and to one who knew her carefulness and her fears for the beloved Library, it was a proof of her strong faith that she could lay aside those cares so easily. Our little talks were not of plans and future work, but of her last communion, and the goodness of her kind nurse.

The Library was left in the hands of eight Trustees, whose President is the Bishop of New Jersey. A new day was dawning, new methods were necessary, new courses were needed, to meet the modern demand. The reorganization has taken time and work. There have been difficulties which could only be met by sound scholarship. All the theology of the last decade is more or less infected with German thought, no longer trusted; it was even said gayly of the Oxford of 1913-"They are all Atheists there!" Since the beginning of the war a well-merited contempt for intellectual processes without morality has been growing. It has not been the intention of the Trustees to change the principles of the S. H. S. H. S., but only to modify and modernize its methods. The old courses may always be had for the asking. The courses in Church History and Christian Classics are perhaps especially to be commended as unchangeably good. The first of the new courses to be presented is that on the New Testament. A Manual for the New Testament, prepared by the Rev. Scott Easton, D.D., Professor of the New Testament at the Western Theological Seminary, Chicago, is in the hands of the printer. Preliminary Reading on both the Old and New Testament is already listed and may be had by applying to the Director.

The new Director and Organizing Secretary is Miss Gladys Baldwin, 164 Waverly Place, New York. She is a daughter both of England and America. Her childhood was spent in Oxford, where her father was Professor of Oriental Languages. Like old Aschem's princess pupil, she

is young and learned; characteristics which have their uses in others as well as in Sydney's sister-though certain others, present in both, may of course be ignored in a really serious paper.

The Russian Library and Courses are in charge of the Rev. Professor Leicester Lewis, at the Western Theological Seminary, Chicago. The professors will charge a fee for criticism and examination by correspondence. These fees are in addition to Library dues. Library membership is one dollar a year, with payment of postage on books sent through the mails. The Old Courses may be had for one dollar. Preliminary Reading in the New Courses for two dollars and a half, and full privilege in the Library for five dollars. The New Courses and Manuals are subject to the advice and selection of the Very Rev. H. E. W. Fosbroke, D.D., Dean of the General Theological Seminary. We offer Seminary Courses and Examinations by the professor who gives the course.

To the clergy in lonely places, far from the inspiration of intellectual association, to women in the home everywhere, to Girls' Friendly Societies, to business women who have free evenings to give to reading and study, to all who feel the need of more definite teaching, to all earnest souls who would study the Bible as it is, the Trustees heartily recommend the Courses of the Anglican Library. We, who are modern, must study the old Faith with the moderns, but it must not be a false or superficial modernism. No other work of this kind is being done in the Church in America. In England there are the Archbishop's Courses, quite beyond the scholarship of most American women, and also the S. P. C. K. Manuals. But here in America, where the distances are so great, and therefore the need so much the greater, there is no other agency elastic enough to cover the

whole ground and give, in the waste places, as in the crowded centers, thorough and efficient teaching in the theology of the Catholic Church.

Two hundred thousand women in our Communion answered the Advent Call to Prayer. If two hundred thousand American women should answer this call to united, careful, prayerful study under trained and orthodox teachers, who knows how soon Jerusalem might be builded in our green land? Women of America! Let us unite, as our sons have united, in one stupendous effort to realize the might of coöperation. Let us to Bethlehem, as to a Plattsburg, and build us a barrack of books. Let us know what we believe, that others may believe through our certainty.

Now may the soul of Sarah Frances Smiley rest in peace, and her work, through the students of the Anglican Library, follow her.

The Morality of Interest

BY HERBERT PARRISH.

T is apt to be forgotten, or it is not generally known, that the morality of interest has a history. In view of the present clamor against capitalism-the vague promises of parlor socialists, the denunciations of soap-box orators— this history may be worth recalling. We are too apt to take for granted that so well-established a thing will stand without defense.

The morality of interest is a development. Like steamengines, machinery, and other inventions of modern civilization-and in consequence of them-the loaning of money

at interest has become recognized as morally right in spite of entrenched opposition, against bitter prejudice, and in the face of official authority. If we change this established custom now we shall reverse the wheels of time and return to the Middle Ages. In an age of Trotzkys the contingency is not inconceivable. The tearing out of this plank by legislative enactment, or the weakening of security by the pressure of labor's demands, will turn the world back to the days of horse-drawn vehicles and triremes more suddenly than can be imagined.

The condemnation of the custom of taking interest on loans was a characteristic of the Middle Ages. For fifteen hundred years the Christian world of western Europe regarded the custom as immoral. Then it gradually changed its mind. It had valid reason. Russia, not having advanced far from mediævalism, never did change its moral view on the subject-which may account for the rapid success of certain theories of Bolshevism there.

The Christian Church, from the time of Nicaea on, condemned all interest as usury. All teachers of morals, theologians, doctors, Popes, and Councils, the Fathers, east and west alike-Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzum, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, John Chrysostom, Theodoret, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Leo the Great-speak of the taking of interest as a sin comparable to theft, sacrilege, or the desecration of the dead. The Council of Nicaea, which sat just a month after the Emperor Constantine had legalized interest at the rate of one per cent a month, quoted Psalm 15:6, and ordered any cleric guilty of lending money at this then very low rate to be deposed and stricken from the list. Later councils continued to condemn the practice. Christian kings enforced these edicts.

The mediæval mind, making no distinctions between the various kinds of money-lending, concluded that interest was offensive to God, based its opinion on passages in the Bible,-Ex. 22:25, 25:36, Deut. 23:19, 20, Ps. 15:6, St. Luke 6:34, — and fortified these with quotations from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca. And, except in certain instances, this attitude was reasonable enough. Money, after the decline of the Empire, had no market value. It was really "barren." It could be used only as a medium of private exchange, for housekeeping. It had to be kept hoarded in strong-boxes or buried in cellars. What with bad roads, sparse population, slight manufacturing, little agriculture, less mining, dangerous travelling, robbers on land and sea, there was no inducement for a man to deny himself and save money in order that he might venture in the hope of gain. If he saved at all he saved for old age or for some special occasion of expense. If he lent it was merely to tide a neighbor over some necessity. Money had no more value than any other household article. And you could not ask interest on the loan of a kettle.

Of course there were exceptions. Kings needed money for wars. Desideratus, Bishop of Verdun, applied to King Theodebert for money to relieve his impoverished dioceseand promised to pay "cum usuris legitimis." The Venetian bankers did some business as early as 1270. It was not so reprehensible to borrow as it was to lend. And the Jews (Deut. 23: 20) who were permitted to lend to "a stranger" became the money-lenders of the times and gained with their exorbitant interests the universal hatred. But in general the attitude in theory and practice of Church and State alike was that the taking of interest under any circumstances whatever was, as the Fifth Lateran Council expressed it, a mean "attempt to draw profit and incre