Isaiah 5:15

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"The mean man shall be brought down (low)." Isa 5:15

How is this possible? Is not the mean man brought low already? To be mean is to be low. What then can be the import of the text? The meaning is that there are always lower depths which may be realised. Even the mean man may daily become meaner. There is a reversion to type that is intellectual and spiritual, as well as merely biological. We have never yet realised how truly mean we may become. The way from anger to meanness is more than one step long. Little by little we go down. Easy is the descent of Avernus; easy is the descent from one degree of meanness to another. A man may not all at once cease to give his shilling to the sanctuary; he may divide it, and subdivide it, and bring down the last donation to so fine a point that it is hardly distinguishable between something and nothing. Or, if we put the text in another light, it is still full of significance. Suppose, for example, that a mean man has been exalted to office: he will soon prove by his meanness that he is unworthy of his elevation, and consequently he will be brought down by the common consent of those who know him best. Suppose that a man should not have been known to be mean because of the skill of his hypocrisy; yet in due time his meanness shall be made obvious, and it shall work his ruin. By meanness we are not to understand poverty of external circumstance; we are to understand moral meanness; that servility of soul which is absolutely without dignity; that poverty of intellect which never contemplates the necessity of the value of other men. There is no hope of meanness. There is hope of wickedness; where there is no hope of real negativeness of character. How seldom is meanness pointed out as a great defect or as a reason for disfellowship on the part of those who are themselves honourable. We expel the drunkard, but not the miser. We expel the adulterer, but not the mean man. The fact is that in meanness there may be infinitely more sin than in any single crime against society that can be named. Publish it abroad, speak it loudly, and with unhesitating emphasis, that the law of the Lord is against meanness, and that all the midnight heavens are in eternal warfare against things that are wanting in the quality of pureness and love.