265. Bricks Without Straw

Bricks Without Straw

Isa_19:1 : ’93The burden of Egypt.’94

What is all this excitement in the streets of Cairo, Egypt, this December morning in 1889? Stand back! We hear loud voices and see the crowds of people retreating to the sides of the street. The excitement of others becomes our own excitement. Footmen come in sight. They have a rod in the hand and tasseled cap on head, and their arms and feet are bare. Their garb is black to the waist, except as threaded with gold, and the rest is white. They are clearing the way for an official dignitary in a chariot or carriage. They are swift and sometimes run thirty or forty miles at a stretch in front of an equipage. Make way! They are the fleetest-footed men on earth, but soon die, for the human frame was not made for such endurance. I asked all around me who the man in the carriage was, but no one seemed to know. Yet as I fell back with the rest to the wall I said: this is the old custom found all up and down the Bible, footmen running before the rulers, demanding obeisance; as in Genesis before Joseph’92s chariot the people were commanded, ’93Bow the knee,’94 and as I see the swift feet of the men followed by the swift feet of the horses, how those old words of Jeremiah rushed through my mind: ’93If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, how canst thou contend with horses?’94

Now, in this course of sermons I am only serving you as footman, and clearing the way for your coming into the wonders of Egyptology, a subject that I would have you study far beyond anything that can be said in the brevity of pulpit utterance. Two hundred and eighty-nine times does the Bible refer to Egypt and the Egyptians. No wonder, for Egypt was the mother of nations. Egypt, the mother of Greece; Greece, the mother of Rome; Rome, the mother of England; England, the mother of our own land. According to that, Egypt is our great-great-grandmother. On other Sabbaths I left you studying what the wonders of Egypt must have been in their glory; the Hypostyle Hall of Karnak; the architectural miracles at Luxor; the Colonnade of Horembeb; the cemeteries of Memphis, the value of a kingdom in one monument; the Sphinx, which with lips of stone speaks loud enough to be heard across the centuries; Heliopolis and Zoan, the conundrum of arch’e6ologists. But all this extravagance of palace and temple and monument was the means of an oppression high as heaven and deep as hell. The weight of those blocks of stone heavier than any modern machinery could lift came down upon the Hebrew slaves, and their blood mixed the mortar for the trowels.

We saw again and again on and along the Nile a boss workman roughly smite a subordinate who did not please him. It is no rare occurrence to see long lines of men under heavy burdens passing by taskmasters at short distances, who lashed them as they went by into greater speed, and then these workmen, exhausted with the blasting heats of the day, lying down upon the bare ground, suddenly chilled with the night air, crying out in prayer: ’93Ya! Allah! Ya! Allah!’94 which means ’93O God! O God!’94 But what must have been the old-time cruelty shown by the Egyptians toward their Israelitish slaves is indicated by a picture in the Beni-Hassan tombs, where a man is held down on his face by two men and another holds up the victim’92s feet while the officials beat the bare back of the victim, every stroke, I have no doubt, fetching the blood.

Now you see how the Pharaohs could afford to build such costly works. It cost them nothing for wages, nothing but the tears and blood of the toilers, and tears and blood are a cheap drink for despots. ’93Bricks without straw’94 may not suggest so much hardship until you know that the bricks were usually made with ’93crushed straw,’94 straw crushed by the feet of the oxen in the threshing; and, this crushed straw denied to the workmen, they had to pick up here and there a piece of stubble or gather rushes from the waterside. This story of the Bible is confirmed by the fact that many of the brick walls of Egypt have on the lower layers brick made with straw, but the higher layers of brick made out of rough straw or rushes from the river bank; the truth of the book of Exodus thus written in the brick walls discovered by the modern explorers.

That governmental outrage has always been a characteristic of Egyptian rulers. Taxation to the point of starvation was the Egyptian rule in the Bible times as well as it is in our own time. A modern traveler declares that under the Khedive sixty-one per cent, of what the Egyptian farmer made was paid for taxes to the government. Now, that is not so much taxation as assassination. What think you of that, you who groan under heavy taxes in America? I have heard that in Egypt the working people have a song like this:

They starve us, they starve us,

They beat us, they beat us,

But there’92s some one above, there’92s some one above,

Who will punish them well, who will punish them well.

