C) Do you comprehend under it _any_ payment of money as interest for
the use of borrowed capital? or only exorbitant, inequitable, grinding
interest, such as the money-lender, Fufidius, extorted?

Quinas hic capiti mercedes exsecat, atque
Quanto perditior quisque est, tanto acrius urget:
Nomina sectatur modo sumta veste virili
Sub patribus duris tironum. Maxime, quis non,
Jupiter, exclamat, simul atque audivit?

--_Hor. Sat._ i. 2, 14-18.

Usury, in itself, is a purely neutral word, carrying with it, in its
primary meaning, neither praise nor blame; and a "usurer" is defined in
our dictionaries as "a person accustomed to lend money and take interest
for it"--which is the ordinary function of a banker, without whose
help great commercial undertakings could not be carried out; though it
is obvious how easily the word may pass into a term of reproach, so that
to have been "called a usurer" was one of the bitter memories that
rankled most in Shylock's catalogue of his wrongs.

150. I do not believe that anything has done more harm to the practical
efficacy of religions sanctions than the extravagant attempts that are
frequently made to impose them in cases which they never originally
contemplated, or to read into "ordinances," evidently "imposed for a
time"--[Greek: dikaiomata mechri kairou] (Heb. ix. 10)--a law of
eternal and immutable obligation. Just as we are told (D) not to expect
to find in the Bible a scheme of physical science, so I do not expect to
find there a scheme of political economy. What I do expect to find, in
relation to my duty to my neighbor, are those unalterable principles of
equity, fairness, truthfulness, honesty (E), which are the indispensable
bases of civil society. I am sure I have no need to remind you that,
while a Jew was forbidden by his law to take usury--_i.e._, interest for
the loan of money--from his brother, if he were waxen poor and fallen
into decay with him, and this generous provision was extended even to
strangers and sojourners in the land (Lev. xxv. 35-38), and the
interesting story in Nehemiah (v. 1-13), tells us how this principle was
recognized in the latest days of the commonwealth--still in that old law
there is no denunciation of usury in general, and it was expressly
permitted in the case of ordinary strangers[126] (Deut. xxiii. 20).

It seems to me plain also that our Blessed Lord's precept about
"lending, hoping for nothing again" (Luke vi. 35), has the s