Ecclesiastes 7:14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also has set the one over against the other… "Hard times!" That is the cry we hear, all the week long, wherever we go. And this, strange to say, in face of crops of unparalleled abundance! 1. We ask ourselves, what is the cause of these hard times? "Over-production," say some; others, "under-consumption." One party blames a "high tariff": the other, "free trade." I will not attempt to discues here the purely political or economical aspects of the case. But there is a moral cause at work, which it is the province of the pulpit to point out. At this moment, while commerce and manufactures are nearly stagnant, the money market is glutted with funds that cannot be used! Why? One answer is, for want of confidence. Monstrous frauds, disgraceful failures, outright robberies, and numberless rascalities, small and great, have paralyzed credit, and made sensitive capital shrink into itself. We want more plodding and patient industry, more incorruptible honesty. No man can revolutionize a community. But every good man has a certain power, more, perhaps, than he thinks. It is the honest men who keep society from going to pieces altogether. 2. Under cover of the proverb, "Desperate diseases require desperate remedies," certain wild proposals are put forward by professed "friends of the working man," who are really his worst enemies, whether they mean it or not. Take, for example, the Socialist idea of abolishing private property in land or anything else, making the State the universal proprietor and the universal employer, and all men's conditions equal. It is only under the maddening pressure of hunger that just and reasonable men can entertain such schemes. In dragging down "bloated monopolists," we bury the day-labourer in the common ruin. It is like setting fire to the house to get rid of the rats! 3. What a light is east by our present condition on the Bible sayings, "We are members one of another": "No man liveth unto himself!" We live in a vast system of cooperation and interdependence. And this, whether we wish it or not. The ends of the earth are ransacked to furnish food and clothing. Sailors cross the seas, miners delve in the earth, woodmen hew down the forests, farmers sow and reap, mechanics ply their tools, merchants buy and sell, physicians study diseases and remedies, teachers instruct, authors write, musicians sing, legislators make, judges administer and governors execute laws — all for your benefit and mine. God has bound us up together, so many wheels in a vast machine, different members of one body. You cannot break away from it. It is as foolish as it is wicked to try to live apart, for ourselves alone, to take and not to give, to expect good only, and to complain of suffering through those around us. 4. That is a good time to "consider" what use we have made of past times of "prosperity" in preparing for days of "adversity." We must learn the old-fashioned virtues of saving and "going without." And these hard times are sent, among other things, to drive that lesson home. Those who came from the old and crowded lands of Europe are showing us examples in this that we should be wise to follow. 5. We do well to ask ourselves at this time how far the words of God by Malachi apply to our case: "Ye are cursed with a curse; for ye have robbed Me."... "Wherein? In tithes and offerings." 6. Not all of us feel the full pressure of hard times. If you are not thrown out of employment, if your pay is not reduced, if your investments yield as much income, if your business is nearly or quite as profitable, what special duties devolve upon you? First, great thankfulness to God. By the sharp sorrows of your less fortunate neighbours learn how good He has been to you. Do not think that if is because of your superior worth. One duly is to see that His cause of the Gospel does not suffer — to give double because others can only give one-half. Another is, to relieve the wants of deserving sufferers. 7. May I say a brotherly word to those who do feel the pressure of the times? If is a hard discipline you are passing through, very hard. But "your Father knoweth." Money and goods are not everything. "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he poseesseth." Your character, your soul, is more to you than your earthly condition. That is what God is training, and the wide sweep of this providential dispensation, affecting whole nations, also includes your individual case. Receive the chastening. Submit without murmuring. Exercise your heart in the strong virtues of patience and fortitude. "Hope thou in God." "Walk by faith, not by sight." (F. H. Marling.) Parallel Verses KJV: In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him. |
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