The price of a man.
The aim of the prophet is to show the extent of the disaster which, in the indignation of God (Isaiah 13:5), should overtake the guilty city. One feature of the ruin should be wholesale slaughter (Isaiah 13:15). And the result of this would be a terrible reduction of the male population. Men, usually so prevalent, so "cheap" in Babylon, should become scarce and precious; so precious should they be that it might be said, speaking figuratively, that a man would be more precious than gold, even than "the golden wedge of Ophir." What might thus be affirmed of man, in figurative language, in the day of God's wrath, shall become true of man, in simple fact and truth, in the day of Divine grace. Under Christ the day will come when the worth of a man shall be felt to be wholly irreducible to terms of gold and silver; that "no mention shall be made of pearls" when it is attempted to form an estimate of the value of a human spirit.
I. UNDER THE INFLUENCE AND DOMINION OF SIN WE HAVE SADLY LOWERED OUR ESTIMATE OF OURSELVES.
1. Men have treated their fellows as nothing worth. They have either treated their sufferings with callous indifference, or they have looked on their neighbors as related in no other way than through the wages market; or they have actually bought and sold them—their sinews, their intelligence, their honor—for so much gold.
2. Men have pitifully undervalued themselves. They have acted as if they were nothing better than intelligent machines for making money, or than creatures capable of so much enjoyment, or than office-holders who might attain to certain dignities for a few passing years.
II. UNDER CHRIST THE VALVE OF A HUMAN BEING HAS BEEN IMMEASURABLY RAISED. Jesus Christ by his teaching, by the illustration in his own person of what a Son of man can be, by the great purpose of his life and death, has liked up to an altogether different level our conception of mankind. Now, we know:
1. That God made every man for himself—for his layout, his friendship, his likeness, his service.
2. That God is earnestly desirous that every child o! his, however far he may have wandered from his side, should return to the Father's home (Luke 15:1-32.).
3. That for every child of man a Divine Savior suffered and died (Hebrews 2:9).
4. That before every man who will accept Jesus Christ as his Redeemer there is a holy life on earth and a blissful, glorious immortality. Instructed, inspired by these high truths, we have come, or are coming, to look on every human spirit as possessed of a value which money does not in any degree represent, which cannot be told in "golden wedges." It behooves us all