s, then all
increase would be usury, and there could be no interest; or if a state
should repeal all laws limiting the exactions of increase, then there
would be no usury in that state. Usury is increase forbidden by civil
law. Separated from the enacted statutes of a state the distinction
disappears. There is no moral nor is there an economic difference.

Blackstone says: "When money is lent on a contract to receive not only
the principal sum again, but also an increase by way of compensation
for the use, the increase is called interest by those who think it
lawful, and usury by those who do not."

The moral nature of an act does not depend on the enacted statutes of
human legislators, and the laws of economics are eternal. We must not
permit our views of divine and economic truth to be perverted by this
modern division of increase into legal and illegal. In order that the
whole truth may be now expressed in our language we must combine with
the old word usury the new word interest; then only will we have the
full force of the revealed truth. "Wherefore then gavest not thou my
money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own
with usury or interest?" It is rendered interest in the Revised
Version.

Throughout this discussion usury is used in its full old classical
meaning for any increase of a loan, great or small, whether authorized
or forbidden by the civil state.

CHAPTER II.

THE LAW BY MOSES.

God determined to deliver his enslaved people from the bondage in
Egypt, and to lead them out to the land he had promised to their
fathers. They had been strangers in Egypt; now they should have a land
of their own. To them liberty was but a tradition; they should now be
freemen. They had been a tribe; they should now be a nation.

God raised up Moses to be his special servant and the mouthpiece to
declare his will. He ordered his marvelous deliverance from the river,
and his training in court as a freeman. He then gave him direction to
lead his people out of their slavery, and also divine authority to
announce to his people the code of laws by which they were to be
governed in their free state. Some of these laws were ceremonial, to
conserve their religion, that they might not forget their God. Some
were civil and politic, to promote the moral, intellectual and
material welfare. All were in accord with the moral and religious
nature of man, and with sound economic principles. All were su