USA > North Carolina > Guilford County > Greensboro > The history of the first North Carolina reunion at Greensboro, N. C., October eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, nineteen hundred and three > Part 4
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Honorable F. M. Simmons, of North Carolina Senior United States Senator
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sometimes in the retail store. The spirit of diplomacy, that by hook or crook we will get ahead of the other fellow, is not the spirit that is moved of God. Honesty, cheerfulness, paying your debts one hundred cents in the dollar, chastity, loyal to the truth in politics, whatever be the position, are the straight lines along which God propels his people. The Holy Spirit moves in straight lines, and every one that moves under his impulse at all moves under the impulse of honesty, cheerfulness, and virtue.
Notice again, and you have a winged stability. You almost smile when you see that these creatures have the calf's foot. The prophet said, "He makes my feet like hinds' feet". The hind's foot and the calf's foot are just alike. They are made for standing on slippery and dangerous places. The hind can poise himself right over a precipice, and leap from boulder to boulder in perfect safety. Its foot is made with agility, with stability for movement. and at the same time firmness, perfect safety on the move. You remember the prayer, "O Lord. establish our goings". But our stayings are pretty well established. No doubt of that. We get in the ruts, and we love to stay there. But, "O, Lord, establish our goings". May we be on the move for good, full of the love of God, and yet be stable. If we are just active, that is all that is needed. If we can just get together, and do something in a very energetic way; why that is all that is needed. There has grown up in this country the spirit of a creedless creed. There are men up in Boston who believe that you ought not to believe. Their conviction is that you ought not to have any convic- tion. They are very much decided that nobody ought to be decided about any- thing. And you know they have gotten so broad until they are mighty narrow. They are out of patience with one who is not as liberal as they are. They believe in a creed without a backbone. They believe in indefinite liberality that does nothing. I was invited to New York to make an address to an infidel club on "Christ crucified". I thought it was a Methodist steward inviting me, as I saw him in a Methodist church where I preached, and I found it was the secre- tary of the greatest infidel club in the State. My first impression was not to go, but my deacons said, " You go, and we will pray for you". We had about seven hundred people present. One-fourth of them women, God help them, and the rest of them Jews and saloonkeepers, etc., and one of them a great Christian Scientist, rose and said, "We worship the everlasting It". Well, I could but reply, "There is a principle as wide as the universe that you become like the object you worship, and you folks will keep on worshiping the everlasting It, until you become a lot of Its; all of you". There will be no personality left, for as man advances, so is he; and a man can believe nothing until he becomes nothing.
The calves have the foot of the hind that knows how to stand. You examine a man's foot. It looks just as if it were made for backsliding. You have got to put shoes on it, and nails in the heels, to make it safe on slippery places, and that suggests that every man needs the support of divine grace. God himself has undertaken for us salvation, but when he is shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, he has got something under his foot that can stand like the hind when it is slippery, and poise itself even upon dangerous places. You know there is such a thing as making progress by standing still, and you can never make rapid progress unless you know how to stand still. Some one asked a jockey, "Can that horse run fast?" "No, but he can stand." You have got to have stability of position. You must know how to keep on your feet in movement, and you can not do that unless you know how to keep on your feet standing still. There were two sloops several years ago off the coast of Con-
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necticut running a race. The wind was very strong, but the tide against them was stronger, and though they seemed to be going forward at a rapid rate, they were really drifting backward. One of the captains, looking ashore, took in the situation. So he cast anchor, and won the race, leaving the other boat half a mile in the rear. It is easy to dritt with the tides of opposing currents; but those make best progress who have cast their anchors in eternal truth.
What we need is the swiftness of God's wing, and the stability of God's power, movement by movement with conviction for truth, not a movement away from truth and God, but a movement with truth and God is the propelling power upwards.
And that brings me to see in this strange vision a winged fellowship. All these wings are joined one to the other. They move together, and as they move together the hands move. In this practical age we are apt to think that we are simply to join hands. Syndication is the order of the day. Federation is the spirit of the times. Not an inward spiritual union, a union in God, but simply get together and join hands and do something, and that is all that is needed. If we are joined in a living union with God, we can easily work together, for then the same spirit of love inspires us.
We are here on a beautiful mission-simply a reunion. We are here in memory of the old home ties. We have drifted far apart in different States in this Union, and perhaps out of the United States, and yet we are one today in the unity of patriotic loyalty. We are here, not under the shadow of impulse, of any organization or form. We are here because we love North Carolina, and would like to do her honor. We are here, every one thinking about different things, with the same thing as the center of desire and purpose. I love the dear old State; not only because of my first birtb, but more so because of my second. The old country meeting-house is in my mind as a picture today, when my father-blessings on his gray hairs today-preached the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ, and I accepted him as my Savior from all sin.
