The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-02-20
SERMON ON PLAN
 OF DE BAROELEBEN Rev. Quincy Ewing Heartily
 Endorses the Idea A NOBLE PROPOSITION Since Monuments Indicate Sentiment, Charity Hospitals are the Best Forms They Can Take-LlV-
 Ing and Helpful.
NOBLE PROPOSITION

on Monuments" at his Il o'clock service yesterday. He chose for his Scripture text:
 And Joshua said unto them, pass over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and take <ou up every man of you a stone upon his shoul- der, according unto the number of tribes of the children of Israel: That this may be sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come saying what mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer theE: That the waters of Jordan were cut ot before the ark of the covenant of the Lord and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever. Josh, iv, 5, 6, '.
 There Is perhaps no remote corner Of the earth today, inhabited by men, with out its monuments of some description; and we are not able to go back aiong the highways and by-ways of authentic history to a time when the earth was without monuments erected by men to do honor to themselves, the gods, or other mem or to commemorate something that the human heart deemed worthy of com memoration. The oldest books the Bibles of the race, are being at the present time read and understood in the light cast upon them by older monuments; and in this same light many a page of ancient history has been decphered that, apart from 1t, would be utterly a blank to modern knowledge. The fact is the most enduring and the most significant history of the race has been recorded on and by it's monuments, memorials of one gen eration to those that came after; objec- tive revelations of the spirit of the earlier to the mind of the later In the marble and granite, the stone and bronze, of oromlech, cenotaph, obelisk, mauso- leum, pyramid, statuary temple and trumphal arch men have embodied the most important elements of themselves- their faith, thought, emotion; and in such embodiments of themselves, we can un- derstand them aa saying to the humanity of another day, Behold what we were fin our day--what our brains were think ing, our hearts feeling our souls bellev- ing
 Monuments Indicate Character.
 Is it not true that we estimate the character of any barbarism or any civ ilizatlon of the past by the character of its monuments. the quality of the ideals 1t elected to express in enduring form Do we in any case hold in more or less reverence or esteem the geniusN of any ancient people than we accord to the hopes, the principles, the convictions, they deemed worthy of perpetual en- shrinement? In the last analysis does not our esli.nate e. g., of the ancient Egyptian coincide with the value we at taeh to the embodied ideals of his py- ramlds, and sphinxes, and mummies; and our judgment of the Greek character find itself accounted for in the Parthenon, and the statues of Zeus, Apollo, Dlonysos, Athene, Aphrodlte? As rule. with scarce a normal exception men .nemori- aizes In stone or metal what most they value. what represents most nearly their faith and aspiration This was not more true of antiquity than 1t is of today.
 And, therefore is may be well for us who are citizens of this city--a city which has been described as one without monuments-to pause an dask ourselves. just now when there is talk of monument building in the air-to pause and ask our selves what kind we shall buid-as ex- pressions of what faith, embodiments of what reverence, manifestations of what purpose--to represent us of this time to our descendants of another. To consider this question may seem unnecessary from what has just been said for, In any event, it may be argued, the monuments we elect to build will be as good as we are in what they represent, and no more questioning of ourselves can make them betterl The argument is not without point and a background of strength; but perhaps 1t is not conclusive on the basis of our present condition. For these con sense if in no other, that they are pecu- liary confusing. It is difficult for any of us to get his true bearings, or to be sure of them when he does. We may easily fail to give expression to the high est and best, not because the highest and best is not in us, but because in some mood of impuIsiye enthusiasm the vision or IL fHdy De iupuleHldllly oDSCuFeu, anu | action take nasty form in that not rep resentative, but rather misrepresentative, of what we most truly and profoundly are.
 Here we find ourselves in a young city, well named when 1t Is called the Magic City" for the material progress and de- velopment witnessed here within a period of thirty years Is nothing short of won derful. Surrounded by mountain-like hills of coal and iron ore, the value of which in silver and gold none can tell, the city of Birmingham cannot fail to go rapidly forward to future of vast wealth and indpstrial importance, compared with which it's present is as the statue of the Infant to the figure of the man full grown. Fortunes have been made here in a brief past; greater fortunes will be made in a brifer future. It is not mere idle speculation, that men worth $l0,00O today will be worth a hundred times that amount q decade hence, and the million aire now, be the multi-milllonaire then. If the days ahead are prophesied at all by the days that have been and are. young ent time are scarcely known in social and business circles, will have won before their shoulders stoop with age or their hair turns grey. their place of leadership in the field where leadership without wealth cannot be. It is not surprising