The Pulpit Commentary — James — Section 80

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. '\'""ers. 1-6.-The jud.r;ments coming upon the wicked rich. This apostrophe is BO dreadful that we cannot imagine it to have been addressed to professing Christians. It w.:>Uld rather seem that the apostle here turns aside to glance at the godless rich Jews of his time, who were in the habit of persecuting the Church and defrauding the poor (eh. ii. 6, 7). His words regarding them are words of stern denunciation. Like one of the old Hebrew prophets, he curses them in the name of the Lord. His design in doing so, however, must bave been in unison with his life-work as a Christian apostle, labouring in "the acceptable time;" he sought, by proclaiming the terrors of the Lord, to persuade to repentance and a holy life. The paragraph breaks naturally into three sections. Ver. 1 refers to the future; vers. 2, 3 to the present; vers. 4-6 mainly tu the past. '\Ve shall consider these three sections in the inverse order. I. THE CAuoES OF JUDGMENT IN THE PAST. (Vere. 4-6.) James mentions threo. I. Heartless injustice. (Ver. 4.) The humane Law of Moses forbade that the wages of the hired laliourer be kept back even for a single night (Deut, :x:xiv. 14, 15); but these wicked men had paid no heed to that Law. They had grown rich by defrauding the poor. ! □ stead of relieving the needy by a liberal charity, they had not even paid the lawful debts which they owed them. And does not this sin linger in the heart of Christendom? What was American slavery but just a crushing of the poor? What was villeinage in our own country but a defrauding of the labourers? It is not yet a century since the Scotch collier was attached by law to the coal-work where he had been born-the right to his services being bought and sold with the mine itself. In n,ore recent times our poets have once and again given voice to great social wrongs in wurdfi tl,at liave rung like a tocsin through the land (e.g. Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of tlw Cl1ildren,' and Hood's' Song of the Shirt'). Or, to take the form of labour referred to in ver. 4-, we may ask-Is the condition of the EngliRh 1iloughman even yet what it ought to be, and wliat our rich landlords ought to help to make it? James says that tl,e rul,bing of the poor i~ a" cryi11;;" sin. The victims themselves cry; and even their wages, fraudulently withh~ld, "cry out" alro from the coffers of the rich, Bu.t OIJ, V. 1-20,] 'l'HE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES. 75