Those plain country people wept with me over sin, and then rejoiced with me over salvation; and when I meet them now I find that though we have drifted miles apart we are together in that joy and hope; and when a few months ago they gathered with me in front of the old meeting-house, and strewed flowers upon the grave of my mother, and wept with mne tears of sorrow and grief, I declare to you I felt that I had something in common with them that life and death could never touch. Most of them have remained on their farms, and I have drifted over the world, but we are akin-we are just alike in the deep things of God. The wings are still joined. The hands move in response to the wings divine, and you know these deep things of God are so deep that little things like the knowledge of Latin and Greek and science and history do not affect them at all. It is solid in God. This conviction of sin, this yearning after the divine, this transformation of character that goes on under the impulse of the Spirit, is not dependent upon culture, upon civilization, upon refinement, nor ignorance. It is way down beneath these things. It is eternal truth. The truth of the hour is not to be despised-the truth that men talk on the streets, suggested by current events-but oh, friends, there is eternal truth, good for both worlds, and all time and eternity-the relation of man to God and God to man. Education does not affect it. Sad, sad the day when education becomes a substitute for regeneration. If there is one thing that has made me prouder of North Carolina than another, it is the great revival of comnion school education, led by our noble Governor-I say ours because J feel that I have a part in him myself. But I tell you, friends, if I had my way
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about it. I would write over the door of every school-house and every college and every university, "You must be born again". Whitewashing and galvar iring bones is not salvation. It takes the breath of God to make life, and when the new life has come into the soul, partaker of the divine nature, then there can be a betterment until we become like the perfection of Christianity in Jesus Christ ourselves. The mistake that education is all-sufficient has been made by eminent men. Bishop Colenso went to Africa, and selected a dozen bright African youths, and brought them to. London, and gave them the best Incation they would receive in the best schools, and after they had graduated from his school, he said, "Young gentlemen, you had better give your attention to Christianity". And not one of them was converted. "They went back to their native wilds. One of them, the son of a chief, in less than a year got into battle with a rival tribe, killed his enemy, and while his body was warm cut out his heart and made a morsel of it, after all his English education.
John Hans Egede went to Greenland, spent nearly thirty years trying to prepare the people for the gospel, but said they must know something about science and literature, and they must get an education to lift them up to the place where they could appreciate the religion of Jesus Christ, and he preached his last sermon on the text, "I have spent my life for nought'', and went back brokon-hearted man.
John Beck went to Greenland, and the first thing he did was to preach to a crowd of savages, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten sen ", and he had not gotten through with his sermon until Kajarnak, the chief, arose and said, "Mister, say it again. Do you tell me there is a God that loves 2:(! Soy it over." And he said it over, and then Kajarnak come to his little house and was instructed in the way of life, and accepted Jesus, and became a dante of fire in his native land. And what every child, cultured or uncultured, Needs is to know God in Jesus Christ: what the savage needs is to have Jesus Christ preached to him.
John G. Payton went to the New Hebrides to help bury the bones of the victims of a cannibal feast, and he preached Jesus, and when he came back on a visit to this country I heard him say that the very men that had engaged in :hat cannibal feast were at that time deacons in his church.
John Geddley, you will find his monument on one of those hills, with an wwwhigh which reads like this: "Landed here in 1837 (if I mistake not), not a (Aristian on the island. Died 1870, not a pagan on the island." What had Rose it! Schools? There had been schools formed, and the people were incatel, but the pioneer of education is the gospel missionary. The foundation of education for time and eternity is faith in Jesus Christ.
Thus we have in Jesus Christ the union of spirit that expresses itself in twani form. The form is in the expression of life, but as we are joined in wywal patriotism in North Carolina, we can be joined in true loyalty unto Jesus C'Arist. I want to bear testimony to another fact. As I come back to the State this time, all these things have come trooping up in my memory, the touch of az all farmer's hand made me a preacher. I studied for three years at Wake Forest with a view of law. My ambition was to be a lawyer. I thought there was ** wiunity for usefulness as well as fame. My father appointed a meeting to ***:: 4: New Prospect church in Cleveland county, on Saturday, and being Puni in another meeting a few miles below that was so interesting he could = lave. sent word to me to go up there and adjourn that meeting at New w:x: I rode a mule up there, not as pleasaut as a palace car, but for five & xix Les I went along thinking about my law future, and I came up in front
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of the old meeting-house. There was a crowd of farmers standing there talking. One of them, possibly the most illiterate among them, but one of the best that ever lived, came up and put his hand on my knee and said. "My boy, what's the matter?" "Father said he can not be here today, and you must postpone the meeting until some future time." He pressed my knee a little harder, and said, "Look here, son, why can't you come in and preach for us?" My heart went to my throat. Why, it had never dawned on me to do such a thing, and I trembled from head to foot. I was ashamed to be a coward, and he held on so lovingly and so persistently that by and by I got off and went into the meet- ing-house, read a few verses of Scripture, don't know what I commented, don't think there was much, but there were some testimonies. I loved Jesus and had a little story to tell about it. I told it, and at the close there were some inquiries, and after that the old farmer came up and said, "Look here. my boy, how would you like to come back and preach for us tomorrow?" I said, "Why I have not a sermon in the world. I do not expect to preach." It scared me all over. He said, "That doesn't make any difference; you come back here tomor- row". And I was still ashamed, and promised that I would. I went back the next day, but there was a preacher there, and I didn't like that for I had my sermon-God had given it to me-and wanted to preach it. But I began a meeting there, and it went on over two weeks, and there were forty souls con- verted. I have never wanted to be a lawyer since. I have been preaching Jesus from that very day, and I would not go back to law for all the wealth of the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds put together. It was the touch of that old farmer's hand that did for me more than all the colleges on earth. Go to the university, get the highest training that the human mind is capable of, but I tell you, brother, there is something deeper than that, something in the old farmer's hand touch because it is the touch of God. God's wing joined with humanity can make humanity powerful if it be as weak as weakness itself.
