A Brazen Wall

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1900

Five Minute Sermons — Written Especially for The Ram's Horn

We had a menagerie in our town when I was a boy, and like other boys, I managed to get there. They had one huge cage in which they placed their happy family during the hours when the tent was opened. They had half a dozen huge beasts of different kinds in that cage and I remember looking in open-eyed astonishment at them. It occurred to me that if they should escape it would be a sorry day for the visitors, and I could not help looking to see what our securities were. There were iron bars through which we peered at the animals, and through which they were looking with hungry eyes at us. It was ten feet from the top to the bottom of that cage. But about half way from the top to the bottom was a bar of polished wood into which the iron bars entered from either side. It there should be a family row inside that cage and in the skirmish that bar of wood should give way, it was as plain as my existence that some of us near the cage should be devoured. I grew uneasy at every growl, and when two or three of them threw themselves against the bars I beat a retreat. I did not propose to wait to be eaten. It is not probable that I should have stopped until I reached my home, if one of the men employed about the tent had not stopped me and told me that the bar of wood was but an ornament upon a solid piece of brass. There was no possibility that it should give way. Who of you remembers where it is written, "I will make thee unto this people a fenced brazen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord."

I have had my panicky times since. I have looked at the moral wild beasts which are only aching for an opportunity to devour human society, and I have thought that if they summon all their strength and pounce upon our defenses, they will surely consume us. And then some one has reminded me that God has set His people as a brazen wall, and they cannot be broken down. I gather up the colossal figures of the liquor traffic, and I note its power in all political organizations, and I see its popularity in society where men whose purses are lined with its gold shine in brilliant society and occupy the choice pews in churches, and I watch youth after youth disappear before it, and I say, surely this country has gone to ruin before this foe. But I am called back by the prophetic voice, and am bidden to look at the "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture" and the appointed church and kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and am told to look at that brazen wall which stands between the destroying power and human society. They may fight against it, but they cannot destroy it. They would if they could, no doubt, but they cannot.

I get alarmed about the amount of impurity in the world. We have imported it from abroad when it was so vicious that we were ashamed to claim it as American. We have introduced it into our theatres if their advertisements and posters tell any truth. We have made many suggestions of it in our newspaper and magazine illustrations. We have made large use of it for advertising purposes. We have published it in a thousand books in its worst form, under the plea that we must describe things as they actually are, and in this way we have carried it into the homes and libraries of the most discreet and modest. It would seem that there is practically nothing to save us from absolute demoralization of morals by this subtle and fearful evil. And then I come back to the Lord's appointment of his servants in the earth as a "fenced city, and an iron pillar and brazen wall." Impurity may fight, but shall not prevail.

When they elected a polygamist to Congress, my heart sank within me. There was that fearful curse which we had tried to exterminate, coming back with added virulence and vehemence. It was seeking recognition in the high places of our land, and by political machination was pretty certain to get it. It would carry with it the establishment of the same old outrage on Western civilization, which must make every self-respecting American blush when Mormonism is mentioned. And if this horror of all horrors is to be permitted, it means the destruction of the sacredness of marriage and the happiness of the Christian home and the rights of children, to home life and care and training. If the bars of the cage in which Mormonism is confined once give way, there is no escape provided for our security as a people. But after all, that barrier is more than a fragile strip of wood, it is a brazen wall against which this form of corruption too, is destined to beat itself in vain. "God is not dead." He still says to His people, "I will make thee unto this people a fenced brazen wall: they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee." — J. N. ERVIN.

—The Ram's Horn, March 17, 1900, p. 7.