In these Jewish passages it was the taking of interest from a brother Hebrew that was forbidden. This limitation to the profitable use of capital may have early led the Jew capitalist to the permitted Gentile outlet; and have caused him, in lending to the outside world, to carry with the act a spice of uncharitableness and conscious ill-will. These passages are a testimony to the extraordinary cohesiveness and patriotic consciousness of the restored nation. Such a proviso of itself is both cause and consequence; it leads to further isolation from others.
In the parable of the Talents, the king who was made to say, “Thou knewest that I was an hard man,” is also made to say, “Thou shouldest have given my money to the bankers that at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.” But I dare not deduce anything from this. The Parables never apply all round; they only teach one lesson at a time. He who taught the duty of prayer by means of the Parable of the unjust judge, and the duty of using present opportunity by the Parable of the unjust steward, might easily teach the duty of the use of the gifts of God, without implying that God was either a “hard man” or a usurer. All these stories may have been accompanied by some such addition as this, that if even with unjust and hard men this teaching holds, will it not be far more worth while to pray to God and to faithfully use His opportunities and His gifts?
There is, however, one passage, not in the four Gospels, but well based on tradition:--“Be honourable bankers”; and it certainly does seem strange, if the whole business of money-dealing were wrong, that that illustration of the use of spiritual capital should have been selected. The fact that usury was denounced by the Early Church may have led to the non-inclusion of this dubious text in the Canon.
Denunciations of usury are commonplaces among the Fathers of the Church. It was wholly forbidden to the clergy and sometimes to the laity. Many have been the sermons, of the fiercest character, delivered against it by the Bishops of the Catholic and Anglican Churches. John Wesley told his followers “to die sooner than put anything in pawn or borrow or lend on usury.” His rule on the subject was, however, explained later on by himself as being against “unlawful interest”; upon which Ruskin remarks: “Doubtless his disciples know what rate of interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so; and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal.” Nevertheless, Wesley was right.