Hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world: both low and high, rich and poor, together.
The inequalities of society
Impressive and instructive that scene in the wood of Senart, when a luxurious Louis, royally caparisoned for hunting, met a wretched peasant with a coffin. “For whom?. .. For a poor brother slave, whom your majesty has sometimes noticed slaving in those quarters.” “What did he die of?. .. Of hunger.” The king gave his steed the spur. Sad is it that such a contrast was ever possible on earth, and sadder still that it may yet be witnessed even in this enlightened and philanthropic land. There are other inequalities. I read, not long since, that a Glasgow bank director, convicted of having appropriated half a million sterling, was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment; and that on the same day a little half-starved boy, charged with stealing cake worth a halfpenny, was sentenced to fourteen days’ hard labour and four years in a reformatory. “One law for the rich, and another for the poor.” These social inequalities have led to much disturbance. Christian divines have abandoned the subject to philosophers, agitators, and would-be reformers. It always has seemed to me that Christianity must have something to say that the world has a right to know; and unless this is done, there never will be a complete mastery of the problem. Social inequality must have arisen from some other kind of inequality. Social inequalities sprang out of the irregularities of human nature. No two men are made alike. Social inequalities are not without relief and compensation in some other kind of inequality. “Uneasy is the head that wears a crown,” and uneasy the heart of him who owns millions of dollars. The Saviour did not devote His attention to surface measures of reform, but to a new heart, confident that the regeneration of man means the regeneration of society. (G. C. Lorimer, D. D.)