matter of simple impossibility for any man in ordinary commercial or industrial life to carry on his business for even a single day without participating directly or indirectly in transactions involving loans and interest. Our excuse for reciting these commonplace details of Roman commercial life is that their very commonplaceness explains the discrepancy between early Christian theory and practice in the matter of interest. It would be an easy task to convict the early Christians of hypocritical pretense in this regard. Nothing more would be necessary than to print their theory in one column and their practice in a parallel one. Yet the early Christians were not hypocrites. As regards sincerity of profession they compare very favorably with any religionists of any age. As a matter of fact the historians have long ago shown that it is altogether impossible and unjust to argue from a sect's opinions to their feelings and actions. To quote Macauley[21] "Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess or act up to all that they believe. Imagine a man acting on the supposition that he may safely offer the deadliest injuries and insults to everybody who says that revenge is sinful; or that he may safely intrust all his property without security to any person who says it is wrong to steal. Such a character would be too absurd for the wildest farce." "The law which is inscribed on the walls of the synagogues prohibits covetousness. But if we were to say that a Jew mortgagee would not foreclose because God had commanded him not to covet his neighbor's house, everybody would think us out of our wits."[22] Yet that Jew is no hypocrite in his religion. He is sincerely and honestly devoted to his faith and will sacrifice time and money; will undergo social obloquy and contempt in support of it. So it was with the early Christians. By the process of abstracting their theory and practice of interest from the social matrix which alone makes the theory or practice intelligible, it is easy to show a logical inconsistency. It would be equally foolish and false to deduce from this inconsistency any conclusions one way or the other as to early Christian morality. It is if course no aim of this thesis to attack or defend any religious or moral opinions. It is a matter entirely apart from our present concern to evaluate interest or non-interest in ethical terms. Our purpose is not to explain away the inconsistency of the early Christians. Admitting the inconsistency in the fullest degree, our aim is to explain it as natural, and, under the social conditions then prevailing, practically inevitable. The early Christians left funds to care in perpetuity for the family burial lot.[23] Under any religious creed; Pagan, Jewish, or Christian, decent provision for the care of graves of relatives was not only admissible, it was a positive demand of social reputability; to say nothing of the