Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1891 — THE BURDEN OF EGYPT. [ARTICLE]

THE BURDEN OF EGYPT.

There Was Gnashing of Teeth When Egypt Was Offended. Egypt Saw Great Times When ‘Pharaoh’s Word Was Law and the Jews Were •n Bondage—Dr. Talmage’s ' . , ■ Sermon. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached, at Brooklyn last Sunday. Subject: “Bricks without straw.” Text, Isaiah xix, I*. He said: What is all this excitement about in the streets of Cairo, Egypt, this December morning in 1889? Stand back! We hear loud voices and see the crowds of people retreating to the sides of .street. The excitement of others becomes our own excitement. Footmen come in sight. They have a rod in the hand, and a tasseled cap on the head, and their arms and feet are bare. Their garb is black to the waist, except as threaded with gold, and the rest is white. They are clearing the way for an ofHcim digfiltaryln: a chariot or carriage. They are swift, and sometimes run thirty or forty miles at a Stretch in front of an equipage. They are the fleetest-footed men on earth, but soon die, for the human frame was not made for such endurance. I asked all around me who the man in the carriage was, but no one seemed to know. Yet, as I fell back with the rest to the wall, I said: This is the old custom found all up and down the Bible, footmen running before the rulers, demanding obeisance, as in Genesis before Joseph’s chariot the people were commanded. “Bow the knee,” and as I see the swift feet of the men, followed by the swift feet of the horses, how those old words of Jeremiah rushed through my mind, "If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee,how canst thou contend with horses?” Now, my hearers, in this course of sermons 1 am only serving you as footman, and clearing the way for vour coming into the wonders of Egyptology, a subject that I would have you study far beyond anything that can be said in the brevity of pulpit utterance. Two hundred and eighty-nine times does the Bible refer to Egypt and the Egyptians. No wonder, for Egypt was the mother of nations. |Egypt, the mother of Greece; Greece the mother of Rome; Rome, the mother of England; England, the mother of our land. According to that Egypt is our great grandmother. We see again and again on and along the Nile a boss workman roughly smite a subordinate who did not nlease him. It is no rare occurrence to see long lines of men under heavy burdens passing by task-masters at short distances, lashing them as they go by into greater speed, and then these workmen, exhausted with the blasting heat of the day, lying down upon the bare ground, suddenly chilled with the night air, crying out in prayer. “Ya! Allah!” “Ya Allah!” which means Oh! God! 1 Oh! God! But what must have been the olden time cruelty shown by the Egyptians toward their Israelitish slaves is, indicated by a picture in the s Beni-Hassan tombs, where a man is held down on his face by two women and another holds up the victim’s feet while the officials beat the bare back of the victim, every stroke I have no doubt, fetching the blood. Now you see how the Pharaohs could afford to build such costly works. It costs them nothing for wages, nothing but the tears and blood of the toilers, and tears and blood are a cheap drink for devils. “Bricks without str’aw” may not suggest so much hardship until you know that the bricks were usually made with crushed strawstraw crushed by the feet of oxen in the threshing, and this straw denied to the workmen, they had to pick up here and there a piece of stubble or gather rushes from the water side. This story of the Bible is confirmed by the fact that many of the brick walls of Egypt have on the lower layers brick made with straw, but the higher layers of brick made out of rough straw or rushes from the river bank, the truth of the book of Exodus is thus written in the brick walls discovered by the modern explorers. That governmental outrage has alwirys been a characteristic of the Egyptian rulers. Taxation to the point of starvation was the Egyptian rule in the Bible times as well as in Our own time. A modern traveler gives the figures concerning the cultivation of seventeen acres, the value of the yield of the field stated in piasters Produce./. 1 hqo Expenses '-99814 Clear produce 801'4 Taxes . ......... ; Amount cleared by the farmer 315 H Or, as my authority declares, 70 per cent, of what the Egyptian farmer makes is paid for taxes to the Government. Now that is not so much taxation as it is assassination. ,What think you of that? You who groan under the heavy taxation in America? j I have heard that in Egypt the working people have a song like this; ;“They starve us, they starve us, they beat us, they beat us, but there's some one above, there’s some ope above who will punish them well, who fcfll punish them well." But 70 per cent, of Government tax in Egypt is a mercy compared with what the Hebrew slaves suffered there in Bible times. They got nothing but food hardly fit for a dog, and their clothing was one rag, and roof A burning sky by day and the stars -■— ; j ■

