me have felt that the beauty and especially the
euphony of the familiar passage has been marred. But the word charity
is no longer equivalent to love, in our language, and could not be
retained without perverting the sense.

Usury, when the version was made, meant any premium for a loan of
money, or increase taken for a loan of any kind of property.

Theological Dictionary: "Usury, the gain taken for a loan of money or
wares." "The gain of anything above the principal, or that which was
lent, exacted only in consideration of the loan, whether it be in
money, corn, wares or the like."

Bible Encyclopedia: "Usury, a premium received for a sum of money over
and above the principal."

Schaff-Herzog: "Usury, originally, any increase on any loan."

This was the usage of the word usury by the great masters of the
English language, like Shakespeare and Bacon, in their day, and is
still given as the first definition by the lexicographers of the
present.

Webster, 1890 edition: "Usury, 1. A premium or increase paid or
stipulated to be paid for a loan, as for money; interest. 2. The
practice of taking interest. 3. Law. Interest in excess of a legal
rate charged to a borrower for the use of money."

Interest is comparatively a new word in the language meaning also a
premium for a loan of money. It first appeared in the fourteenth
century, as a substitute for usury, in the first law ever enacted by a
Christian nation that permitted the taking of a premium for any loan.
The word usury was very odious to the Christian mind and conscience.

Interest was at the first a legal term, used in law only, and it has
always been applied to that premium or measure of increase that is
permitted or made legal by civil law.

In modern usage usury is limited in its meaning to that measure of
increase prohibited by the civil law. Thus the two words interest and
usury now express what was formerly expressed by the one word usury
alone. Interest covers that measure of increase that is authorized in
different countries, while usury, with all the odium that has been
attached to it for ages, is limited to that measure of increase that
for public welfare is forbidden by the laws of a state.

The distinction is wholly civic and legal. That may be usury in one
state which is only interest in another. The legal rates greatly vary
and are changed from time to time in the states themselves. If a
state should forbid the taking of any increase on loan