1 Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out: and the cries of them that reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one; he doth not resist you.

It is easy to criticize the rich, and in some quarters it is always popular to denounce men of wealth. It must be remembered, however, that no sin is involved in the possession of money and that there is no virtue in being poor. Wealth has peculiar temptations and grave responsibilities; yet not all rich persons are to be condemned or to be under suspicion. If poverty is voluntarily assumed, it should be for some good purpose. As to riches, two questions should be asked: How are they secured? How are they used? The persons whom James condemned were guilty on both these counts. They may have been Christians, or, more probably, unconverted Jews; beyond doubt they belonged to a class with which we are all familiar to-day. They had amassed their wealth by fraud and cruelty; they were spending it in selfish luxury.

Upon such James pronounces a solemn doom, as he warns them that the coming of Christ may be near: "Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for our miseries that are coming upon you." Their folly appears in the heaping together of unused wealth; if it consists of products of the earth, it will corrupt; if in garments, they will be eaten by moths; if in precious metals, they will tarnish and rust; its rapid decay is a fit symbol of the swift destruction of its owners. Their folly is seen further in the fact that their struggle for wealth is made under the shadow of approaching doom: "Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days." The possibility that the return of Christ might be near, like the fact of the brevity and uncertainty of life, should be a warning against the worldly spirit which in the previous paragraph led to presumptuous plans for the future, and which here is expressed in amassing wealth which the owners never can enjoy.

These rich men, however, are guilty not only of folly but also of sin. Their wealth has been secured by injustice: "Behold, the hire of the laborers who mowed your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out." This is the crime of oppressors in all ages, refusing a fair wage, keeping back what has been earned by the employees whose toil has secured the wealth the employers enjoy. This, supremely, occasions "the social question." Such injustice is related to other forms of cruelty; "Ye have condemned, ye have killed the righteous one; he doth not resist you." It was easy for the wealthy to control the processes of law for condemning and defrauding the helpless poor; the latter were being "killed" not necessarily with the sword, but by lack of food and improper conditions of labor and by the crushing monotony of ceaseless toil; but the silent appeal of their patient helplessness was unheeded. The rich oppressors were deaf to all entreaties. They were too much occupied in their own enjoyments to know the very conditions which existed. Their sin consisted not only in the injustice by which their wealth was secured, but in the prodigal luxury in which it was spent: "Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure." There was One, however, who heard the moaning of the helpless sufferers: their cries "have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." The guilty oppressors are like sheep, fattening themselves for slaughter; the Lord of Hosts soon will lay bare his arm. Doom is certain.