of heaven by night. You say “Why did they stand it?” Because they had to stand it. You see alongback in the world’s twilight there was a famine in Canaan, and old Jacob and his sons came to Egypt for bread. The old man’s.boy Joseph was Prime Minister, and Joseph, suppose his father and brothers called him Joe. for it makes no diffence how much a boy is advanced in worldly success his father and brothers and sisters always call him by the same name that he was called by when two years old —Joseph, by Pharaoh’s permission, gave to his family, who had just arrived, the richest part of Egypt, the Westchester farms or the Lancaster farms of the ancients. Jacob’s descendants rapidly multiplied. After awhile Egypt took a turn at famine, and those descendants of Jacob—the Israelites—came to a great storehouse that Joseph had provided and’paid in money for corn. But after awhile the money gave out, and then they paid in cattle. Presently the cattle were all in possession of the government, and then the Hebrews bought corn from the government by surrendering themselves as slaves. Then began slavery in Egypt. The government owned all the Hebrews, And let modern lunatics who, in America, propose handing over telegraph companies and railroads and other things to be run by the government, see the folly of letting the government get its hand on everything. I would rather trust the people than any government the United States ever had or will have. Woe worth the day when Legislatures and Congresses and administrations get possession of anything more than it is necessary fqr thcm»to have. That would be the revival in this land of that old Egyptian tyrnny for which God has never had anything but red-hot thunderbolts. But through such unwise processes Israel was enslaved in Egypt, and the long line of agonies began all up and down the Nile. Heavier and sharper fell the lash, hungrier, and ghastlier grew the workmen, louder and longer went up the prayer, until 3,000,000 of the enslaved were erving: “Ya! Allah! Ya! Allah!” Oh! God! Oh! God! Where was the help to come from? Not the throne —Pharaoh sat upon that. Not the army—Pharaoh’s officers commanded that. Not surrounding nations—-Pharaoh's threat made them tremble. Not the Gods Ammon and Osiris, or the goddess Isis, for Pharaoh built their temples out of the groans of this diabolical servitude. But one hot day the Princess Thonoris, the daughter of Pharaoh, while bathing on the banks of the Nile, receives word that there is a baby afloat on the river in a cradle made out of big leaves. Of course there is excitement all up and down the banks, for an ordinary baby in an ordinary cradle attracts smiling attention, but an infant in a cradle papyrus rocking on a river arouses not only admiration but curiosity. Who made that boat? Who made it water-tight with bitumen? Who launched it? Reckless of the crocodiles whoday basking themselves in the sun, the maidens wade in and snatch up the child, and first one carries him and then another carries him, and all the way up the bank he runs a gantlet of caressess, till Thon oris, rushes out“of the bathing house and says: “Beautiful foundling, I will adopt you as my own. You shall wear the Egyptian crown and sit on the Egyptian throne.” No! No! No! He is to be the emancipator of the Hebrews. Tell it in all the brick kilns. Tell it among all those who are writhing under the lash, tell it among all the castles of Memphis and Heliopolis and Zoan and Ihenes. him’ a~sea will part. mountain top, alone, this one will receive from the Almighty a law that is to be the foundation of all good law while the world lasts. When he is dead God will come down on Nebo and alone bury him. no man or woman or angel worthy to attend the Obsequies. The child grows up and goes out and studies the horrors of Egyptian oppression and suppresses his indignation, for the right time has not come, although once for a minute he let fly and when he saw a task-mas-ter put the whip on the back of a workman who was doing his best and heard the poor fellow cry and saw the blood spurt, Moses doubled up his fist and struck him on the temple, till the cruel villian rolled in the sand exanimate and never swung the lash again. Served him right! But, Moses, are you going to undertake the impossibilities? You feel that you are going to free the Hebrews from bondage. But where is your army? Where is your navy? Not a sword have you, not a spear, not a chariot, not a horse. The preacher then spoke.at length of Moses’ work in leading the Hebrews from slavery to freedom, and continued: But before I forget I must put more emphasis upon the fact that the last outrage that resulted in the liberation of the Hebrews was their being compelled to make bricks without straw. That was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. God would allow the despotism against his people to go no further. Making bricks without straw. , That oppression still goes on. Demand of your wife appropriate wardrobe and bountiful table without providing the means necessary; bricks Without straw. Cities demanding in the public school faithful and successful instruction without giving the teachers competent livelihood; bricks without straw. United States Government demanding of Senators and Congressmen at Washington full attendance to the interests of the —rt 41 _ ... ... . 1

