Isaiah 3

Isaiah 3:14-15

THE OF THE POOR Isaiah 3:14-15IT would be difficult to find in any other book so accurate a description of real conditions as we have just read from the Bible. True to the Divine habit, God uses the pen of this Prophet to picture things as they were, softening to shadows nothing that existed in substance, nor yet exaggerating into mountains what were really but mole-hills. No doubt this message of the Prophet displeased the richer lords and ladies of Jerusalem, and brought upon Isaiah their criticism and contempt. Rich men are always mad when a preacher uncovers, to public inspection, their ill-gotten gains; and fine women are never so spiteful as when their jewelry, dresses, bracelets and bonnets are put under the ban of the pulpit.The grand old Isaiah was made of sterner stuff than most of his latest successors in office, or else he had crouched before the beaux and belles of his city, giving them simpering compliments instead of stolid truth.There are too few men in pulpits today who deal in fearless honesty with the people they have to face. We are human, as other men are, and like other men, are tempted to betray our trusts, and seek personal popularity at the expense of our nobler commission.We are familiar with the martyrdom of Isaiah and we don’t covet that experience; and yet while his violent death fills the successor with fear, his courageous and noble life must also serve to inspire to duty at all cost.That it is the preacher’s duty to plead the cause of the poor has never been disputed since Christ performed that office. And today, in presenting this text, I cannot doubt that I do what becomes a minister of Him who came to “bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1), and whose ministry meant most to the poor man.THE SACRED CITYThe first thing that impresses one in studying Isaiah’s words, is the similar conditions in one’s cities to those which characterized the sacred city, Jerusalem, at the time of our text.

In several most important respects, at least, there is striking analogy.There, the most dangerous enemy was not an alien, but a citizen. So here!

Jerusalem was well situated against the attacks of aliens—enemies from the outside. She was not only walled in by the hand of man, but about her God had built a higher wall in the eternal hills. When the Psalmist wanted to tell the safety of believers in the power of God, he could think of no more perfect illustration than the security of his sacred city, and so he said, “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even for ever” (Psalms 125:2).But the house is not always safe when the doors are locked and the windows bolted down. The thief may be in the closet; the robber under the bed; or both thief and robber may sit full before you in the disguise of a friend. It is so also of a city. Your watch-dogs may guard every incoming road, wagon, steamer and train; tramps may be met at the outer limits and sent back over the road they travelled in coming; undesirable foreigners may be fenced out by law, and thugs frightened away by patrolmen and pistols and yet the city isn’t safe.The thief is already in our municipal closet where the public money-bag hangs; the robber is already under the bedspread with the silk quilts and covers of “class protection”; yea, the thug sits in most exclusive circles, is courted by the most elegantly appearing men and richly adorned women; belongs with them by birth and breeding; or else has been joined to them by the bonds of boodle.Walls, mountains and watchmen could not save the city of God from the pillage and plunder of these.

And all the laws that are written into our State statutes and city ordinances, do not protect the city against her own citizens—children of her own breeding. When I say this, I don’t mean those citizens who are either in jail or fleeing before a fat policeman.

It isn’t the custom here, as it is not in any other city, to convict many genuine criminals. We put into jail the black man “who steals the goose from the common” and laud the white man who steals “the common from the goose”. We run down and lock up the hungry child who snatches a loaf from the baker’s window and bow ourselves to the grass as, on the boulevard, he drives by who robbed that child’s father of so much of his honest earnings that he couldn’t meet the hunger of his whole house. Many cities show daily alarm lest some Coxey-army enter there, and many of the very men who raise and equip armies to keep them out, are more dangerous as robbers than a whole section of that eccentric army that once marched Washington ward. Go into their luxurious homes and see what they contain. Take an inventory and report it and see if much of that which they boast as their own ought not be re-labelel, “the spoil of the poor”.The vast majority of the colossal fortunes of America have been made in such a way that if James were alive, he would find no need to rewrite the fifth chapter of his Epistle, but would repeat only the old words,“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 he 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 labourers 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” (James 5:1-4).He might change from reapers to shop-men, mechanics and artisans of many kinds, but all the rest would stand, and the charge of feathering one’s nest on the toil of a brother, would find more illustrations today than ever before. Rich men, through their corporations, control the money interests of every city in America, and to them a laborer is not so much a brother with whom to share profits, as he is a slave out of whom to make them.The force ofTHE RICH MAN’S DEFENSEsome of us fail to feel.