Now the prophet gives us a throne above these scenes and in relation to that throne the wheels. The wheel is the symbol of progress. Civilization goes forward on wheels. I came here on wheels. If you take the wheel out of civilization, you stop it dead still. And these wheels were so complicated, wheels within wheels, and so high that they were dreadful and all full of eyes. These wheels were under the impulse of the spiritual. They rested on the earth, and when the spirit moved they went up with the spirit, when the spirit went forward they went forward. They symbolize organization, the machinery of the church, the state, and the family, and everything that God can use for the advancement of his cause, and the teaching for us is that all this machinery should be under the spirit of God. The wheels, oh, so complicated! I tell you, brother, some have to take the complications because they try to run the wheels themselves. They get to the old windlass and turn their wheels. At our last annual meeting we had forty-two societies to make their annual report, enough to make the head whirl and just send one to the lunatic asylum if you try to run all these wheels, but it rests you just to realize that the wheels rest under God's spirit. If they do not, they should. All the machinery of God's church, in missions, in home work, in education, and everything else, is under the impulse of the divine spirit. and if they are not, they ought to be. They will never be successful until they are. These wheels were so great, they were dreadful and full of eyes, full of wisdom. The eve is the symbol of wisdom and thus safe to form great plans for God-plans that take in the evangeliza- tion of our State and country and the world, and plans such as we have for time and eternity formed for the advancement of God's kingdom. But notice
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Honorable W. W. Kitchin, of North Carolina Representative in Fifty - Eighth Congress
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this, that some men who form great wheels for themselves; they think in thousands and millions for their corporations-and I declare corporations have become such wheels they are all dreadful and full of eyes-but you put one of these men on a committee for evangelizing the city or State and just listen to him talk when he begins to consider how much money he ought to give for that purpose, and go to the meeting of the committee when it is discussed, and you will find these men who have been thinking in thousands and millions for their own corporations are now thinking in dines and dollars. Instead of having a great wheel full of eyes, they set up their own pinwheels, men that have the spirit and wisdom to build immense corporations, some of them wicked, some of them on a basis of honesty. Oh, that God would help them to form plans for him as great as his thought, as far-reaching as his salvation, for the salvation of the world.
Let me say finally that the throne had a rainbow about it, and Jesus Christ upon it. The man who sees Jesus Christ on the throne is an optimist. He sees the rainbow, and no matter how complicated the wheels or how dark the pros- pect, it is about him, for he has crowned Christ in his heart, and looks upon him as holding the scepter that is his to give hope for the future. Such a man has a right to hope. I tell you, brother, if you have not crowned Christ in your heart and in your life, you have no rainbow about the throne. You have come back to the old home in North Carolina without a home in heaven. You have come here to look at the place where the house was burned, as my old homestead was; you have come here to wander in the old groves, and you will have no hope of walking amid the trees on the bank of the river; you have come to the old homestead without a title to the new home. O, is that true, friend? Howard Payne, who wrote "Home, Sweet Home", never knew what it was to have a home of his own, and most of you doubtless know the history of that song; how it was that Payne was walking down the street in a great city in Europe one night, and he went across the street, stood there upon the steps for a moment, and noted how the light shone down through the window. He took out his handbook, and, inspired by the home scene through the window, wrote these words, "Home, Sweet Home". He went off, and they were published, and have gone over the world. Years afterward Howard Payne, walking down the same street one night, said, "I will go over and sit on the steps where I wrote my poetry that has made me famous". He went over and took a seat on the steps, and while he was sitting there some ladies came in the parlor, struck a light, opened the piano, and one of them sat down and began to play his own words and music, "Home, Sweet Home". He sat there with his face in his hands, and wept as he thought of the fact that he had made other homes happy, and had no home himself. Suppose the owner of that home had come to the door and said, "Mr. Payne ,this home is yours. You have written about it. Will you not come in?" Do you think he would have cursed the owner of that house? I plead here this evening with every man or woman who has a home to love and a home that you owe to Jesus Christ of Calvary, will you not let that home and its sacred ties lead you to a title to the home eternal, so that when you go back to the home outside of the State you can carry a tie that unites us for time and for eternity. Some people speak of homes breaking up; and, as the world puts it, our home is broken up. The children are scattered. the mother is glorified. The dear father-we tried to induce him, unwisely as I think now, to leave his little church and place and live with us-there in his loneliness, preaching and working and praying for his boys and girls. The home has been broken, you say; and yet, friends, you never lose your homes.