But sixty-one per cent, of government tax in Egypt is a mercy as compared to what the Hebrew slaves suffered there in Bible times. They got nothing but food hardly fit for a dog, and their clothing was of one rag, and their roof a burning sky by day and the stars of heaven by night. You say, ’93Why did they stand it?’94 Because they had to stand it. You see, along back in the world’92s twilight there was a famine in Canaan, and old Jacob and his sons came to Egypt for bread. The old man’92s boy Joseph was Prime Minister, and Joseph’97I suppose the father and the brothers called him Joe, for it does not make any difference how much a boy is advanced in worldly success, his father and brothers and sisters always call him by the same name that he was called by when two years old’97Joseph, by Pharaoh’92s permission, gave to his family, who had just arrived, the richest part of Egypt, the Westchester farms or the Lancaster farms of the ancients. Jacob’92s descendants rapidly multiplied. After a while Egypt took a turn at famine, and those descendants of Jacob, the Israelites, came to a great storehouse which Joseph had provided, and paid in money for corn. But after a while the money gave out and then they paid in cattle. After a while the cattle were all in possession of the government, and then the Hebrews bought corn from the government by surrendering themselves as slaves.

Then began slavery in Egypt. The government owned all the Hebrews. And let modern lunatics who in America propose handing over telegraph companies and railroads and other things to be run by government see the folly of letting government get its hand on everything. I would rather trust the people than any administration the United States ever had or will have. Woe worth the day when legislators and congresses and administrations get possession of anything more than it is necessary for them to have. That would be the revival in this land of that old Egyptian tyranny for which God has never had anything but red-hot thunderbolts. But through such unwise processes Israel was enslaved in Egypt, and the long line of agonies began all up and down the Nile. Heavier and sharper fell the lash, hungrier and ghastlier grew the workmen, louder and longer went up the prayer, until two millions of the enslaved were crying, ’93Ya! Allah! Ya! Allah!’94’97’94O God! O God!’94

Where was help to come from? Not the throne’97Pharaoh sat upon that. Not the army’97Pharaoh’92s officers commanded that. Not surrounding nations’97Pharaoh’92s threat made them all tremble. Not the gods of Ammon and Osiris, or the goddess Isis, for Pharaoh built their temples out of the groans of this diabolical servitude. But one hot day the Princess Thonoris, the daughter of Pharaoh, while in her bathing-house on the banks of the Nile, has word brought her that there is a baby afloat on the river in a cradle made out of big leaves. Of course there is excitement all up and down the banks, for an ordinary baby in an ordinary cradle attracts smiling attention; but an infant in a cradle of papyrus rocking on a river arouses not only admiration but curiosity. Who made that boat? Who made it water-tight with bitumen? Who launched it? Reckless of the crocodiles who lay basking themselves in the sun, the maidens wade in and snatch up the child, and first one carries him and then another carries him, and all the way up the bank he runs a gauntlet of caresses, till Thonoris rushes out of the bathing-house and says: ’93Beautiful foundling, I will adopt you as my own. You shall yet wear the Egyptian crown and sit on the Egyptian throne.’94 No! No! No! He is to be the emancipator of the Hebrews. Tell it in all the brickkilns. Tell it among all those who are writhing under the lash, tell it among all the castles of Memphis and Heliopolis and Zoan and Thebes. Before him a sea will part. On a mountain top, alone, this one will receive from the Almighty a law that is to be the foundation of all good law while the world lasts. When he is dead God will come down on Nebo and alone bury him, no man or woman or angel worthy to attend the obsequies. The child grows up and goes out and studies the horrors of Egyptian oppression and suppresses his indignation, for the right time has not come, although once for a minute he let fly and when he saw a taskmaster put the whip on the back of a workman who was doing his best and heard the poor fellow cry and saw the blood spurt, Moses doubled up his fist and struck him on the temple till the cruel villain rolled over in the sand exanimate and never swung the lash again. Served him right!