people, but on compensation which may have ddhe well enough when twenty-five cents went as far as a dollar now, but in these times not sufficient to preserve their., influence and respectability; bricks without straw. In many parts of the land churches demanding ■of pastors vigorous sermons and sympathetic service onsloo, a year; bricks, without straw. That is one reason why there are so many poor bricks, or bricks that crumble, or bricks that are not bricks at all. Work adequately paid for is worth more than work not paid for. More straw and then better bricks. But in all departments tliei e are Pharaohr. Sometimes capital a Pharaoh, and sometimes labor a Pharaoh. When capital prospers and makes large percentage on its investment and declines to consider tkx» needs of the operatives, and treats them as so many human machines, their nerves no more than the b".? 4 ' on the factory wheels—then capital ii a Pharaoh. On the ' other hand, when workmen, not regarding th? anxieties and business struggles of the firm employing them., and at a time when the firm are doing their best to meet an important contrast and need all hands busy to accomplish it, at such a time to have the employes make a strike and put their employers into extreme perplexity and severe loss, then labor becomes•a Pharaoh of the worst oppression, and must look out for the judgment of God.

When, in December, 1889. at th? museum at Boulac, Egypt. I looked at the mummies of the old Pharaohs, the very miscreants' who diabolized centuries, and I saw their teeth and hair and ffnger—nails, and saw the flesh drawn tight over their cheek bones, the sarcophagi of these dead monarchs side by side, and I was so fascinated I could only with difficulty get away from the spot. I was not looking upon the last of the Phara ohs. All over the world old merchants playing the Pharaoh over young merchants, old lawyers playing the Pharaoh over young lawyers, old doctors playing the Pharaoh over young doctors, old ministers playing the Pharaoh over young ministers. Let all oppressors. whether in homes, in churches, in stores, in offices, in factories, in social life or political life,-in private life oi- public life, know that God hates oppressors, and know that they will all come to grief here or hereafter. Pharaoh thought he did a fine thing, a cunning thing, a decisive thing. when for the complete extinction of the Hebrews in Egypt he ordered all the Hebrew boys massacred, but he did not find it so fine a thing when his own first born 1 hit night of the. destroying angel fell dead on the mosaic floor at the foot of the porphyry pillar of the palace. Let all the. Pharaohs take warning. Some of the worst of them are on a small scale in households, and when a man, because his arm is strong and voice loud, dominates his poor wife into a domestic, slavery. There are thousands of such cases where the wife is a life time serf, her opinion disregarded, her taste in suited and her existence a wrethedness, though the world may not know it. It is a Pharaoh that sits at the head of that table and a Pharaoh that tyrannizes that home. There is no more abhorrent Pharaoh than a domestic Pharaoh. There are thousands of women to whom death is passage from Egypt to Canaan because they get rid of a cruel taskmaster. What a monster is that man who keeps his wife in dread about family expenses and must be careful how she introduces an article of millinery, or womanly wardrobe, without humiliating consultation and apology. Who is that man acting so? For six months, in order to win that woman’s heart, he sent her every few days a boquet wound in white ribbon, and an endearing couplet, and tock her to concerts and theaters, and helped her into carriages as though she were a Princess, and ran aero s the room to pick up her pocket handkerchief with all the speed of the antelope, and on the marriage l , day promised all that the liturgy required, saying, “I will!” with an emphasis that excited the admiration of all spectators. But now he begrudges her two cents for a postage stamp, and wonders w’hy she rides across Brooklyn Bridge when the foot passage costs nothing. ) He thinks now she is awful plain, and he acts like the devil, while he thunders out: “Where did you get that new hat from? That’s where my money goes; Where's my breakfast? Do you call that coffee? Didn’t I tell you to sew on that button? Want to see your mother, do you? You are' always going to see your mother! What are you whimpering about? Hurry up, now. and get my slippers! Where’s the newspaper?” The tone, the look, the impatience—the cruelty of a Pharaoh. That is what gives so many women a cowed down look. Pharaoh! you had better take your iron heel* off that wo- , man’s neck or God will help you remove your heel. She said nothing. • For the sake of avoiding a scandal she keeps silent: but her tears and wrongs have gone into a record that you will have to meet as certainly as” Pharaoh had to meet hail and lightning and dark ness, and the death angel. Go I never yet gave to any man the right to tyrannize a Woman, and what a sneak you are to take advantage of the marriage vow, and because she can not help herself, and under the shelter of your own home out-Phara-oh the Egyptian oppressor. There is' something awfully frrong in a household where the woman is not considered of as much importance as', the man. No room in this world for any more Pharaohs!