The Expositor's Bible: The Book of JoshuaBlaikie, William Garden
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Joshua
Blaikie, William Garden
Bible. Joshua -- Commentaries
We advance to the relation of the rich to the poor, especially of
those who are born to riches to those who are born to obscurity and
toil. Had the providence of God no purpose in this arrangement? You
who come into the world amid luxury and splendour, who have never been
required to work for a single comfort, who have the means of
gratifying expensive tastes, and who grudge no expenditure on the
objects of your fancy:--was it meant that you were to sustain no
relation of help and sympathy to the poor, especially your neighbors,
your tenants, or your workpeople? Do you fulfil the obligations of
life when, pouring into your coffers the fruits of other men's toil,
you hurry off to the resorts of wealth and fashion, intent only on
your own enjoyment, and without a thought of the toiling multitude you
leave at home? Is it right of you to leave deserving people to fall
peradventure into starvation and despair, without so much as turning a
finger to prevent it? What are you doing for the widows and orphans?
Selfish and sinful beings! let these old Hebrews read you a lesson of
condemnation! They could not selfishly enjoy their comfortable homes
till they had done their part on behalf of their brethren, for
wherever there is a brotherly heart a poor brother's welfare is as
dear as one's own.
Then there is the case of nations, and pre-eminently of our own. Some
races attain to civilization, and order, and good government sooner
than others. They have all the benefit of settled institutions and
enlightened opinion, of discoveries in the arts and sciences, and of
the manifold comforts and blessings with which life is thus enriched,
while other nations are sunk in barbarism and convulsed by disorder.
But how much more prone are such nations to claim the rights of
superiority than to play the part of the elder brother! We are
thankful for the great good that has been done in India, and in other
countries controlled by the older nations. But even in the case of
India, how many have gone there not to benefit the natives, but with
the hope of enriching themselves. How ready have many been to indulge
their own vices at the cost of the natives, and how little has it
pained them to see them becoming the slaves of new vices that have
sunk them lower than before. Our Indian opium traffic, and our drink
traffic generally among native races--what is their testimony to our
brotherly feeling? What are we to think of the white traders among the
South Sea islands, stealing and robbing and murdering their feebler
fellow-creatures? What are we to think of the traffic in slaves, and
the inconceivable brutalities with which it is carried on? Or what are
we to think of our traders at home, sending out in almost uncountable
profusion the rum, and the gin, and the other drinks by which the poor
weak natives are at once enticed, enslaved, and destroyed? Is there
any development in selfishness that has ever been heard of more
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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