The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1907-05-16

LESSON COM
MENTs FOR MAY 80 by THE
REV. ]. w. HENDERSON.

Subject: Israel Enslaved i'm Egypt,
Ex. 1:f-f4---Goiden Text, Ps.
107;f3-Memory Verses, 13, IA
Commentary.
This lesson takes us out of the
book of Genesis into the second book
of the Bible, the book OF the Exodus.
The book of Exodus is the record OF
the enslavement, the deliverance of
people; 1t tells of the economic and
religious struggles of the early Jews.
The lesson for to-day plunges us
directly into the heart OF the begin
ming of the trials and tribulations of
the Israelites after they fell, In Egypt,
into the tolls of Pharaoh who knew
not Joseph. Jacob and Joseph and
their immediate descendants are
dead. With the passing of the years
the Hebrews have so multiplied that
the land is filled with them, and their
power and influence is a cause of
dread to the Pharaoh of their day.
And so measures are taken to check
their growth. The Pharaoh put Upon
them the hardest labor that could be
devised, they were reduced to con-
ditions of the most abject slavery,
their boy babies were ordered to be
killed. Everything was done to check
their progress and to counteract and
destroy their power. But still, as
under the promise of God to Abra-
ham and Isaac and Jacob, they grew
in numbers even in the face of the
most discouraging economic condi-
tions.
The book of the Exodus is not we'll
grasped until we understand in some
measure at least that 1t is the record
of the industrial hardships and deliv-
erance of people as we'll as the his
tory of the beginnings of a national
religious consciousness and spirit that
was to blossom into the most influen-
tial and pure religious system of the
ancient world. God had to get Israel
out of economic and industrial bond
age before they could be greatly in
fuenced by the deeper forces of spir-
itual truth. Their aff1iction in a ma
terial way was good because it
brought them face to face with the
need of salvation. and a savior. It
caused them to turn to God. OPP
pressed as they were the way was
dark about them. They were undone.
They were in danger of becoming
submerged altogether under the
pressure of the impure religious
thought with which they were sur
rounded.
In the face of these adversities God
was yet with them. The promise
made to their fathers was continually
fulfilled in their experience. They
throve on adversely. That which was
intended to be their destruction was
for them socially, as the prison had
been for Joseph individually, their
discipline, their strengthening, their
energizing. The deeper down they
were plunged the nearer apparently
God drew to them. The more they
were bounded and driven and de-
spoiled, the more they augmented.
Overwhelmed with a common evil
they had an ever increasing social
need. And with the social need there
came an increasing social conscious
ness. Desiring in their common woe
a deliverer they looked forward to
one who should lead them as a social
unit out of the industrial, economic
and spiritual darkness into which
they had been immersed.
The lesson of the industrial and
spiritual bondage of the children of
Jacob in the land of Egypt is one
that is essentially apropos. We are
face to face to-day with condi-
tions that are as startling economic
ally and spiritually as those which
alarmed Israel in the time of which
our lesson treats. To be sure, in civ
ilized countries the system of chattel
slavery, which for many years was a
factor of civilized life, Is quite abol-
ished. But multitudes of men and
women and children are to-day, by
virtue of the economic conditions in
cidental to the mighty age of ma
chinery and individualism In which
we are living, as truly in land of
bondage as ever the children of Israel
were. The masters are prosperous
even as the masters of Egypt were.
The oppression of the people also,
different in kind, perhaps different in
degree, is just as real as the Egyptian
bondage ever was. And this con-
temporaneous industrial distress is
nowhere more felt than, on the one
hand, In the prevailing distrust of
ecclesiastical institutions upon the
part of the industrially oppressed,
and, on the other hand, in the pre-
vailing call for and confidence that
God will send an inspired deliverer
who shall regenerate with flaming
truth the social as we'll as the indi-
vidual life of man.
AS with Israel so with modern So
ciety. The very injustices of our
modern industrial conditions are
leading men to grasp the idea of uni
versal brotherhood and to desire and
to strive to bring to pass by the grace
OF God such regeneration of mod
ern life as shall transform not only
individual conditions of life and char
acter but also society.
And God is brooding over modern
society as really as He brooded over
Israel. The cry of the oppressed
reaches up to His ears. The sin that
is done In darkness for the spoliation
of His people In His own good time
will be brought to light. He will
send the deliverer to the modern
bondman. He will send the prophet
of His simple, unsullied, life impart-
: ing truth to the people of our own
time. The cry of lives that are "bit-
ter with hard service" falls on O Di-
vine ear that heeds.s The social life
of to-day as surely as God lives will
go through the wilderness to Canaan.
We shall have to have our Sinai.
May the church be the pillar of cloud
and of fro