But, Moses, are you going to undertake the impossibilities? You feel that you are going to free the Hebrews from bondage: but where is your army? Where is your navy? Not a sword have you, not a spear, not a chariot, not a horse. Ah! God was on his side and he has an army of his own. The snowstorms are on God’92s side: witness the snowbanks in which the French army of invasion were buried on their way back from Moscow. The rain is on his side: witness the eighteenth of June at Waterloo, when the tempests so saturated the road that the attack could not be made on Wellington’92s forces until eleven o’92clock and he was strong enough to hold out until reinforcements arrived. Had that battle been opened at five o’92clock in the morning instead of at eleven, the destiny of Europe would have been turned the wrong way. The heavy rain decided everything. So also are the winds and the waves on God’92s side: witness the Armada with one hundred and fifty ships and twenty-six hundred and fifty guns and eight thousand sailors and twenty thousand soldiers, sent out by Philip II, of Spain, to conquer England. What became of men and shipping? Ask the winds and the waves all along the English and Norwegian coasts. The men and the ships all wrecked or drowned or scattered. So I expect that Moses will be helped in rescuing the Israelites by a special arsenal.

To the Egyptians the Nile was a deity. Its waters were very delicious. It was the finest natural beverage of all the earth. We have no such love for the Hudson, and Germans have no such love for the Rhine, and Russians have no such love for the Volga, as the Egyptians have love for the Nile. But one day when Pharaoh comes down to this river, Moses takes a stick and whips the waters, and they turn into the gore of a slaughter-house, and through the sluices and fish-ponds the incarnadined liquid backs up into the land and the malodor whelms everything from mud hovel to throne-room. Then came the frogs with horrible croak all over everything. Then this people, cleanly almost to fastidiousness, were infested with insects that belong to the filthy and unkempt, and the air buzzed and buzzed with flies; and then the distemper started the cows to bellowing and horses to neighing, and camels to groaning, as they rolled over and expired. And then boils, one of which will put a man in wretchedness, came in clusters from the top of the head to the sole of the foot. And then the clouds dropped hail and lightning. And then locusts came in, swarms of them, worse than the grasshoppers ever were in Kansas, and then darkness dropped for three days so that the people could not see their hand before their face, great surges of midnight covering them. And last of all, on the night of the 18th of April, about fifteen hundred years before Christ, the Destroying Angel sweeps past; and hear it all night long, the flap! flap! flap! of its awful wings, until Egypt rolled on, a great hearse, the eldest child dead in every Egyptian home. The eldest son of Pharaoh expired that night in the palace, and all along the streets of Memphis and Heliopolis and all up and down the Nile there was a funeral wail that would have rent the fold of the unnatural darkness if it had not been impenetrable.

The Israelitish homes, however, were untouched. But these homes were full of preparation, for now is your chance, oh, ye wronged Hebrews! Snatch up what pieces of food you can and to the desert! Its simooms are better than the bondage you have suffered. Its scorpions will not sting so sharply as the wrongs that have stung you all your lives. Away! The man who was cradled in the basket of papyrus on the Nile will lead you. Up! Up! This is the night of your rescue. They gather together at a signal. Alexander’92s armies and all the armies of olden time were led by torches on high poles, great crests of fire; and the Lord Almighty kindles a torch not held by human hands, but by omnipotent hand. Not made out of straw and oil, but kindled out of the atmosphere; such a torch as the world never saw before and never will see again. It reached from the earth unto the heaven, a pillar of fire, that pillar practically saying, ’93This way! March this way!’94 On that supernatural flambeau more than a million refugees set their eyes. Moses and Aaron lead on. Then come the families of Israel. Then come the herds and flocks moving on across the sands to what is the beach of waters now called Bahr-el-Kulzum, but called in the Bible the Red Sea. And when I dipped my hands in its blue waters, the heroics of the Mosaic passage rolled over me.

After three days’92 march the Israelitish refugees encamped for the night on the bank of the Red Sea. As the shadows begin to fall, in the distance is seen the host of Pharaoh in pursuit. There were six hundred finest war chariots followed by common chariots rolling at full speed. And the rumbling of the wheels and the curse of infuriated Egyptians came down with the darkness. But the Lord opened the crystal gates of Bahr-el-Kulzum and the enslaved Israelites passed into liberty and then the crystal gates of the sea rolled shut against the Egyptian pursuers. It was about two o’92clock in the morning when the interlocked axle-trees of the Egyptian chariots could not move an inch either way. But the Red Sea unhitched the horses, and unhelmeted the warriors, and left the proud host a wreck on the Arabian sands. Then two choruses arose, and Moses led the men in one, and Miriam led the women in the other, and the women beat time with their feet. The record says: ’93All the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.’94

