
 bondmaids of the heathen— shall we therefore reduce our brethren to slavery ? 
 Strange, indeed, if what was pronounced robbery, extortion and oppression 
 between Jew and Jew should be worthy of different terms between Christian 
 and Christian. Usury was the means by which the native covetousness of 
 the Jewish heart found its outlet. The degree of guilt, as between Jew 
 and heathen, might be lessened — the nature of the vice remained the same. 
 If oppressive to the heathen, it cannot but be oppressive to the christian. 
 Seeing that the principles of our social economy are the same in every place 
 and in every age, we cannot but conclude that what was good for the Jew is 
 good for the Christian, and that the spirit of the injunction against the prac- 
 tice of usury has, if anything, been strengthened and confirmed by the spirit 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 It cannot be denied that usury or lending on increase is held forth in 
 Scripture as a vice. On this point there can be no dispute. It may be truly 
 said that the extent to which usury prevails indicates unmistakeably the 
 extent of that mammon bondage in which the world is held. Now, by what 
 subtlety can that which was a vice in the days of Israel become a virtue in 
 the reign of Queen Victoria or the presidency of James Buchanan? If lending 
 on interest be as lawful as buying and selling, then it is lawful to take usury 
 flrom the poor. If it be not lawful to take interest from the poor, then it is 
 not lawful to take interest from the rich, for the " bite " thus taken from the 
 rich comes at last, through the aid of price bliiA paper money, out of the pockets 
 of the poor. Let no one suppose that these grinding taxes are contributed 
 by the rich. Originating mainly, now-a-days, with commerce, the lash comes 
 down eventually with increasing force upon the back of the laborer, reducing 
 either the rate of his wages or adding to the price of the articles of his daily 
 sustenance. For it is a fact as capable of demonstration as that two and two 
 make four, that the real prosperity of the country is ever in an inverse ratio 
 to the prosperity of her banking institutions. It is usury, indeed, which has 
 mainly contributed to the " artificial and complicated affairs of modern times " 
 by the facilities which it affords of playing into the hands of the rich, and 
 thus correspondingly reducing the condition of the poor. 
 
 It would seem as if the apologists of the usury or credit system consider 
 that the Jews were only enjoined not to lend on interest to the absolutely 
 poor. I do not think that the ability of a Jew to calculate the nature of the 
 security offered for his money has been at all overrated. Perhaps the Jew and 
 
1 
 
 :? 
 
 Christian stand upon an equal footing in this respect, and Sbylook would, no 
 doubt, be capable of calculating the value of a good fat living just as shrewdly 
 as John Hull. To warn either Jew or Christian against lending on interest 
 to a man in poverty who had no security to offer would be but a 
 work of supererogation. There was little danger of the law being trans- 
 gressed with regard to lending to the man in absolute poverty and raga. The 
 families in danger of the usurer were those who bad lands and houses — the 
 freeholders of Israel — the bono and si|}ew of the land, and who, by means of 
 calamities, either transient or oft recurring, had fallen in decay. Accord- 
 ingly we find that in the days of Nehemiah, what we may call an agricul- 
 tural crisis was brought upon the country by this very vice. Lands, vine- 
 yards, oliveyards, houses, money, corn, wine, oil, all were swallowed up in the 
 insatiate maw of usury. In the simple narrative of Nehemiah, we can trace 
 its progress from bad to worse, till the culminating point is reached in the 
 alienation of hereditary rights, and the selling into bondage of the sons and 
 daughters of the freemen of Israel. 
 
 With these facts before us, I ask, can any man excuse or patronise such a 
 vice as this, one which is the same everywhere, whether in commerce or agri- 
 culture, among rich or poor. Will the pulpit, that mighty engine for good or 
 evil, remain silent or prophesy peace \<^en there is no peace, daubing the 
 wall all the while with untempered mortar, while the poor sheep are scattered 
 and peeled under this rod in the hands of the covetous, the powerful, and the 
 extortionate ? Why fear the loss of the usurer's gold ? Let the church look 
 upon this subject with a spiritual eye and be done with her double dealing 
 and flattery. Let the pulpit speak forth without fear or fator, and with the 
 faith and simplicity of early christian times, regarding this the monstrous 
 vice of the age, and that by which mammon reigns almost supreme and with 
 undisputed sway. 
 
 Note— Those desirous of pursuing the subject will find, in HunV$ Merchants Magazine 
 the following articles by the author of this sheet : — 
 
 " Usury : its meanmg and definition. » May, 1869. 
 
 " Is money, as employed by usurers, a merchantable commodity? " September, 1869. 
 
 ''Remorks on the value of money; and on the principles which regulate its demand and 
 supply." April, 1860. 
 
 "The Effects of Usury on Prices and Wages." August, 1880. In this article the effects 
 of ihc usury or renting of land are considered. 
 
 Parties willing to assist in the circulation of these Tracts or to contribute towards the ex- 
 pense of publication, are requested to address (postpaid) Mr. W. Brown, Cote des Ncigesi 
 near Montreal, C. K. 
 
 MoMTREAt :— Printed by M. Longmooeb A Co.. at the '• Montretil Gazette '» Sicnin ^pch, 
 
 22 Great St Jnma Street.