educational, religious or whatever. The goodness or badness of interest is to be judged strictly and solely by the convenience and economy with which it serves these ends. If any other property institution can, in a given situation, serve a given end more easily and more cheaply than the institution of interest, then, in that situation, the institution of interest--other things being equal--is immoral and should be abolished. If, in the given situation, no other property institution can serve the given end more easily and more cheaply than the institution of interest, then that institution is moral and should be retained. That is, from the modern sociological point of view, the institution of interest is inconceivable except as a means to some end outside itself. As a means it is to be judged in a purely objective and pragmatic manner by the ordinary standards of cost price, economic, social, and other. The method of the ancients is entirely otherwise. Assuming still the correctness of the modern viewpoint, which viewpoint be it said is not unassailable and indeed is assailed by divers radicals, socialists and others, but for the most part persons lacking in pecuniary reputability; the mistake then, that the Early Church fathers make is that of taking the means for an end. They have many arguments against interest but all these arguments can be criticised for this one error. The fathers elevate interest to the dignity of an end in itself. Interest, qua interest, is condemned. It is taking advantage of a brother's necessity. It is grinding the face of the poor. It is producing pride, luxury, and vice. As soon as moral value is attached to anything, it of course, is viewed as an end in itself. If it be true that interest is an end in itself, then the fiercest diatribes of the fathers are none too severe. Assuming their premises, their conclusions follow inevitably. The modern man--he is not unknown--who talks about the "sacred rights" of private property is guilty of the same error as the ancient Christians, the error of mistaking means for ends. The early Christians could not see that the property institution of interest is neither good nor bad except as it is good or bad _for something_. The _something_ determines the judgment. As a matter of historical fact the condemnation of interest developed in certain early stages of human civilization and at those stages interest was socially detrimental. At those stages, however, it was exceedingly rare and correspondingly infamous. In any country where there is abundance of good, free land the phenomenon of interest on money will disappear, provided labor is free. So it disappeared in the northern states of this Union in the later part of the 18th century. These phenomena caused the southerners to adopt slavery though all their English traditions had declared it immoral for more than three centuries. The relation of interest to slavery under a condition of free