CONDITIONS—WARNINGS—DUTIES.
By Editor
In the fifth chapter of the Epistle of James are words which are especially applicable at the present time. They are as follows:— "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord." Verses 1-7. The above scripture is a most solemn message of warning and admonition, as well as a prediction of what would be in the last days. A volume might be written upon it; we have space to notice but a few points:— 1. God warns the rich men, in unmistakable language, that miseries are coming upon them, because of their hoarded riches, which would witness against them in the days of trouble. They "have heaped treasure together for the last days." And how true it is! A generation ago a man was considered to have fabulous wealth who was worth a million dollars, and the millionaires in this country could be counted on the digits of both hands, but now they are many as compared with that time, and their riches are counted by the tens and hundreds of millions. We have not before us definite statistics of the present or past year. But in 1890 the New York Journal estimated the wealth of one hundred and sixty-six persons in this nation to aggregate the vast sum of two billion four hundred and fifty-six million dollars ($2,456,000,000), in fortunes varying from $3,000,000 to $150,000,000. One of these very men, at that time worth $135,000,000, is now estimated to be worth over $200,000,000. Here is wealth enough in the hands of one hundred and sixty-six men to give the sum of nearly twoscore dollars to every man, woman, and child in this country. Were they to give on an average a million each to the three million deserving poor of this country, it would amount to the sum of $55 each, and it would leave these millionaires with an average fortune of nearly $15,000,000 each. But the wealth is not given. Dives lives in his luxury still, while Lazarus lies at his gate begging for crumbs. 2. The Scripture charges that these riches, in part at least, have been gotten by the oppression of the poor. "The hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud," is a general expression covering all oppression of the poor. We are aware that many of the poor are improvident, intemperate, and unwise. We believe that they have greater enemies in rum and tobacco than they have in the rich, but this does not excuse the rich. The poor man is as much justified in the indulgence of his beer, his grog, his wretched five-cent cigars, and cheap, poisonful tobacco, as is the rich in his indulgence in the rare wines and brandies and costly Havanas. We are also aware that much is said of the "honor" of these wealthy men; that they are members of churches in "good and regular standing;" that they have sometimes helped a poor widow to a five-dollar bill, or a favored servant who has given them his life, to a mere pittance of their hoarded store; that they give a paltry thousand, hundred thousand, or half million to some great enterprise, to purchase newspaper fame, while some of their poorest employees give proportionately for the cause of Christ ten times as much every week. We are aware of all of this exploiting and glorifying of wealth, this worship of plutocracy; and, oh, the meanness of it all! The laws are framed in the interest of the rich, and in the interest of the great, greedy, graceless corporations and monopolies they control, which voraciously swallow up the business of every small dealer and tradesman, and drive into poverty thousands who might have won a competence and have been self-supporting. The record books of Heaven will sometime reveal the gigantic crimes in the name of law, and in despite of law, which these "irresponsible, soulless" corporations have committed, and at God's bar individual men shall give account. Political, commercial, marital, social crimes have been revealed in every State and in every large municipality against these last-day plutocrats; public opinion has been shocked for a little, and then the glitter of gold has silenced church and State and press. And the terrible drama—tragedy—goes on, while the great Juggernautic car of Mammon crushes underneath its wheels the poor, the weak, the needy, the more honorable. 3. We do not mean to say that there are not honorable wealthy men, for there are some, men who hold wealth and all that they have as a stewardship from God. There are dishonorable poor. But the wealth has controlling interests, and the poor are often what the rich have taught them to be, or, from a human standpoint purely, compelled them to be. But God holds the wealthy responsible for the way they have used their means. He tells them that the cries of those oppressed by them have entered into his ears. Further than this, these rich men have not heeded the distress around them. They have "lived in pleasure upon the earth, and been wanton;" they have nourished their hearts, as in a day of slaughter; they have spent in feasting, for purely selfish pleasure, while professing the religion of Jesus Christ, that which would have fed the starving and afflicted poor, weeping under the cold shadows of their mansions or famishing in the wretched