What the wealthy sons of the sacred city answered to this charge of the prophet, we are not told. But there are few songs with which the modern public is more familiar than the reply of financial masters to the discontent of their slaves.They say, “But for us it would not be possible for the poor to live; by furnishing them employment, we provide them with bread. If they were thoughtful and human, their grumbling against low wages would give place to gratitude that they get any wages at all.”That is a curious argument, but I have heard it made in good faith, by intelligent men. That argument assumes that Brawn is a pauper and impotent, and can only live when Brain is pleased to shake its crumbs from the dinner-cloth. When I worked for wages it never occurred to me that I was living by the man who employed me. I verily thought I earned what I got and even dreamed that I earned something for him also, else he wouldn’t want me.

I am of that same opinion still. The head of the body may be its noblest member, but is it independent of heart, lungs, feet and hands?

I had never so supposed! On the contrary I have been taught that the head perished when the heart and lungs ceased from supplying it; and that it was very helpless if for any reason feet and hands failed. Paul, you remember had the same notion, for he said: “But now Hath God set the members every one of them in the body * * are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you” (1 Corinthians 12:18-21).There is not a financial head in America that can run a great factory with success without the lungs and heart, the hands and feet—laboring men. It seems to me, then, that it ill becomes employers to boast their independence, and proclaim the dependence of working men, when each is dependent upon the other.Again that argument assumes that great corporations or individuals open and operate factories for the sake of the poor, and not for selfish gain!Who believes it? How many of them run when the machinery turns at their loss?

If they do run, who must submit to losses, the laborer or the employer? We know the answer to this question!

Mr. Pullman made it some years ago. If the machinery runs at a loss, the laborer must bear that loss; the employer won’t. The poor man’s income may be the least upon which he can live, while the lord of the shop revels in all conceivable luxury, and yet the cut comes at the bottom, and public sentiment approves, saying, “It is unreasonable to ask a man to keep open shop at his own expense.”But that public sentiment has a shallow foundation. There is not an eminent Christian Sociologist today, but dissents from it. It is most reasonable that he should continue his factory at his own cost until a financial spasm has passed.

He can do it and subject himself to never a hardship. He needn’t give up his elegant home to continue; he needn’t part with his retinue of servants; he needn’t take one picture from his palace; he needn’t sell one horse from his stable; he needn’t discard one dainty dish from his table; he can keep all these— run at a loss for years, and die, leaving more behind him than his heirs can rightly manage.He has the greater duty so to do, because his millions are largely the product of his hired men. “Pay him for his mind!” you say.

Oh, yes, pay him for his mind; put on it a price above that of our Presidents—above that ever paid Gladstone, the grand old man of England—and yet you have millions left in his name that others earned! Who has a better right to draw on it than the men who have helped to make it by patient toil in shop; by paying his company $2.25 a thousand feet for gas manufactured for 33 cents; 10 cents per thousand gallons for water that costs but 4 cents; advance rents for property which they cannot purchase at any price? It may be according to the custom of trade that hard times shall reduce the income of the man who struggles with the problem of supporting a family on $1200; and the man who has $1,000,000 annual average—or 850 times that of his less fortunate fellow—shall still keep his on the increase, at the laborer’s expense; but Christianity can never sanction it until it changes its character and forgets the golden rule of its author.If the charge made against one that he gave $100,000 to a new museum and on the following morning cut the wages of his men, can be proved, then it is an indulgent public that shall give its sympathy to such a Shylock. If that can’t be proved, riches have made worse records before our very eyes, oftentimes. What defense is there of capital that permits a railroad magnate to add $25,000 annually to his own salary, and send to men on the road a schedule of wages reduced sufficiently to cover that amount? If that is Capital’s idea of charity to the poor, may the gods deliver us from its too extensive practice!But, we are told, the demands of working men are unreasonable.

