The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-21

' OS ANGELES, Cal, October H.-In
 this sermon. the preacher shows
 - that as storms, stress and elemen-
 tai confusion are the forerunners of
 growth and orderly development in na-
 ture. so social disturbances, upheavals,
 labor strikes and the conflict of the
 classes and the masses' are the inevita-
 ble precursors of orderly national devel-
 opment. The text is Proverbs xiv, 4,
 Where no oxen are the crib is clean,
 but much increase Is by the strength of
 the OK"
 All true lovers of the beautiful should
 read the messages of its great high
 priest, John Ruskin. There never lived a man who wieded a poetic-prose pen like | his. His Seven Lamps of Architecture"
 and Ethics of the Dust" and "Stones of
 Venice" his Sesame and Lilies" and
 Grown of Wild Olive.' his Studies of
 Wayside Flowers" and of "The Cloud
 Form" and the "Relation of Natural
 Science to Art" offer to the aesthetic en- thusiast visions of this world which ean-
 not be found among the writings of any
 other writer, living or dead.
 Well do I remember the powerful fasci-
 ration which held me when l first pe-
 rused one of his books Though I have
 seen many sages, yet not one of these ever impressed me with the awe with
 which I looked upon the trembling form | of this mighty penman, whose face | saw many years ago when as a student | travelling through England I saw a nurse | lead John Ruskin along the country road 1 for his afternoon walk What was the more remarkable about this view was | this: At that time I was looking only | upon the shell of a man. l was watching a great writer whose body was alive, but | whose mind was dead. If you have read | the biography of John Ruslkn you know | that in his last days he was a mental
 wreck. The brain which had created | thoughts which will charm the Tnglish l speaking world for all time had burned itself out. When I saw John Ruslln he was an old, wornout, helpless man. His mind was a Melrose abbey in ruins. If you have read John Ruskln carefully | you may remember how in one chapter he makes a mighty plea for the aesthet- | les of life as against the ruthless invasion 1 of commerclalsm. He denounces in ve- hement language the heartless vandalism of the business world which would paint. a horrible advertisement of some patent medicine upon the rocks of a majestic palisade or frowning Gibraltar He be- walls the fact that Englands artistic sensibilties are so chilled and dulled that she a would allow the manufacturers wheel to tuFn into a muddy stream the clear. beautiful waters that leap out of the mountains, and he eXcorates the conoclastic brutality of the lumberman who would bury the ax in the heart of the grand old oaks that for centuries have been lifting mp their 1eafY hands to God in an attitude of prayer. But, though John Ruslin our teacher, our Gamaliel, our aesthetic high priest who 1 leads us in worship at the altar of the beautiful makes this plea for the pres ervation of the woods and the valleys, though he would strike down the hands Of the iconoclast who would desecrate the thigh cliff, yet the whole world knows that if commerclalism did not sut It's eyes at times to the aesthetic our rail roads would be unable to tunnel under the mountains and the farmers could never cover their fields with grain. In order that the increasing human race may live we must cut and tear down and slash In many senses we must have a chaotic cosmos in order to have progress | sion.
 Disorder Is Necessary.
 If you will turn to my text and read | 1t carefully, as the inspired penman meant it to- be read, you will find that | the thought which l am enunciatlng l King Solomon taught in his book of Prov | erbs thousands of years ago. He goes
 out one morning, when the complaining | farmers enters his barn. Everything there l Is filthy and dirty. The straw beds upon
 which the oxen slept are all mussed up
 and must be raked out Into the barnyard
 and the stalls cleaned. The chickens 1 have flown into the haymow and scat l tered the hay. The grain bags have been I broken open by the mice. The manager l itself Is in a fearful state The oxen in tI,af,s I,utro |
 everywhere. "Oh, dear' exclaims the
 farmer, just look at that barn. Did you l ever see such a mess? It is work, work work: clean, clean, clean I never finish
 fixing up the barn one day, but I have
 to go to work and fix 1t all up again the
 next" "'ris true that what you say is
 hard" answers the wsest of all men.
 But. farmer, remember that you can
 not have tidiness and cleanliness If you
 have oxen, and if you did not have any
 oxen you could not blow your fields and
 could not SOW your grain and could not
 receive any financial return from your l lands.' Thus King Solomon says to us
 today: "Friend, sometimes it is best to l have disorder Sometimes 1t is best to i have an upheaval. Where no oxen are,
 the crib is clean; but the disorder you de-
 plore and the increase of property you
 rejoice in are inseparable from the pres
 ence of the OK, and you cannot have one
 without the other"
 A valuable practical lesson Is this
 thought for almost every department of l life. In the first place, it will apply to
 the disorders of the natural world. Some
 people, if they could have their way ! would never have a rainstorm. They ] would never have q blizzard They
 would never have the trees robbed of
 their leaves. They would never have
 them stand in a uniform of spotless
 white, like grim soldiers with their bay
 onets of ice as sharp pointed as Roman
 spears They would never have the
 wagon wheels sink hub deep in mud or
 the robins and the thrushes fly away
 from the New England hills to the land | of the flowers. They would always have
 their orchards heavy laden with fruits,
 and their lawns covered with grass, and their gardens crowded with incense way