land are actually perjured and forsworn by the 109th canon of our Church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the sacrament till he be reformed,—and there is no refor mation without restitution. And that ye may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, turn to Ezekiel xviii., 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon usury, or taketh any increase,-mark it! he that taketh any increase, above the principal,—not six in an hundred, but let it be never so little, and never so moderate,-he that taketh any increase, is a usurer, and such an one as shall surely die for his usury, and his blood shall be upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to excuse your damnation. "Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime and hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitution for all they had gotten by usury.' Such, without possibility of denial, has always been the Christian position as exhibited until late days-in the actual prac tice of the Church, no less than in the uniform texts of its canons, decrees and definitions, and the consentient teaching of its Doctors and Fathers. In this particular, therefore, at least, I am calling, not for some new, unheard-of interpretation of Christian duty, but for the return of renegades and apostates to the standard adhered to with absolute unanimity through all the earlier centuries. But the complexity of the modern social organization makes the ancient rule so much more difficult! It does not render it any less righteous. It would involve so much, -so many private fortunes, so many educational and religious foundations, even! It would disturb all values, it would upset the world! Why, the preachers of such a doctrine advocate revolution! Jesus was something of a revolutionist. He was executed in the name of good order. The Apostles were the detested social conspirators of their day. Everywhere they went, they set the cities in an uproar. They made no attempt to conceal it: they were seeking to turn the world upside down, saying that there is another King, one Jesus. It is all very hard? It is hard. Those who embrace the doctrine will suffer? Truly they will. Their dependents will suffer? All are involved in the common fate, and the innocent must bear the sins of the guilty. Many are doing that now, of necessity. Salvation will come when some voluntarily take up the burden. The way of salvation is the Way of the Cross. The Way of the Cross-can none be found to enter upon it ?-Upon the answer which some perhaps of us will give hangs the decision in the minds of the millions living and to follow, as to whether Jesus Christ were a crack-brained poet, or very and eternal God in human flesh, assumed to persuade us, with the invincible convincing power of infinite love, how we ought to live; Who died upon the Cross to give us strength to imitate His brave contempt for dignities and ease; as to whether He were a phantom who performed a part and vanished, or is an eternal Saviour Who, in the guise of His majesty radiant through humility, infallibly dwells among His people still, bruised, wounded, covered with reproach, misunderstood, denounced, -yet revealing Himself in deeds of midnight ministry by sick-beds and in godless streets, of sacrificial service to the ungrateful and despised; a Christ witnessed to, and shown, in the pure devotion of His faithful priests; glorified in the wide, uncalculating dedication to Him of their riches by those who have learned that riches have no value except in His service; triumphing in the heroism of men who in His name renounce all opportunities for legal and respectable, but unjust, gain; winsome with the loveliness of holy women who devote their lives to His service. 18 On the decision of some between Obedience and rejection, it depends, I do believe in profound sincerity, whether Christianity is to be hereafter for the world a myth, a fable, a dissolving superstition, or the wisdom and the power of God for the salvation of the race of men. |