Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1891-11-06
LESSONS FROM PHARAOH
DR. TALMAGE CONTINUES HIS
SERIES ON EGYPT.
The Pharaohs OF Modern Times
Sometimes Capital and Sometimes
Labor and often tho Vie Beater.

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BRooKLYN, N. Y, Nov. 4, 1s91.-The
Tabernacle was thronged as usual this
morning. The vast editice filed to it's
utmost capacity with eager listeners
shows how the popular preacher re-
tains his power over the people. AL
though he has been preaching IA
Brooklyn for more than twenty-four
years, his audiences were never so
large as now, and although the largest
Protestant church in America has been
built for him there never was time
when SO many persons were turned
away for lack OF room. The subject OF
this mornings sermon was "Bricks
Without Straw" a continuation of the
series on the confirmation of Holy
Scripture which DR.. Talmage found in
his journey from the Pyramids to the
Acropolis. His text was, Isaiah 10
1.-THE burden of Egypt"
In this course of sermons i am only
serving you as footman, and clearing
the way for your coming into the won
ders OF Egyptology, a subject that
would have you study far beyond any
thing that can be said in the brevity
of pulpit utterances. Two hundred
and eighty-nine times does the bible
refer to Egypt aud 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 own land. According to
that Egypt is our great-great-grand-
mother. On other Sabbaths / left
you studying what they must have
been in their glory; the Hy-
postyle Hall of Karnac, the archi-
tectural miracles at Luxor, the colon
made of Horemheb, the cemeteries of
Memphis, the value of kingdom in
one monument, the Sphinx, which
with lips of stone speaks loud enough
to be heard across the centuries, Hello
polls and Zoan, the conundrum of
psychologists But all that extrava-
gance of palace and temple and monu-
ment was the cause of an oppression
high as heaven, and deep as hell The
weight of those blocks of stone
heavier than any modern machinery
could lift came down upon the Hebrew
slaves, and their blood mixed the
mortar for the trowels.
We saw again and again on and
along the Nile boss workman
roughly smite subordinate who did
not please him. 1t is no rare occur
renee to see long lines of men under
heavy burdens passing by task-masters
at short distances, flashing them as
they go by into greater speed and then
these workmen. exhausted with the
blasting heats of the day, lying down
upon the bare ground, suddenly chilled
with the night hir, crying out in
prayer; "Ya Allahp' "Ya! Allahl'
which means Oh! God Oh God! But
what must have been the olden times
cruelty shown by the Egyptians to-
wards their Israelitish slaves is in
dictated by picture in the Beni-Has-
san tombs, where a man is held down
on his face by two men and another
holds up the victims feet while the
officials beat the bare back of the vic
tim, every stroke, l have no doubt,
fetching the blood.
Now you see how the Pharaohs
could afford to build such costly
works. 1t cost 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
straw" may not suggest so much hard
ship until you know that the bricks
were usually made with crushed
straw, straw crushed by the feet OF the
oxen in the threshing and, this crushed
straw denied to the workmen, they
had to pick up here and there a piece
of stubble or gather rushes from the
waterside. TINS 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
thus written in the brick walls dis
covered by the modern explorers.
That governmental outrage has al
ways been a characteristic of Egyptian
rulers. Taxation to the point of
starvation was the Egyptian rule in
the bible times as well as it is in our
own time. A modern traveller gives
the figures concerning TIE cultivation
of seventeen acres, the value of the
yield of the field stated in piastres:
Produce.............-... 1909
Expenses. ......................... 1884,
| Clear produce. ........,.......... .... s0Sys
taxes. .......................... as
Amount cleared by the farmer. 8l5k
Or, as my authority declares, 20 per
cent. of what the Egyptian farmer
makes, is paid for taxes to the govern
ment. Now, that is not so much taxa
ton as assassination. What think you
of that? You who groan under heavy
taxes in America? l 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
one above, who will punish them we'll,
who will punish them we'll" But
20 per cent of government tax
in Egypt is a mercy as compared
to what the Hebrew slaves suffered
there in bible times. They got moth
ing but food hardly fit for dog and
their clothing was of one rag and their
roof burning sky by day and the
stars of heaven by night You say
why did they stand it?" Because they
had to stand it. You see along back
in the worlds twilight there was a
famine In Canaan, and old Jacob and
his sons came to Egypt for bread
The old mans boy Joseph
was Prime Minister and Joseph
/ suppose the father and the brothers
called him Joe, for 1t does not make
any difference how much a boy is adj
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