hovels for which furniture has been sold to pay rent to the devotees of Plutus and Bacchus. But God remembers it, and his judgment surely cometh. Take the following words, ascribed to Dr. Herbert Burrows, bishop of Westminster, London, preached three years ago Christmas, as a picture of what is:— "For years I have been one of you. My home was not where Christ's home was, with the masses, but with the classes who have an abundance of this world's goods. I have lived with the fashionable, with the wealthy, and I have been a dignitary of a church of the rich, and not of the poor. Without a protest I have mixed in the society of men and women whom Christ would have denounced as he did the scribes and Pharisees. In the house of lords I have silently sat side by side with the whore-mongers and adulterers, and as silently have I welcomed as my personal friends high-born women—some of whom I see before me to-day—with whom no decent workingman will allow his wife and daughter to associate." "I have seen among you, spreading like a canker, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, and, instead of reproving you, as Christ would have done, I have taken refuge in generalities, and have not dared to denounce your individual sins. All this while there was going on around me in this huge city and through the land the surging, toiling life of humanity, the sorrow, the suffering, the poverty, the disease, the sin and shame which I realize but dimly, as something apart from my own existence, but for which I at last see clearly you and I have been, up to the present time, mostly to blame. We and our class have kept back by fraud the hire of the laborers who have reaped our fields; we have lived in pleasure on earth and been wanton; we have nourished our hearts, while we have starved the bodies of those to whom we owe the very bread we eat and the clothes we wear, and now we are condemning and killing at our very gates the people whose articulate cry is entering into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, whose faithful servants we pretend to be." Take again the present condition of things in our own land—a land where there is an abundance of all that is needed to eat and wear. Look at the thousands in all our large cities who have been for months longing, begging for work, pawning from time to time furniture, books, clothing, for a morsel to eat, while wife and children grew day by day pale, pinched, and eager eyed for the absolute need of what the wealthy could have spared and never have missed. Look at the "industrial regiments" recruiting in all parts of our country, with their strange mixtures of politics and religion, of fanaticism and superstition, but with a terrible sense of need. Authorities place them under arrest; the light and heartless laugh at their uncouth appear371ance; religious papers call them "fools," but have they not a cause? What shall they do? They have tried everything that worldly wisdom suggests; they are refused the privilege of what they are willing to do,—spending brawn and brain and life, if need be, for the needs of life,—they are ready to try anything which promises relief. Foolish they may be, but let no man call them fools till he has been where they are. Yet before God, and in the light of his word, we would rather share their responsibility to-day than that of the rich, rolling in his lavish treasure and hoarding his gold, unmindful of his neighbor’s needs. 4. But these things bode peril. The crushed worm will at last turn. The peaceable poor without higher hope will turn anarchist. Slavery to rich men is breeding hatred; hatred is breeding contempt for the religion which the rich profess; and thousands are preparing to cast off all restraints, and say, as has been said before, "There is enough for all; let us go and take it." These are the perils which confront the rich. These are the miseries sure to come. Men may close their eyes to the black cloud rising rapidly above the horizon, but it will not prevent the coming storm. God and his law have been trampled underfoot by the professed church of Christ, and the harvest is almost ready for the reaping. Laugh who will now, but God has spoken; tomorrow will bring weeping to those who do not heed his warnings. 5. But will the poor be justified in this?—Nay, not before God. This earth is not all. This is not the only life. Christ is our example. "Consider Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself." "Be patient, brethren, therefore [for the reason that Christ has undertaken your case], unto the coming of the Lord." "Patiently endure;" Christ did. Let no Christian join in these methods of worldly warfare, which in the end will result in disappointment and crime. Do all you can, by faithfulness, prudence, and economy, to earn an honest living. Help all the needy you are able; but bear, as did Christ, the oppression, the robbery, the injustice of men who are beyond the reach of ordinary justice and its regular channels. Commit your cause to the God of heaven. He has said, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay." In Christ alone is our hope. All else is failure.