The saying is not conclusive, however, since it comes from interested parties. No doubt single crafts do, sometimes, set a higher price on their labor than it is worth in the market, as the plumbers have often done.

But if so, the public is not slow to reprove. Sometimes, with a victory in name, certain unions are defeated in fact. They get their demands, but for them there is little demand.Does Capital never overestimate itself? Are brains free from the infection of egotism that at times trouble brawn? When 400 Americans, who are not intellectual giants, receive in return for their genius $1,500,000 each annually, or if you please, $4,109.00 a day, every day in the year, Sunday included, does the $3.00 or $4.00 or $5.00 or even $10.00 of the working man seem so wild? If so, then some of us are too simple to see it.

Does it argue well for Capital, when eminent representatives inform the public that they will accept no arbitration from third parties, but propose to deal with their own men after their own minds?I take it that the public has a vital and eternal interest in the solution of the labor problem; and I take it that the Christian Church pleads the cause of the public when she speaks for the poor.THE DAY OF IS AT HANDand those of us who live between the upper millstone of miserliness and the nether one of misery, can hardly hope to let things turn as they have and be, ourselves, unhurt.In our text God proclaims His purpose of judgment. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise” (2 Peter 3:9). Chicago, New York, and other cities, are today in the agonies of their evil reward.

The oppression of the poor produces results, that are as definite and sure as the course of the moon.It means ignorance with all of its power of evil infection. Whenever men may not meet the essential luxuries of life by hearty, honest labor, it is a darkening evening foreboding a blacker night. Perhaps the best paid wage-earners are in Old Massachusetts, and yet, there the income of the factory father must be supplemented by the service of wife and child, to meet the actual expense of living! Where, then, is the opportunity of education? Talk of judgment days to come! God’s judgment day is every day; and the modern city is reaping what it has sown in a harvest of ignorance.Ignorance, or illiteracy at least, is an infection.

It does not stay in the house of its friends forever. I speak from a bitter experience.

I was brought up in the South, loved by a black mamma, caressed by a black man who was at once our slave and our master, associated with black boys and girls in all hours of labor, and for forty-five years I have struggled to be rid of ugly English learned from them. The boy bred in the hovel on the alley can’t grow up in gross illiteracy and your son know him and escape. The Scriptures are not setting forth a new notion, but an eternal verity, when they say, “For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself” (Romans 14:7).DISEASE AND DEATHBut there is a severer judgment that comes upon the oppressors of the poor, and one more sensibly felt. It is the judgment of disease and death. We know where our most malignant ills start. That great section, lying along the Chicago river, 150,000 of whose inhabitants live there, is an incubator for diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid, small-pox and what not.

Low wages compel many to settle beside that river, whose foul gases, like the beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit, overcomes the people and kills them, and their dead bodies lie in the streets of the great city; and the death-germ is wafted over all dividing lines and there is presently woe in the house of the rich, for the favorites have fallen.The men who live on the boulevard hoard up millions. The people who live by the dirty rivers have not bathtubs, or any sanitary appliances.

Many of them labor in sweltering founderies by day and sleep in pig-stys at night; women work in sweat shops sixteen hours and then go home to sit up with fevered and festering children. The man who engages them undersells his fellows and is counted smart; the people who buy from him boast bargains, and secure additional luxuries on the sum saved. The millionaire and the middle-man join company against the law that seeks to save weak women and tender children from the cruelties of our competitive system, and destroying it from the statute-book, laugh at Mrs. Kelley’s tears. But oh, the laugh will yet be turned. Pharaoh thought it great to compel his Jewish slaves to make bricks without straw.

