A Brazen Wall

(Click graphic for better view)

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.

Thanksgiving Day – The Religious National Holiday

1900

Thanksgiving day is unique in one respect at least in that it is our only National holiday to which a distinctly religious character is given by official utterance. Christmas day, because it recalls the birth of Christ might be supposed to be the more religious occasion of the two, but Christmas long since has lost much of its religious significance as also indeed has Thanksgiving, but it is still true of the later that its celebration is ordered by official proclamation.

This at first thought may not mean a great deal, for we know in what terms of stale conventionality these annual proclamations are issued and that they come sometimes from executives to whom the name of God has no sacred import. But it is very significant that there has never yet been a Governor or President, however much of an unbeliever he might be, who was willing to offend the religious sense of the nation by failing to appoint a day of prayer and Thanksgiving.

It has often been observed that the name of God does not appear in our federal Constitution, but what matters it so long as year by year our chief magistrate and the magistrates of our nearly half a hundred mighty commonwealths call upon the people to remember God on this day of prayer. It matters little and especially so if the people themselves will but preserve this day and observe it in a manner consistent with its traditions. It need not be altogether spent in prayer and fasting; praise and feasting are quite as much in place.

Above all it should be a day when family ties are strengthened, when family hearths are ablaze and when father and mother, son and daughter should bow together before our Father's God, acknowledging all his blessings, and seeking his forgiveness for our sins. They who dedicate Thanksgiving day to mere sport and dining betray a sacred institution, and dishonor a noble ancestry who held God in faithful remembrance.

—The Ram's Horn, Nov. 17, 1900, p. 6.

Talks on American Sunday

1902

Cardinal Gibbons Declares That the Rich Man Desecrates the Day by Newspaper Reading

In his sermon on the American Sunday at the cathedral at Baltimore, Cardinal Gibbons, among other things, said:

"It has been the boast of our country that in no nation of the world was the Christian Sabbath better respected than in the United States, but a close observer cannot fail to note the dangerous inroads that have been made on the Lord's day in this country during the last 30 years.

"The average business man of America is in a state of habitual feverish activity. He rushes through life at full steam. The one aim of his existence is to become rich. Money making is not the means, but the end, of his life. He increases his wealth, not so much for the love of it as from the fascination attached to the accumulation of a fortune.

"On Sunday mornings, as he is debarred from the conventionalities of life in going to his place of business, he seizes the morning paper and devours its contents of 20 or 30 pages, its news of stocks and bonds, or pleasures and amusements, of crime and scandal, until his whole being is saturated with this unhealthy diet. Like animals gorged with food, he spends the morning in a comatose condition."

—The Indiana Democrat, Indiana, PA, Nov. 26, 1902, p. 5.

Emerson One of "Ten Moral Leaders"

1902

Almost feverish eagerness was displayed to get into Tremont Temple by throngs of people to hear Professor E. H. Griggs's closing lecture. There was particular interest in observing how the only American named in the list of "ten moral leaders" would be estimated, in comparison with the nine Europeans.

The lecturer certainly could not have disappointed Emerson lovers through failure to assign a sufficiently high place to him. Not only did Professor Griggs pronounce Emerson "the prophet of democracy," "the most fertilizing mind which our country has produced," but he declared, with passionate eloquence, that Emerson's place is not lower than that of the very loftiest of the nine other moral leaders in the list.

That list comprises, besides Emerson, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, St. Francis, Savonarola, Erasmus, Luther, Bruno, Victor Hugo and Carlyle. — Boston Daily Advertiser.