Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus.
The causes of national decadence
Who has not sometimes, standing on Brooklyn Bridge, and looking off on the forests of masts, or upon the fleets sailing back and forth upon the river, or at the great warehouses upon one side and the homes beautiful and happy upon the other--who has not sometimes called up in his imagination the picture of Ephesus or Athens or Corinth, where great ships once rode at anchor, whose old-time harbour is now a great morass? Who has not wondered whether the time may not come in some far future age when men shall come and look on the ruins of this great bridge and the ruins of this great city and the harbour filled up with its own filth, and will regret it as we regret the forgotten splendours of Mexico or of Central America? Decay is on all men’s institutions. Persia, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Venice, Spain, all lived out their life as we are living ours, and all fell into their decay, their senility, and their grave. Are we to follow them? I do not know. But this I know: that behind all these institutions, behind all these governments and laws, there is an eternal law manifested and revealed. I know not how long this republic shall endure; but I know this, that behind all kingdoms and republics, in them and by them, is manifested the eternal kingdom of God; nay, the very governments that set themselves against that kingdom to break down and destroy it are speaking, whether they will or they will not, the word that endureth forever. “Tell me what lessons you have to teach us, O you nations of the past!” And Babylon lifts up her voice and says, “I have to teach you this: that any nation that puts its foot on the neck of prostrate humanity seals its death warrant and hastens to its own doom.” And Greece says, “I have this to tell you: that no art, no philosophy, no culture, can save from death the nation that is immoral.” And Rome says, “I have this to tell you: that no power of law will make a nation safe and strong if there be corruption eating out the heart of it.” And Venice says, “I have this to say to you: that no nation is rich, though its fleets sail all seas, if it be poor in manhood.” And Spain says, “I have this to say to you: that pride, for the nation as for the individual, cometh before a fall!” And then I wonder, as I look upon my own dear native land, whether she will learn these lessons writ so large in all the history of the past. Whether we are to illustrate by our own stupendous and awful ruin that, though a nation have power and culture and wealth and law and pride, it perishes without a God; or whether we shall rather teach this: that a nation whose kings are uncrowned kings, and who beckons from far across the sea the ignorant, the unlearned, and the incompetent, is strong and enduring, because it has enshrined God in its heart and has founded itself on that judgment and that justice which are the foundations of His throne. What the history of the future shall have for our dear land, who can tell? But whether this nation is born to teach a lesson by its folly or its wisdom, by its fidelity or by its infidelity, back of all these transitory and decaying nations stands writ the truth of Him who in national life is speaking, and whose word endureth forever. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Pride and folly of accumulation of wealth
H.W. Beecher strikingly compares the great heaps of wealth that some men pile up to the Pyramids of Egypt. There they stand, looking grand on the outside, but within they contain only the dust of kings. So with these fine appearing fortunes which have been heaped up in forgetfulness of God’s service. They contain within only the dust of what might have been a kingly character.
Tyre a sacred city
This feeling of superhuman elevation in the King of Tyre was fostered by the fact that the island on which Tyre stood was called “the holy island,” being sacred to Hercules; so much so that the colonies looked up to Tyre, as the mother city of their religion as well as of their political existence. (A. R. Fausset.)