Luke 11. 25, Jesus uses the word, which in the Greek is kosmos (cosmos), to characterize the unclean spirit, "The unclean spirit

saith, I will turn back unto my house whence I came out. And when he is come, he findeth it swept and garnished. In Matt. 23. 23-39, the word is turned in scorn upon the Pharisees, in the scathing paragraph: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe.. and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy and faith.... Ye blind guides, that strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel! Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full from extortion and excess Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the tombs of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we should not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye are witness to yourselves, that ye are the sons of them that slew the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape the judgment of hell?" The words emphasized need but to be brought over to the Praetorium, as Jesus stands in scorn of the time-server, Pilate. If we do this, observe the keen edge of Jesus' entire conversation with Pilate. "Pilate . . . said unto him, Art thou the King of the Jews? Jesus answered, Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee concerning me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? ... what hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this error; if my kingdom were of this error then would my servants fight.... but now is my kingdom not from error Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king.. to this end am I come into the world of error, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Pilate said unto him, What is truth? And.. went out again unto the Jews." The first ray of the fact had entered his heart from the Mind of God, that a kingdom had been set up in Jerusalem, a kingdom free from error, force and untruth: a kingdom of virtue, of power, of life: the kingdom of the living God.

It really seems that our one lack through all these years has been the want of a science of the Kingdom of God, devoted to the setting forth, not of theological propositions so-called, but the presence of Jesus in our Christian society, to bring us to the mind of God concerning God's will for all society. For the want of such

a science we have often been forced into political activities that were not even advanced in the name of God, and by no means for his Kingdom. This is indicated by Thorold Rogers, who was educated for the Church, but who was destined to rise in Parliament, after occupying a professor's chair in Oxford, thence to be compelled to say of England's hard-earned democratic institutions:

"We do not owe them to the Church, which has been since the days of the first Edward, the willing servant of statescraft, and has rarely raised its voice against wrong-doing. Had the English people relied on the mere machinery of its government and the character of those who have manipulated this government, it would never have been an example and a model of civilized organization." 46

Outlining what is really a part of the teaching and instruction of the Church, and what has ever been more or less so, all words to the contrary, this earnest writer goes on to say, that the maintenance of free public opinion, the rise of effective public men when needed, and stubborn perseverance on the part of the people, tell the tale of England's progressiveness.

Brilliant Arnold Toynbee, also of Oxford, and destined to do much toward helping press the leverage of the Church of England toward lifting the cause of the people, seems also to have felt the need of a science of the Kingdom of God. Thus the reader may observe:

"Religion, the desire to what is right! A great thing this! The whole of Plato's Republic is the attempt to draw men to do what is right. If it has taken man centuries to win liberty, how many more centuries must pass away before he learns the right use of liberty! Nay, what has not come down to us in the name of religion itself?-division, bigotry, persecution. If the State has oppressed and stamped out freedom, the Church has misguided men and stamped out religion. Picture the Founder of our religion sitting on that mountain on which the ancient prophet bowed his head in expectation of the rain-cloud,

sitting with His face toward the western sea, what a world of spiritual ruin and calamity would He behold! If men were slow in building up a power to do what they like, how much slower in building up a power to enable them to do what is right! We are disposed to say the true Church is not yet come." 234. And again:

"The constructive positive stage which is to follow it will lay tasks upon us splendid though difficult. While the struggle for a free State lies behind us in the past, the struggle for a pure Church lies before us in the future. A pure Church, so far from being won, dwells only in the imaginations of men religion and a pure Church are not only not yet won for us, they are threatened as they never were before by intolerance and indifference. The struggle for religion will be a struggle beside which the struggle for freedom will seem a little thing, and upon us, who recognize every man as a priest of the Most High God, lies the burden of pressing forward to secure to the nation the religion by which it may live." 239. 47 And once again:

"What! men cry, can this church . . . this last obstinate remnant of a dead social system, this institution of feudalism and fierce obstruction, this church of the dominant classes, dark with the memories of persecution and intolerance; can such a church as this become the church of freedom and a church of the people? Yes, it can!"

Dear soul! It has always been more or less that. Only it has been a Church for everybody, and everybody includes poor and rich, weak and strong—just as the Church has found them in the world, and drawn them.

The difficulty is, that when the Church has been betrayed, and it has been betrayed often because it has trusted, it has always been put in the light of betraying human society.

But the advent of Christianity has never really deserved to be regarded as a calamity. It is not true that its teaching is adapted, not so much to render people good citizens of this world, as to prepare them for another and better world.

This is not true, because it is the nature of our science to prove, (a) That democracy, or the cause of

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