Folk who are at ease.
Special reference is made to the women of the upper classes in Jerusalem, who were living in self-indulgence and extravagance, and setting mischievous example to all the women of the land. The coming woes would affect them all the more seriously because of the luxuries which they had gathered round themselves, and which had become to them fancied necessities. No doubt the idle, self-indulgent, and too often profligate conduct of these women greatly added to the pressure of the existing evils. It is suggested to us to consider how greatly; in every age, women represent and augment the evils of their times. Many a man has been ruined by his efforts to feed the pride, vanity, and luxury of these ease-loving, careless wives and daughters. And nations have lost their manhood in the moral decay of the "mothers" of the race. "When a land goes to ruin a great part of the blame of it rests upon the women. For they are more easily prompted to evil, as they are to good." But this "being at ease" describes the condition of what is called a "high state of civilization," when money is accumulated in the hands of the few, and these few, having no need to work, give themselves up to self-indulgence, manufacturing wants, and constantly craving for some excitement to relieve the dreadful ennui of life.
I. MEN AND WOMEN SHOULD NOT BE AT EASE. There is work to be done. Work for all. It is put close to our hand. There are evils to fight—evils so gigantic that every man and woman may have a place in the soldier-ranks. God worketh hitherto; Christ works; and woe to all who, in negligence or in rebelliousness, refuse to bear the yoke!
II. MANY MEN AND WOMEN MUST MASTER THEMSELVES AND THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES IF THEY ARE TO CEASE TO RE AT EASE. For careless ways may have become fixed habits. We may have deceived ourselves into the idea that our "doing nothing," our busy idleness, is really doing something. We begin to take life into our hands for ordering, when we face the question, "What is life given me for? '
"Life is real, life is earnest."
III. GOD'S WOE SURELY COMES ON ALL WHO KEEP AT EASE, Our Lord pictured this in his parable of the "rich man and Lazarus." That rich man, living at ease, is not to be envied while he lived, for the woe of God lay on him, making bitterness for his many idle hours. Much less is he to be envied when his life is done, for the woe of God is on him there. "In hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments." "Tremble, ye women that are at ease!"—R.T.