The Curse of a Weak Government.
iii. 12. As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.
“Children,” “women,” are not to be taken literally. In interpreting the second of these figures, we must remember the status of women in ancient times in the East. I. A weak government is a curse. 1. By such a government the affairs of a nation are mismanaged, its resources squandered, and its great possibilities unrealised. 2. A weak government always becomes in the end an oppressive government. By it the national burdens are caused to press most heavily on those least able to bear them. 3. Under such a government, privileged classes and monopolies multiply and grow strong, to the hurt of the nation at large. 4. Worst of all, and as the source of countless evils, government itself comes to be despised, and the national respect for law destroyed. In short, under a weak government a nation makes rapid progress towards anarchy. II. The curse of a weak government is not long in overtaking a nation that gives itself up to luxury and loses its regard for moral considerations. 1. It is only by such a nation that such a government would be tolerated. 2. By such a nation such a government is likely to be for a time most popular (Jer. v. 31).
The cures for political evils are not political but moral. Political remedies will but modify the symptoms. Political evils are really due to moral causes, and can only be removed by moral reformations. Hence, while good men will never neglect their political duties (no good man will neglect any duty), they will be especially in earnest to uplift the nation morally, and therefore will do their utmost to strengthen those agencies which have this for their aim—the church, the school, and those societies which exist for the diffusion of the Scriptures and of religious liberty. Wherever the Bible becomes the book of the people, oppression by “children” becomes impossible, and the government of “women” is set aside.