What a thrilling story of endurance and victory! The greatest triumph of Handel’92s genius was shown in his immortal dramatic oratorio, ’93Israel in Egypt.’94 He had given to the world the oratorio of ’93Esther and Deborah,’94 and ’93Athaliah,’94 but reserved for his mightiest triumph at the full height of his powers the marshaling of all musical instruments to the description in harmony of the scenes on which we this morning dwell. He gave twenty-seven days to this production, with its twenty-eight choruses, enthralling his own time and all aftertime with his ’93Israel in Egypt.’94

So the burden of oppression was lifted, but another burden of Egypt is made up of deserts. Indeed, Africa is a great continent for deserts, Libyan desert, Sahara desert, deserts here and there and yonder, condemning vast regions of Africa to barrenness; one of the deserts three thousand miles long and one thousand miles wide. But all those deserts will yet be flooded, and so made fertile. De Lesseps says it can be done, and he who planned the Suez Canal, which marries the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, knows what he is talking about. The human race is so multiplied that it must have more cultivated land, and the world must abolish its deserts. Eight hundred million of the human race are now living on lands not blest with rains, but dependent on irrigation, and we want by irrigation to make room for eight hundred million more. By irrigation the prophecy will be fulfilled, and ’93the desert will blossom as the rose.’94 So from Egypt the burden of sand will be lifted.

Another burden of Egypt to be lifted is the burden of Mohammedanism, although there are some good tilings about that religion. Its disciples must always wash before they pray, and that is five times a day. A commendable grace is cleanliness. Strong drink is positively forbidden by Mohammedanism, and though some may have seen a drunken Mohammedan, I never saw one. It is a religion of sobriety. Then they are not ashamed of their devotions. When the call for prayers is sounded from the minarets the Mohammedan immediately unrolls a rug on the ground and falls on his knees, and crowds of spectators are to him no embarrassment’97reproof to many a Christian who omits his prayers if people are looking. But Mohammedanism, with its polygamy, blights everything it touches. Mohammed, its founder, had nine wives, and his followers are the enemies of good womanhood. Mohammedanism puts its curse on all Egypt, and by setting up a sinful Arab higher than the immaculate Christ, is an overwhelming blasphemy. May God help the brave and consecrated missionaries who are spending their lives in combating it.

But before I forget it I must put more emphasis upon the fact that the last outrage that resulted in the liberation of the Hebrews was their being compelled to make bricks without straw. That was the last straw that broke the camel’92s back. God would allow the despotism against his people to go no further. Making bricks without straw!

That oppression still goes on. Demand of your wife appropriate wardrobe and bountiful table without providing the means necessary: bricks without straw. Cities demanding in the public school faithful and successful instruction without giving the teachers competent livelihood: bricks without straw. United States Government demanding of Senators and Congressmen at Washington full attendance to the interests of the people, but on compensation which may have done well enough when twenty-five cents went as far as a dollar now, but in these times not sufficient to preserve their influence and respectability: bricks without straw. In many parts of the land churches demanding of pastors vigorous sermons and sympathetic service on starvation salary, sanctified Ciceros on four hundred dollars a year: bricks without straw. That is one reason why there are so many poor bricks. In all departments, bricks not even, or bricks that crumble, or bricks that are not bricks at all. Work adequately paid for is worth more than work not paid for. More straw and then better bricks.

But in all departments there are Pharaohs: sometimes Capital a Pharaoh, and sometimes Labor a Pharaoh. When Capital prospers and makes large percentage on its investment, and declines to consider the needs of the operatives, and treats them as so many human machines, their nerves no more than the bands on the factory wheel’97then Capital is a Pharaoh. On the other hand, when workmen, not regarding the anxieties and business struggles of the firm employing them, and at a time when the firm are doing their best to meet an important contract and need all hands busy to accomplish it, at such a time to have his employees make a strike and put their employers into extreme perplexity and severe loss’97then Labor becomes a Pharaoh of the worst oppression, and must look out for the judgments of God.