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The home is never destroyed. It goes with you wherever you go. It sings to you in your silence. It is a comforter to you in your silence. It is sweetness to you in the bitterness of night. At midnight you wake up, and it is a night- ingale in the dark. At midday you think, and it is the laik rising up to meet the sun. The home is never destroyed. It goes with us all over the world. A Christian home is eternal. Fire can not burn it. No power on earth can affect it. The Indians have a legend that when the frost comes and nips the flowers in their beautiful colors, these same colors are caught up in the rainbow on the cloud, so that the rainbow is the glorified flowers of the field. And oh, that is what the home is here, and there the flowers of hope and peace and joy are never lost. God catches them up in the rainbow about his throne. The home here is but the preface of the volume of the home beyond, if you have Jesus Christ as your Savior.
May I say as a last message that our State is under God's guidance, God's protection ? The State is ordained of God. You know I think what is ordained of God ought to do only what God wills. Once it was united with the free unbiblical alliance of the world. The State supported the church. Now, let us wipe off a blush, it is united with the saloon. The saloon helps the State, helps to support it; and what was ordained of God should not be supported by what was ordained of the devil. Let the divorce come -- in the providence of God let the divorce come, and then the State will go forward upon the wheels of progress, propelled by the spirit who has given it its mission.
God has said that marriages have only one cause for divorce, and the State that recognizes any other cause does not respond to the impulse of the Spirit. God has set apart one day in the seven as the holy type of worship and service, and I believe he would have the State recognize it as well as the church, even with the union of the church and State. The wheels of the family and the church and the State and humanity under God's impulse, going forward with Christ on the throne, and that throne on which he sits will by-and-by be pushed into sight with power and great glory, and then every crown will be his crown, and every scepter will be his scepter. and every throne his throne. I would like to call upon every individual and every family and every church and every State and every nation and every angel and every redeemed son in glory to say,
" All hail the power of Jesus' name, Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem And crown Him Lord of all. "Let every kindred, every tribe On this terrestrial ball, To him all majesty ascribe And crown Him Lord of all."
When James Russell Lowell stood with a German friend on the top of the Alps, one of the highest peaks, he lifted his hat as he turned toward Italy and Rome, and said, "Glories of the past, I salute you". His German friend turned on his heel, and lifting his hat toward his fatherland, he said, "Glories of the future, I salute you".
The Apostle Paul, standing on the Alpine height of a Christian experience said, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness". "Glories of God's grace in the past, I salute you." And lifting his hat to the futur.
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"'Glories, greater glories of the future, I salute you"'. And when the time comes that every heart shall be under the impulse of God's spirit, every heart in his church, every institution ordained of him, we can stand on the Alpine height of redeemed humanity, and say as individuals and as Churches and as families and as organizations, "Glory of God's grace through Calvary, we salute you". Then we can turn our faces toward the vista of eternity, and salute the greater glory that shall come in the home eternal.
Honorable J. M. Gudger, of North Carolina Representative in Fifty Eighth Congress
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The Reunion Exercises
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Monday, October Twelfth
Never before in her life did the Gate City present a scene so gay, so beautiful, and so brilliant as that which greeted the eye on the morning of the twelfth. From private residences on the most obscure street to the business houses and public buildings on the most prominent square, from the various headquarters of counties, States, schools, colleges, and societies, and from every vehicle and car on alley, street, and avenue, there were unfurled the State and National flags, beautiful bunting, and countless designs and devices in decorations. The headquarters of the various counties of the State, as well as those of the schools and colleges, were elaborately decorated, and presented each a picture of striking beauty. Long before noon South Elm had been transformed into a second Broadway by the moving mass of humanity attracted thither by the open-air concerts of the brass bands. Promptly at the appointed hour the great throng surged around the entrance to the Grand Opera House, where the exercises of the day were to be held. When Dr. MeIver, the chairman of the Board of Managers, rapped the great audience to order, the auditorium was packed to its utmost capac- ity, while thousands were unable to gain admission. Following the earnest invocation by Rev. Charles W. Byrd, D. D., came the opening announcement by President MeIver, who spoke as follows :
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