“If I were running a glue factory in hell and you’d bring me one of those louse covered bootleggers to make glue of I’[d say, no I think you, I can’t use him, I aint got enough deodorizing material to make him fit to use.
“And the man who buys the stuff from him is as low down as the bootlegger himself.”
That’s what Cyclone Mack said in his sermon Sunday afternoon on “Americanism.”
And he followed it up with this: “The bootlegger is challenging this country, they are challenging North Carolina, they are challenging Monroe, they are challenging me, and before this meeting is over I expect to crystalize the sentiment against them so strong that the liber colored hellians will be put on the chain gang.
“The whole trouble is that you fellers who claim to be standing for the right are not doing it.”
The evangelist was greeted with two notable gatherings on Sunday afternoon and night. The tent was not only full but running over at both entrances. On Sunday afternoon the huge choir loft was full to the brim for the first time, and on Sunday night the same thing happened. On the clear moonlit air of the night the volume of song rang out over the town and could distinctly be heard many blocks away. Leader Jones took a note and many of the singers promised to be on hand again and stick to it.
The afternoon sermon on Americanism and the evening one on the home were notable ones in the evangelist’s efforts. The latter was much clearer and coherent, more logically arranged and presented, dealing as it did with a specific subject and one that touches every heart.
The sermon on Americanism is designed to call the people both to the oldtime American ideals when Americanism meant fidelity to God, to the church, to wife and children, to country and flag. The evils of the day were reviewed, and a glance taken over the history of the country from the time of the settlement, including a graphic picture of the landing of the Pilgrims and their idea of government.
“And no ship of State has ever been wrecked upon Plymouth Rock, nor the principles for which it stands,” very dramatically exclaimed Mr. McLendon, preceding a review of the condition of the condition of the world when George Washington was 43 years old, when the government was founded, and down went the British flag, and up went the Stars and Stripes.
At the beginning of the afternoon service Mr. McLendon said: “When I started out to preach I decided that I would be original or nothing. I soon found that I was both. I have found that there is nothing original. Jesus is the only original man who ever lived. Bryan’s cross of gold was not new, and Lincoln’s remark about fooling the people had been said before. So I have learned to get my sermons where I can. If I hear of one being preached better than I can preach, I get that and preach it. So this sermon on Americanism was for the most part given me by Senator John L. McLaurin of South Carolina. He wrote out and sent me much of it and is all the time sending me something to use in my sermons.
Sunday Night Sermon
On Sunday night Mr. McLendon delivered his sermon on the home, a sermon which many think to be one of the very best that he has so far preached. The text was taken from the 20th chapter of the second Kings—“Set thine house in order.” He started out by saying that there’s a great difference between a home and a house, for love builds homes and gold builds houses.
The home has a cur dog which they call “hun” and all the family love him. The house has a pedigreed airedale and he is kept in the barn. In houses we find broken hearts, hurry, nervous prostration, idleness, artificiality, aimlessness. In homes we find sunshine, flowers growing, warm hearts, happiness, love. The house is cold, reserved, carping, biting, stinging, lacerating, cutting, slashing remarks, and, if not that, you find a state of habitual dumbness and selfishness. In the home there is peace and rest and satisfaction and unselfishness and thoughtfulness and love in activity.
In the home, meal time is a get-together party of shining, smiling, loving faces. In the house, the breakfast table is just a lunch station between the bedroom, office or factory. I have gone to houses and have seen conventional furniture, conventional rooms, forced smiles, Klondike looks, cold stares, icicly, frosty, languid, handshakes and conventionalism upon the back of conventionalism.
In the home the wife is smiling, the children are playing, and you get a good old-time welcome written with box car letters all over the home. The house is formality, coldness and frigidity, and the home is ease and enjoyment and contentment.
Books Brand Home
If you will let me visit your home and if you will take the time to tell me what is in our home by your own choice, then allow me to study the titles of the books in your library and permit me to read the magazines and listen to your conversation, give me the privilege to talk to your neighbors and servants and, if possible, study your friends whom you particularly like, then I will take the initiative in doing three things: first, telling you what you have been; second, what you are; third, what you will be but for the grace of God, although I am a stranger to you and do not know you personally. People, whatever may be seen in your home determines what your home is. There are too many homes in which they are breeding vice as a dog breeds fleas. It reminds me of the soliloquy of a flea that I once read:
“I have no dog on which to live
No matter where I roam
For the dog whose back I used to bite
Has gone to his long, long home
B ut the bow-legged lice on which I feed
Is good as a pug you see
For any old dog on which I hop
Is home, sweet home to me.”
Our homes are the streams constantly pouring forth their current either to brighten or dam the land and they should be the center of all that is noble, godly, inspiring and great. I am going to ask you to go with me tonight on the most sacred spot in the world. A place that knows more sweet associations and pleasant memories than any other place in the world—the home.
Home the National Problem
The more I travel up and down America and preach Jesus Christ the more I see of its successes and defeats, drunkenness and sobriety, religion and infidelity, the more I become convinced that the home is the greatest problem with which he have to deal today. You may talk about your race problems, mill problems, city problems, country problems, church problems, school problems, but the settlement of the home problem will mean more to America than the settlement of any other question. We are drifting away from our old fashioned, God-fearing, Christ-serving, Holy Ghost-obeying homes, where heads were bowed at the table and grace said and we were sent to bed from an altar and an open bible. Fathers in their greed for money and with the multiplicity of cares that have been heaped upon them have grown too busy; mothers have delegated their God-given work to others. We have lost in this country instead of gained. When the home is full of weakness, the government is full of danger. The word home should mean rest, shelter from the storm, protection for brooding love, joyful reunion, light, laughter, song, fellowship with those who understand us and whom we love. But for many it is a place of misery and gloom and hard words and want and squalor, and contention, where the children are little vagrants or criminals in embryo. Children will be in society just what they have been in the home. The downfall of every man and woman can be traced to some weakness or defect in the home. Every gambler who leans over a greasy card table and stakes his last dollar, every bloated face, red-nosed, muttering, staggering sot, with his will power murdered and everything noble and great in his life prostituted, every white slaver and sponsor of harlotry, and barrel house bum, and thief, and every woman that is merchandising her purity, virtue and womanhood, every one of these characters at one time knelt by some mother and learned it from her the mother tongue and how to walk the tottering steps.
. . . .
From the front page of The Monroe Journal, Nov. 20, 1923
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