October 1927
621
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
White-Collar and Kid-Glove Men A STRIKING article in Nation’s Business appeared some months ago under the title “Taking off the Curse.”^ The writer speaks of the growing army of col lege graduates who are not prepared for the jobs that require brawny muscle and horny hand, but only for the: white-collar and kid-glove places in life. The great de mand everywhere is for productive labor, and there is a growing complaint that thousands of young people, after going through college, are not prepared for these places. Masons, carpenters, bricklayers today earn more than doctors, lawyers, teachers and preachers, and the country is far overstocked with candidates for these white-collar positions. •One university last year graduated more teach ers than there were teachers’ jobs in the whole state. Many who have had college training are forced to manual labor for a living. When this situation was called to the attention of the president of a university having 8,000 students, and he was asked how they were going to make their living, his reply was: “By taking the curse off labor. The cultured man is going to carry his trained mind into mechanics and take the curse off labor. It will make culture uni versal instead of the privilege of the few.” The writer goes on to show how men from these white-collar ranks are inventing machinery that reduces labor and expense. By the turning of a switch a great machine will do the work that formerly required scores of men. Thus man would remove the curse by putting the white-collar man in the place of the man who labors by the sweat of his brow. After the fall of man, God ruled, for man’s good, that labor should not henceforth be so easy and remunerative, but that hard work should occupy man so far as possible. The curse came upon nature to enforce this so that by the sweat of man’s'brow he should live. One of the marks of man’s fall was dislike for work. Man has ever since bent his energies to the task of dodging work, invent ing labor-saving devices and improving upon nature’s products by artificial means. We are profoundly grateful for many wonderful in ventions which have eased the burden of suffering and enabled God’s servants to accomplish more in the advance ment of His kingdom, but one is shortsighted who thinks he can outwit God, and promote his own welfare, by these things, thinking to escape the realm of the curse which God put here to deter men from sin. Worse evils are flooding in on every side. Highly educated men are turning their powers into channels that are destructive rather than constructive. Others, whose inventive genius has brought them quick returns, are living in license and luxury. Meanwhile there is a veri table volcano of unrest among the laboring class, and any day may witness an awful upheaval. While man is “re moving the curse” he is hastening headlong to the fulfil ment of Jas. 5:1-8, for “behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth” (Jas. 5:4). White-collar men we must have in many places, but it will be a sorry day for the world when good productive physical labor comes to an end and everything is done by pressing a button.
ling for religion, and even dying for it, than they are at present living for it. Further, we are forced to admit that the churches have many who are wearing Christianity only as a cloak of profession. But granting all that—is Christianity disproved? Our Lord Himself warned of the days when the love of many should wax cold, and when the great majority of relig ionists would have a form, rather than the power of god liness. Therefore, to all such objectors, some of whom are honest, we would set forth our Lord’s own parable of the marriage of the King’s Son in Matt. 22, wherein we have a representation of the ingathering of the church and its consummation in the coming of the King. - When all were assembled, the King came in to see the guests (v. 11). Immediately He saw a man who was not clad in the proper garment for such an occasion. What keenness of glance, that He should so soon discover one man in a large crowd! He questions him—-“How earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?” There was no rebuke to the servants for admitting him. He does not blame the preacher and the evangelist. They can be easily deceived. The man was “speechless” (lit. “muzzled*’) . He had been able to talk glibly enough to the other guests, but when the King comes in he stands self-condemned. Why could not he have said : “I had no chance to change my clothes” or “I was too poor to provide them” ? The whole point of the parable is that the King Himself provided the robes for such occasions, according to ancient custom. Horace tells of Lucullus that he had 5,000 mantles in his wardrobe. Chardin says of the King of Persia that he gave away hundreds of garments on festive occasions. No wonder the King said to the ser vants : “Bind him and take him away into outer darkness.” It was a piece of defiant insolence and could not go unpun ished. Let the critic remember that “the hope of the hypo crite shall perish,” like his own. No one will get to par ticipate in the marriage feast who is not “clothed with the garments of salvation” and “covered with the robe o f His righteousness” (Isa. 61:10). To the church it is said: “To her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the right eousness o f saints” (Rev. 19:8). The rags of self-right eousness will never be tolerated there (Isa. 64 ;6). The day will come when every hypocrite in the Church will discover the necessity of the righteousness of Christ as his garment, for in the light from the King’s Throne he will find himself, like the unbeliever outside, in moral nakedness. Yes—some are sure to get into the visible Church who have no business there. They have no real love for the King’s Son and are there only to eat of the good things at His table. But forget not that there is a vast company that no man can number, who have come by way of the King’s wardrobe. They are like the feeble Chris tian lady attending a mission service. The sermon had been on “The Garments of Salvation.” At the close, she told the speaker that she might never be able to attend another service, but that she would meet him anyway at the marriage feast. “Have you no fear of appearing before God?” he asked. “No—-no,” 'she replied with a smile: “I ’m too well dressed for that.” Surely it is no place of security to be standing on the outside criticizing those who have gone inside, even though some of them have entered in their rags.
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