CHAPTER XXXIX.[ToC]
CRUSHED TRUTH WILL RISE AGAIN.
The practice of usury is so general, and it is apparently so fully approved and sanctioned by many of the most intelligent and virtuous of our people, that those who believe in its prohibition and are disposed to pessimism may be utterly discouraged.
Truth must eventually prevail. Any custom or system built upon falsehood must sooner or later yield. The house built upon the sand must in time fall. It may be undermined by years of instruction and so gradually give way that the date of its overthrow can hardly be determined, or it may in its strength be taken in a storm and fall. The whole commercial credit system built on this monstrous falsehood must either crumble or tumble.
The prophet Isaiah was hopeful and happy in the midst of the most unfavorable conditions of corruption and alienation from the truth, for he was able with his prophetic eye to catch a glimpse of the good time coming, when righteousness should completely triumph. "He shall teach us of His ways and we shall walk in His steps." "With righteousness shall He judge the poor." "Righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins."
No prophet has fixed a date for the suppression of usury, yet no intelligent man of faith, familiar with the reforms of the past, when as thoroughly entrenched and as giant evils were attacked and overthrown, need be in despair.
We were enslaved by superstitions. Haunted houses were numerous and the bewitching of people was frequent. Two hundred arrests for witchcraft were made in a single year, 1692, and twenty of these persons were put to death. These persecutions were urged and defended by Cotton Mather, a representative of the highest intelligence and culture of the times. His mother was a daughter of John Cotton, and his father the President of Harvard College. Now black cats and epilepsy inspire no fear, and ghost stories do not now terrify and unnerve our children.