But when his first-born lay dead in his house, he saw that he had fought against God. It is terrible to be so dull that such bitter experiences must teach us.

But, so it is! Long since the scarlet fever, diphtheria and small-pox germs left their lodging house. They have visited our neighbors. They will visit some of us, and when that hour comes—the hour when the heir to ill-gotten gains lies cold in death—the independent man shall know that “none of us liveth to himself” (Romans 14:7).Dr. Pierson said, “Society has a way of avenging herself for the wrongs committed on the lowest of all her members,” and illustrates by that bit of pathetic history. Robert Peel rode with his daughter through the parks of London on her nineteenth birthday. She was robed in a magnificent riding habit, her father’s gift. Her sweet face filled the father with affection and stirred in him paternal pride.

Ten short days, and he stood beside her grave, grief-stricken, stunned and unspeakably sad. The secret of her disease was traced to a garret where a poor seamstress had seen her husband shivering with a chill, and ceasing work upon the beautiful garment, had laid it over him to shut out the cruel cold. “It took up the germs and conveyed them from the hovel of the poorest to the palace of the peer.” The man who pleads for the poor, speaks also for the children of luxurious homes. When I pray and preach for a better wage, I pray and preach for the health and happiness of your home and mine.But more dreadful still is the judgment of social discontent. There is not time to discuss the merits and demerits of Coxey men; nor yet, of a greater army which is marching, not to Washington, but toward reform, and threatening to get their rights by violent revolution. Many of them are brave, ignorant and dangerous; but others of them are thoughtful, moral and determined; and it is time that their superiors sympathized with the right and joined them in the search for it.There are two ways to adjust wrong. The one way is to blow it up by a bomb and find the hole left behind a more dreadful chasm than that which excited the anarchy.The other way is to ask Christ to show it to you and help you remove it.

Labor and Capital could meet on this last platform and plan in concert for correction, if only each were less sensual and more generous. I have presented the faults of capital only this morning.

Labor is no more free from them than her master. On another occasion I shall deal with my working brother as faithfully and unflinchingly as I have held my brother of money to the light. But oh, I pray that these whom I claim as brethren may claim each other, and in Christ adjust their troubles and defer and do away with the judgments our cities suffer in their wrongs.Illiteracy, disease and discontent! What a trinity of darkness! How long must they tramp our streets? I ask it anxiously! I know that Capital ought to capitulate first, for it is the stronger and can better afford to be generous and hear and obey the Christ. I cannot better close than by repeating one who had studied this subject much.

As I look anxiously and prayerfully into the future, I see the men who work and the men who own, labor and capital marshalling themselves upon opposite sides of a conflict that may bring woe to all that dwell upon the earth. As the hosts anger and strengthen, I see One like unto the Son of Man moving down the gathering lines, to bind all the conditions of the interests of human life in the bonds of the justice of the Kingdom of God. I see Him reach to clasp the hands of strife in a federation of love, which is the realization of the freedom of God in humanity.And then the question arises, What will we do with Christ? Shall those loving hands again be pierced with the hate of selfishness? Shall the unbelief of society again refuse the Kingship of the Son of Man? Shall a false church and a secular state, Pharisee and Atheist, join hands once more to crucify Him as a destroyer, who comes as a Saviour?

Answer me, you who engage, and you who serve; what will you do with His Law—“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the Law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2), and then I will know what to expect. If He is rejected and crucified by trade, by property and poverty, then the seven angels are yet to appear and pour out their vials of wrath and the social suffering shall beggar the description of an inspired pen.

If He is accepted and His Gospel becomes the law of commerce between labor and capital, then the Angel of Peace will brood above us and we shall love each other better than brothers of common blood,