When in December of 1889, at the Museum at Bulak, Egypt, I looked at the mummies of the old Pharaohs, the very miscreants who diabolized centuries, and I saw their teeth and hair and finger-nails and the flesh drawn tight over their cheek bones, the sarcophagi of these dead monarchs side by side, and I was so fascinated I could only with difficulty get away from the spot, I was not looking upon the last of the Pharaohs. All over the world old merchants playing the Pharaoh over young merchants, old lawyers playing the Pharaoh over young lawyers, old doctors playing the Pharaoh over young doctors, old artists playing the Pharaoh over young artists, and old ministers playing the Pharaoh over young ministers. Let all oppressors, whether in homes, in churches, in stores, in offices, in factories, in public life or social life, in private life or political life, know that God hates oppressors, and they will all come to grief here or hereafter.

Pharaoh thought he did a fine thing, a cunning thing, a decisive thing, when for the complete extinction of the Hebrews in Egypt he ordered all the Hebrew boys massacred, but he did not find it so fine a thing when his own first-born, that night of the Destroying Angel, dropped dead on the mosaic floor at the foot of the porphyry pillar of the palace. Let all the Pharaohs take warning. Some of the worst of them are on a small scale in households, as when a man, because his arm is strong and his voice loud, dominates his poor wife into a domestic slavery. There are thousands of such cases where the wife is a lifetime serf, her opinion disregarded, her tastes insulted, and her existence a wretchedness, though the world may not know it. It is a Pharaoh that sits at the head of that table, and a Pharaoh that tyrannizes that home. There is no more abhorrent Pharaoh than a domestic Pharaoh. There are thousands of women to whom death is passage from Egypt to Canaan, because they get rid of a cruel taskmaster.

What an accursed monster is that man who keeps his wife in dread about family expenses, and must be cautious how she introduces an article of millinery or feminine wardrobe without humiliating consultation and apology. Who is that man acting so? For six months, in order to win that woman’92s heart, he sent her every few days a bouquet wound with white ribbon, and an endearing couplet, and took her to concerts and theaters, and helped her into carriages as though she were a princess, and ran across the room to pick up her pocket-handkerchief with the speed of an antelope, and on the marriage day promised all that the liturgy required, saying, ’93I will!’94 with an emphasis that excited the admiration of all spectators. But now he begrudges her two cents for a postage-stamp, and wonders why she rides across Brooklyn Bridge when the foot-passage costs nothing. He thinks now she is miserably plain, and acts like the devil, while he thunders out, ’93Where did you get that new hat from? That’92s where my money goes. Where’92s my breakfast? Do you call that coffee? What are you whimpering about? Hurry up, now, and get my slippers! Where’92s the newspaper?’94 The tone, the look, the impatience’97the cruelty of a Pharaoh. That is what gives so many women a cowed-down look. Pharaoh! you had better take your iron heel off that woman’92s neck, or God will help you remove your heel. She says nothing. For the sake of avoiding a scandal she keeps silent. But her tears and wrongs have gone into a record that you will have to meet as certainly as Pharaoh had to meet hail and lightning and darkness and the Death Angel. God never yet gave to any man the right to tyrannize a woman, and what a sneak you are to take advantage of the marriage vow, and, because she cannot help herself, and under the shelter of your own home, out-Pharaoh the Egyptian oppressor. There is something radically wrong in a household where the woman is not considered of as much importance as the man. No room in this world for any more Pharaohs!

But it rolls over me with great power the thought that we have all been slaves down in Egypt, and sin has been our taskmaster, and again and again we have felt its lash. But Christ has been our Moses to lead us out of bondage, and we are forever free. The Red Sea of a Saviour’92s sacrifice rolls deep and wide between us and our aforetime bondage, and though there may be deserts yet for us to cross we are on the way to the Promised Land. Thanks be unto God for it is emancipating Gospel! Come up out of Egypt, all ye who are yet enslaved. What Christ did for us he will do for you. ’93Exodus!’94 is the word. Exodus! Instead of the brick-kilns of Egypt, come into the empurpled vineyards of God, where one cluster of grapes is bigger than the one that the spies brought to the Israelites by the brook Eshcol, though that cluster was so large that it was borne ’93between two upon a staff.’94

Welcome all by sin oppressed,

Welcome to his sacred rest;

Nothing brought him from above,

Nothing but redeeming love.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage